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Known Limitations

Configurations works on a large majority of pages in IFS Cloud, but not everywhere. Configurations require that the implementation of pages and their underlying storage conform to framework guidelines and best practices. Architectural decisions taken when implementing a page can make it impossible to associate a configuration with it.

Note: This page lists a number of situations that is important to be aware of in order to work efficiently with Configurations. There are actually more situations that can be considered as a limitation than listed here.

Join and Union Views

To be able to extend a View with Custom attributes, all records in the View must have a rowkey which correspond to a record in the base table. There are Views defined which are created using joins or unions where this is not the case. Custom attributes functionality would not work on these Views.

Excluded Entities

Due to architectural design decisions some entities may not be extended with Configurations. In such a case, such Entities should be explicitly excluded from Configuration logic so that a user will not be misguided. Refer [Excluded Entities](040_excludedentities.md) page for more details.

Projection Configurations with Standard Entities

Standard entities added to a projection configuration are read only, hence do not support CUD operations.

Custom Attributes connected to a Standard Entity are not supported when configuring Projections.

Business Logic

It is not possible to add business logic directly to a custom attribute, e.g., validations. It is possible to achieve some logic and flow by referencing custom attributes from custom defined events or custom commands. Referencing custom attributes from static source code is however not supported.

Develop with Custom Attributes

New development or customizations of application source code should never make use of custom attributes. There are technical limitations as well as maintenance issues with such an approach. Writing business logic including a custom attribute is not supported by IFS or IFS development and deployment tools. In other words, writing a static code that references configured objects is not supported.

Custom Attributes on Assistants

Unlike ordinary application pages that have a straight forward interaction pattern where typically a user searches for data, update or add information and then explicitly save, assistants provide flexible implementation to suit the task at hand. Under these circumstances, it is not currently possible to provide custom attributes on assistants.

Custom Attributes with Utility Packages

For entities without a base table but have a base view, only Read Only Custom attributes will be supported. The views of the entity (Base or Detail view) should have a Rowkey column with unique values. Therefore if a Utility Package has a Base View or a Detail View then Custom attributes will be enabled for those Utility Packages. Read Only Custom attributes will only be supported since there is no Base Table for Utility packages.

Detail Views and Select Arguments

When a Select statement is set up for a Read-Only field, the arguments must exist in the base view or the base table for the entity, as well as in all approved detail views on that entity.
Navigation functionality (zooming) of reference type custom attributes provide navigation to respective client pages without filering the corresponding record. Filtering is not available due to a technical limitation in IFS Cloud.

Custom Defined Events

Custom Defined Events can be used as a means to add some minor business logic to custom attributes, e.g., validations. For this, to work it is important to place the event on the generated custom attributes table. If the event is attached to the standard entity table the value of the custom attribute will not be updated. This is because the insert on the standard table is done before the custom attribute table, hence when a trigger is executed for the standard table the value of the custom attribute is null. The same thing happens on an update when the standard table fires the update trigger, the value of the custom attribute is not yet updated and contains the previous value.

Custom Enumerations

Maximum character length for a Custom Enumeration is 4000 characters. This amount includes the character length of all the items in the Enumeration.

Page Configurations in Release Upgrades

The current implementation of page configuration lacks version validation warnings or errors to prevent automatic deployment by the installer. If page configurations are included in ACPs within a delivery, they will be installed and published. Consequently, in releases containing upgrade scripts to update page configuration metadata, the included page configurations will overwrite the upgraded configurations, potentially leading to severe side effects.

IFS Cloud Mobile

IFS Cloud Mobile apps only support a sub-set of IFS Cloud Web controls. Care must therefore be taken when configuring IFS Cloud Mobile app Pages within the Page Designer to ensure the App displays the pages and data as expected. If a control is added that is not supported in IFS Cloud Mobile then the control will not display in the App. Details on what controls are supported are documented in the IFS Cloud Mobile Development documentation here >>>

Attribute Properties

Attribute properties such as Visibility, Editability & Required changes in Page Designer will not reflect in IFS Cloud Mobile apps.

List of Values

Changes done with the Page Designer on attributes associated with a List of Values will not be fully reflected in IFS Cloud Mobile apps.