The expression editor in “Enabled state” is unfortunately somewhat buggy and misses some functionality:
It frequently looses focus and closes without saving what you entered
References to variables are called differently, why? In button triggers, a ref to a variable in the expression editor is established with “@Variable…”. Here this is changed to “@Variables…” making it incompatible to copy and paste…
The reference to the current active user is missing from the command list. It would be very nice, especially should the custom user group handling finally lands, to be able to enable/disable a button directly from here without the need to additional helper triggers on step entry. Currently I need to load the current user into a table placeholder pointing to the user table and go from there. E.g. I would like to enable certain buttons only IF the user belongs to a certain user group, like shift supervisors.
For what its worth, I just wanted to note that this functionality is an incredible step forward for the platform and I am sure some of the bugginess will be cleaned up soon. Being able to control app logic live with expressions is a game changer and gets me really excited for a future where we will be able to define variables based on expressions (and maybe even table records one day). My apps are simpler now and that is a huge win for long term sustainability of complex applications.
Let’s be sure to share our excitement with the Tulip team too!
As an LTS user, this is definitely something I’d like to see included in a point release. It severely detracts from the usability of the feature. It’s not a loss of existing functionality, but the ability to use this was a primary part of LTS12 so having it randomly stop working with no apparent deterministic cause is not great.
The great news is the refreshing issue / expression editor dropping was fixed in Release 288 - September 2024. Apologies that I missed following up on that in this thread!
PLAT-34697 - Fixes a bug where the content an expression being edited in the button widget enabled state would be erased every minute.
I understand that there are other things you would like improved on expression editor within the widget interaction menu as well, and the team is working to make these improvements over time, so we appreciate your patience! Because this is a new feature, we know it does not have all the same functionality yet as the normal expression editor, and intend to continue to improve it. Our product team also diligently plans our roadmap well in advance, so often requests like this are squeezed in as possible, or planned for at a later time, that way we can remain focused and prioritize appropriately.
Just to make sure we are on the same page, here are other suggestions that I am seeing that are still open form this thread:
