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Is there a debug mode or logging mode to help troubleshoot problems with Actions?

I have an action sequence kicked off by a text change event and nothing is happening.  I've added a Message to the beginning of the Action Sequence to see if any of the sequence is getting kicked off, but the message is not showing.

This is being used in the Sales Order Line Item grid.  I have an Action Sequence that runs when the Item is changed, apparently successfully, but there is a message at the bottom of the grid that says "Insert new record in progress".  This message never goes away or updates.  Then the Action Sequence on the QTY field is not getting executed on the text change.

There could be some bad syntax in the Action Sequence, but all I have to debug it is the Message statement at the beginning that is not popping up.  Is there another way to get more verbose messaging from the session?

Cheers,

James

The debugging sounds good to me. I was working on a few actions and was wondering the same thing.

Thanks, John M

Hi James,

From what I’m reading, the Show Message action is on the text change event for the Item dropdown? Is it the very first action and are you displaying a message in the action? I just tested this on my account in the same area by showing a message with the value Type In "Test" and it pops up every time I change my item.

James and John,

We don’t currently have a ‘debugging’ tool in Method. Even internally, I find myself using the show message action in conjunction with other actions. I’ll typically examine and break down the action sequence into smaller more manageable sections for testing one at a time. We’re open to ideas on this topic.

James and John,

I stand corrected, we do have a debugging tool. I simply forgot about it because I’m used to the old-fashioned way of doing this but you have both inspired me here.  You can find the tool under Customize>>>Display to “Enable Debug Tracing”. When you run an action with this turned on it should give you a popup with all the action result values at each step.

James – adding to my last comment about the show message action, it will NOT display if:

1. Show Message is an empty message.
2. Show Message is within a loop through table/gid.

Thanks,

Fantastic.  Thanks for explaining both methods.

My problem actions are on the QTY text change event which occurs after the actions on my Item text change event.  I've got a Show Message Action at the end of the action sequence of the Items actions, and a Show Message at the very beginning of the QTY actions.  The Item actions ending message displays, but not the beginning of the QTY sequence.

I've got the Text Change actions of the Item field resetting the QTY field to zero to make sure the QTY based pricing calculations are re-run against new Item data, so I think I might be setting up some weird race condition or otherwise causing the execution to hang within the QTY action sequence due to some bad logic on my part.  You've given me some ideas about using the Lose Focus event as an alternative to Text Change, which might give me more control over kicking off the actions.

Now I've got all the tools to debug what I'm doing.  Having the tracing mode will save a lot of time as I was needing to move new Show Message actions up through the action sequence, one position at a time.

Cheers,

James