Displaying a Note in Read Only to users based on conditions

User Experience
1

I am working with a three-level embedded Page List structure: LoadsCharacteristics, which contains UnitsList, and within that, LoadsList. The LoadsList is rendered as a table in the UI and displays five properties.

Based on the values entered by the user—specifically Load Type and Number of Devices—I need to display a contextual note/message to guide the user.

I attempted to use read-only fields and instruction text, but this approach was not successful because:

  • Visibility conditions cannot be applied effectively within the embedded Page List structure.

  • Form refresh did not seem feasible for this scenario to set the property to show in UI, being an embedded Page List structure.

Given these constraints, is there a way to display a note (read-only text/message) in the UI dynamically, based on the values entered in the table (Load Type and Number of Devices)?

2

A couple of approaches I can think of:

  1. Render the message outside of the pagelist – you’d need a reference to the row with the guidance or…
  2. A column called “Guidance” whose value is derived via declare expression. Something like… .Guidance = “If LoadType = “Motor” AND NumDevices > 5 Then "For motor loads over 5 devices, consult xyz.
    Might either of these work?
3

Most of the contextual guidance in Pega is for forms only, to help the user complete the form. Read only doesn’t do things like “additional information” icon as this would clutter the UI on guidance on how to complete the form (that should be in a form).

There was a recent discussion on how to do some of this, which might help

It would be good to understand what the contextual message is. That might help suggest some approaches. I agree with @DianeSK’s suggestions, which would help in some outcomes.

Data Model

You might consider creating a Message or Message List field in your data model to store these, which could be populated dynamically as needed.

  • If you felt inclined to extend Constellation UI, I know many who have introduced this to render such field(s) in Pega. Though I’m not a big fan of this approach as this copies a Traditional UI approach and decouples the centre-out approach (data model) from the actual fields that need guidance. I’ve seen user feedback where users could not tell which information was for which field because there was just so much on the screen!

Optional Action / Action

You could have a promoted optional action that a user clicks to see more of this guidance you need. This can be dynamic in both its display on the case and using pre-processing can be used to dynamically populate the guidance.

Form Refresh Settings?

I wouldn’t suggest Form Refresh Settings, as this is not Traditional UI “action sets”, its designed to keep the data in the Form (assignment) up to date, not update data anywhere, anytime in an ‘event handling’ approach. In fact DX API would block you, for security reasons, from trying to update something that wasn’t editable on screen. More insights on Form Refresh Settings here:

1 Like
4

Can you please check with declare trigger to show the contextual message?