Storing property values

John Hart

I have a form that employees use for recording test results. After they're entered another employee has to go in and approve results.

When the form loads it stores the logged in employee's name in a variable. There's a ComboBox on the form to switch the status from Pending to Approved. The event handler calls this script to save the approver and the date and time.

If ThisForm.Components("StatusComboBox").Value.ToString() = "Approved" and sApprovedBy.Length = 0

ThisForm.PrimaryIDOCollection.SetCurrentObjectProperty("approved_by",  ThisForm.Variables("EmpName").Value.ToString())

ThisForm.PrimaryIDOCollection.SetCurrentObjectProperty("approved_time", DateTime.Today.ToString())

But when I go to save the object the values don't get saved. I verified there's data by adding a couple static fields to the form, bound to the object properties. And as soon as that code runs the values are there. But as soon as I click Save everything clears out.

Seems like I'm missing something obvious. Any help would be appreciated.

Mary Green

Hello @John Hart

Here's what I can share from our documentation:

The Problem

SetCurrentObjectProperty updates the property value in the IDO collection, but does not mark it as modified. Since the save process only persists properties that are flagged as changed, the values appear on screen but vanish on save.

The Fix

This needs to add two more calls after each SetCurrentObjectProperty:

1. SetCurrentObjectPropertyModified — marks the individual property as changed
2. SetCurrentObjectModified — marks the entire object as dirty so it gets included in the save

Here's the corrected version of the script:

If ThisForm.Components("StatusComboBox").Value.ToString() = "Approved" And sApprovedBy.Length = 0 Then

    Dim oIDO As IWSIDOCollection
    oIDO = ThisForm.PrimaryIDOCollection

    oIDO.SetCurrentObjectProperty("approved_by", ThisForm.Variables("EmpName").Value.ToString())
    oIDO.SetCurrentObjectPropertyModified("approved_by", True)

    oIDO.SetCurrentObjectProperty("approved_time", DateTime.Today.ToString())
    oIDO.SetCurrentObjectPropertyModified("approved_time", True)

    oIDO.SetCurrentObjectModified(True)

    ' Optional: refresh any bound components
    oIDO.NotifyDependentsToRefresh("approved_by")
    oIDO.NotifyDependentsToRefresh("approved_time")

End If

Shortcut Alternative

There's also a convenience method that handles the property update, marks it modified, and notifies dependents all in one call — but you still need SetCurrentObjectModified separately:

oIDO.SetCurrentObjectPropertyPlusModifyRefresh("approved_by", ThisForm.Variables("EmpName").Value.ToString())
oIDO.SetCurrentObjectPropertyPlusModifyRefresh("approved_time", DateTime.Today.ToString())
oIDO.SetCurrentObjectModified(True)

The root cause is that SetCurrentObjectProperty alone is not enough — the save process relies on the modified flags to know what to write back. Adding those two extra calls (or using the shortcut method) should resolve the issue entirely.

Does this answer your question?