Making a form uneditable

Forza

To All Navision Expert,


Our company is in the process of implementing Navision 4.0 and had engaged a NSC to carry out the implementation for us. We are in the piloting stage and the user is having a tough time adapting to the new concept of Navision where the fields are updated whenever the users leave a control in the form.

In the old system that Navision (when I mean old, I really mean it) is replacing, there are two views for the form, one is the "Inquire Only" view, while the other is the "Editable" view. This is set up to prevent the users from accidentally changed something that they genuinely have permission to modify.

I've spoke to our NSC about this but they indicate that nothing could be done to make that feature available as it is a built-in feature in Navision. With the level of flexibility that Navision exhibits so far, I felt hard to believe their explanation. So I decided to dig a little deeper.

I found the following properties in the form:

Editable
Use this property to determine whether a field, form or control can be edited.

Applies to
Fields, forms, check boxes, option buttons, text boxes, matrix boxes, frames, tab controls, table boxes, subforms, menu items.

Settings
The Editable settings are:

To...
Choose...

Allow the field, form or control to be edited
Yes (default)

Prevent the field, form or control from being edited
No


Comments
For fields, use this property to make a field for display only.

For controls, if the Editable setting for the container that contains this control is set to No, that setting overrides what you enter here.

If a form has Editable set to No, then the controls on the form will not be editable, even if their (individual) Editable properties are set to Yes.

This property can be set dynamically by using the UPDATEEDITABLE function in the OnBeforeInput trigger of the control.

What interest me is this statement at the end:

This property can be set dynamically by using the UPDATEEDITABLE function in the OnBeforeInput trigger of the control.

Does this means that I can change this properties at run time?

If yes, Can I set the form's EDITABLE properties to default to No and let the user to change it to Yes at run time. I'm imagining that I can add a button command in the form to toggle between Yes and No for the EDITABLE properties.

I tried to customize this imagination myself but I don't have a developer license to alter the codeunit and C/AL Code.

Anybody done this before or can help me try out this feature?

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks a million!

Alex_Chow

Yes, you can update the form's editable property dynamically. However, it's very time consuming as you would need to modify every form that needs to have this ability. The reason why your NSC said it can't be done does not literally mean that it cannot be done, it means that it can be done, but it'll cost a lot of money and won't provide that much benefit.

The proper way to go about the usability issue with the user is simple and can be summed up in one word: training.

If that doesn't work, train some more.

Forza

deadlizard:

The proper way to go about the usability issue with the user is simple and can be summed up in one word: training.

If that doesn't work, train some more. Mr. Green

That is my first approach. Train them and change their mindset. But it proved harder than it seemed. Now the management had instructed us to implement that feature no matter how. I guess the loonies won again. :-$

Savatage

There are many ways to make this happen.
Your NSC should have been more clear instead of flat out saying it can't be done.

One way we tackled that was to make all the "Important" fields uneditable.
(not all fields are editable to begin with anyway)

Then we added a tab at the end called "Add/Change" which contains all these fields (editable) in one location in case change is necessary.
(this was something we could do by ourselves)

But I understrand the need sometimes to click a button:
Editable: ON or Editable OFF

I guess it's within the range of possiblities to change the form color if "editable is set to YES" using the onFormat trigger
:-k :-k

But it won't be free

themave

We took the same basic approach as Savatage

we made several forms un-editable, and then made another copy that was editable. we simply have a button on the form that is not-editable, labled Make changes, when pushed it opens the editable form.

this allows us to control who can edit, because we limit the premissions to the editable form to certain people.

Alex_Chow

Forza wrote:

deadlizard:

The proper way to go about the usability issue with the user is simple and can be summed up in one word: training.

If that doesn't work, train some more. Mr. Green

That is my first approach. Train them and change their mindset. But it proved harder than it seemed. Now the management had instructed us to implement that feature no matter how. I guess the loonies won again. :-$

Before you do that, I would strongly advise you let the management how much it would cost to make this modifcation. Verses the cost associated with training. Ususally when the management sees the cost and the benefit, they would go with additional training.

You can tweak the forms to be more user friendly, but I wouldn't recommend a major forms overhaul unless it's specificied in the design specification.

Most of the user's complaint about usuability only happens in the first month. Once the users are more comfortable with the layout, you'd be surprised on the dramatic decrease in complaints. And of course, training and handholding helps too.

Forza

deadlizard:

Before you do that, I would strongly advise you let the management how much it would cost to make this modifcation. Verses the cost associated with training. Ususally when the management sees the cost and the benefit, they would go with additional training.

Thank you for the advise and suggestion from all of you! I know how to proceed now.

kriki

You can make the forms uneditable.
Add a menu-item in some menubutton with a shortcut (e.g. CTRL+F12) that makes the form editable.
We did this for some forms for some customers and it is quite fast to do and it works well enough.