Multi-instance Dialogs

Using Multi-instance Dialogs at Runtime

Designing Multi-instance Dialogs

A multi-instance Dialog is created by "dragging and dropping" the sub-dialog from the Knowledge Explorer pane into the editor of another Dialog. The sub-dialog in turn can have another dialog embedded inside it and so on. Alternatively click the 'Add Sub Dialog' icon on the toolbar to create a new SubDialog control which can then be tied to any Dialog object via its TiedDialog property.

The sub-dialog acts as a template for creating multiple instances of the data captured inside it at runtime. The data captured is defined using the standard dialog editor of the Sub-Dialog object.

The runtime data on the Sub-dialog can be defined as one of two modes:

• Attributes captured and stored by the Sub-Dialog (all Objects defined on the Sub-Dialog are automatically defined in this mode)
• Attributes stored (but not captured) by the Sub-Dialog (drag & drop from the Knowledge Explorer into the "Sub Dialog Objects" pane). This can be used to hold derived data, for example Age calculation in the above example

You can also choose to either display or not display each of the Sub Dialog Object values (as a column) in the parent dialog at runtime. By default all Attributes included in the Dialog editor are also displayed, as indicated by a in the "Sub Dialog Objects" pane. You can switch this display off by double-clicking on the Object name in the "Sub Dialog Objects" pane (then the will not be shown).

The runtime order of the displayed columns in the parent sub-dialog is determined by the design-time order of Attributes shown in the "Sub Dialog Objects" pane. This order can be changed by dragging the Attribute inside the "Sub Dialog Objects" pane to a different position in the list.