Order of combined journal fields is different on different tables or if the record is new

Wayne Richmond · ‎08-10-2017

Hi. I've overridden the default behaviour of the new combined journal fields (specifically Work Notes and Customer Comments) so that both fields appear all the time (see my post here: Disable combined journal fields). However, I've noticed that on some forms the order of each field can be different. E.g.

Existing Requested Item:

New Requested Item (no Post or toggle buttons):

Existing Incident (swapped):

New Incident:

Existing Legal record (custom table):

New Legal record (Draft Text is not a journal field but has dropped beneath the journal fields and the File Notes (work_notes) and Correspondence (comments) boxes have swapped):

How can I get consistent behaviour on all tables and regardless of whether it's a new record or not?

Stefan Baldhof1 · ‎08-10-2017

Hi Wayne,

after some testing with form layouts and the configuration of the "Activities (filtered)" element on the form it seems to behave like following:

For new records: the order of the fields depend on the configuration done via "Configure - Form Layout" (or the form designer). See following screenshot - we prefer to have the "Work Notes" at first position to prevent accidentally adding (internal) work notes to the "Additional Comments" field

For existing records: For these the order seems to depend on how you configured the "Activities" element (assuming, you also use this element on the affected forms):

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Regards,

Stefan

View solution in original post

Wayne Richmond · ‎08-10-2017

There is a self service view but neither Draft Text nor File Notes appear on that view.

Stefan Baldhof1 · ‎08-10-2017

At this point I'm running out of ideas

Already tried to remove one field from the form (the hidden one or the "Draft Text")? Just to check, if one of them interferes in any way with the actual displaying on the form - I know that it's kind of poking around in the dark now

Wayne Richmond · ‎08-11-2017

Thanks Stefan. I think I'll raise this one on hi. The only reason I can think of this happening is because the the journal fields must always appear above the activity field where the journal entries are displayed. When the record is new there are no Activities, therefore the fields appear where they should. When the record is saved and the Activities show, the fields that are between the journal fields and Activities are bumped in the order on the form. I've confirmed this by adding another field next to Draft Text and the same thing happens.

Wayne Richmond · ‎08-11-2017

The official word from SN:

Root cause:

- With UI 16, The behavior that you are experiencing is not a problem. The System is behaving as designed. The journal fields are been placed by the activity formatter for user experience purposes. For instance, once the journal field is updated, the content disappear from the field and appear on the activity formatter right away. When the formatter is not placed closer to the journal field, the users may think that the information on the field was lost because the data disappeared from the field and he doesn't know where it went.

- This is the reason that "Draft Text" field gets jumped before the journal fields on your "u_legal" form after submit.

- The behavior was different prior to upgrade to "Jakarta", because you have used UI 15 in your Geneva release

- There was a problem PRB659701 raised for this reported issue behavior, however development team has closed the problem as expected product design behavior.

Stefan Baldhof1 · ‎08-11-2017

Thanks for this update, Wayne.