Continuing our series of posts looking at the various packaged applications available in 4.2.2 (most of them are also available in 4.2.1, but we’ve upgraded almost all of them at least slightly), I’ve decided to return to the sample applications. This week, I’ll focus on the Sample Dynamic Actions application.
I like dynamic actions. Quite simply, they are one of the most powerful features available to developers in the entire APEX framework. Of course, because they are so powerful, it is very easy to be overwhelmed, and decide to ignore them completely, which is unfortunate.
A little background, in case it’s necessary: Dynamic Actions are declarative objects which you can add to your APEX pages to do stuff in response to the user’s actions. You can use them to help a user find the information they’re looking for (one great way is to hide stuff they don’t need to see at the moment), or direct them to fields that have invalid data, or even refresh part of a page in response to a user’s change elsewhere. And you can stack dynamic actions–one action by the user can trigger multiple dynamic actions, or a dynamic action can contain multiple steps…or a dynamic action can trigger another one. Like I said, powerful and a bit daunting (at first, at least).
But the first step–before you start stacking dynamic actions with multiple steps to build bigger structures than my kids with their legos–the first step is to learn what you can do with the individual pieces. And that’s why we built the Sample Dynamic Actions app: to give you a taste of some of the things you can do with them. We don’t provide samples for every type of dynamic action, nor do we show you the upper limit of what’s possible. We’re still figuring out cool things to do with them ourselves, and once you start using them, so will you.
If you have a specific packaged app that you’d like me to cover in this series, or suggestions on other applications we should build and include in future releases, please feel free to let me know, either by leaving a comment below, or e-mailing me directly.