Making decisions with Control element
Control element performs basic tasks based on a set of conditions. It is the equivalent of a if-then control structure in developer terms. In consists of conditions and actions. If the conditions are met the actions are exetuted.
Conditions
A set of conditions defines all the prerequisites in order for the actions to be executed. Each condition can be valid or not (true/false). It supports common comparison operations equals, not equal, greater, greater or equal, less, less or equal for both numeric and string operands. In addition, regex match, a handy regular expression matching operation is supported too.
Operations
equals, not equal, greater, greater or equal, less, less or equal
Compares the two operands. The comparison can be numeric "123" or text based "ABCD". For numeric comparisons, the operands should be convertible to numbers (floats supported). For text based comparisons any operand will do.
Comparison type - Text & numbers
When comparing, treating operands as numbers or text will not always render the same result.
For example, 4 is less than 05 but at the same time '4' is greater than '05'. Make sure
you are always using the right comparison type. You can switch between comparison types using
the ABCE/123 link right after the operands:
regex match
Tries the to match the text parameter against the regular expression in the pattern parameter. If a match is found it evaluates to true. Note that no Visual Designer expression expansion takes place for the pattern parameter.
Handling many conditions
For a single control element more than one conditions can be evaluated. If many conditions are given, each one of them will be evaluated individually and all results will be combined to determine the status of the whole complex condition. This can be done in two ways. Either All conditions should stand (AND operation) or Any condition should stand (OR operation).
In the screenshot above, both $date should equal '20160101' and $core_From should start with '555' in order to have the whole control element evaluate to true.
Actions
A number of tasks to be executed sequentially if the condition(s) evaluate to true.
Assign action
Introduces a new variable and assignes it the value of the expression on the right.
The text box on the left with the → icon holds the name of the variable (note that no '$' character should be included here). A typical Visual Designer expression can be typed in the right side.
Variable scope
The scope of the variable (i.e. for how long it will last) can be selected by clicking on the blue link inside the text box.
In the screenshot above, tel variable is set to Application scope (i.e. last throughout the
whole lifecycle of the application).
Continue-to action
Diverts the flow of the application to the specified module. All consequent actions are ignored.
In the screenshot above, the flow of the application is dieverted to the Sales module when the action
is executed.
Capture action
Captures part of the Visual Designer expression in text according to pattern and assigns the captured value to a variable. Use a pair of parenthesis to designate the captured segment.
In the screenshot above, the 'year' part is isolated out of a date literal and assigned
to a year (application-scoped) variable.
The use of a single pair of parenthesis is obligatory inside the pattern parameter. Also, only literal regex patterns are supported in this parameter. No Visual Designer variable expansion will take place.
Ordering actions
The order of actions is significant. They will be executed one-by-one until the last action is complete, a Continue-to action is executed or an error occurs. The order of actions can be altered using the re-order buttons on the far right of the row:
Make sure to include only a single Continue-to action in a control element and always make it last.