Perform Actions in a Layout

In addition to data entry operations such as edit, create, and delete described previously, some web applications define special operations, “custom actions”, on business objects. These actions can be defined on individual rows from a business object (“item-level”) or on an entire business object (“collection-level”).

Let’s take an example of an expense reports layout in a workbook. The web application may have a number of actions defined for this business object. Some of these actions are performed on individual expense reports, such as “Approve” and “Reject”.

Other actions are performed on the entire business object. For example, you may have two actions on your expense reports layout, “Send to Auditor” and “Escalate Overdue Reports”. The first one identifies all expense reports that are not in compliance and forwards them to an auditor. The second one prompts you to provide the number of days overdue and then sends an email to the assigned approver for each matching expense report.

Your workbook may also include an Action Table layout that lets you create hundreds or even thousands of pending action request rows before sending those action requests with a single click.

Some workbooks may also use row status custom actions, which return informational, warning, or error messages for a row without changing row data. These messages appear in the Status column and Status Viewer.

Note: These actions are just examples. The web application integrated with your workbook may have different actions available or none at all.