Any way to show "unsaved changes" icon on new record?

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Posted on by awalters

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We have a form where we need to disable the autosave. I'm considering how to document this for my users, and I was going to comment on the "unsaved changes" icon being there, as one visual cue that they needed to save their changes. However, this icon doesn't actually seem to show until after the record has first been created (i.e. if you've filled in a couple of fields but not saved it at all yet, it does not show that there are "unsaved changes", or an unsaved record, or any visual cue in that bottom corner. Is this expected (I mean, I get that you could argue that a "change" means there are changes to an existing record, but I'd also say that going from no record to a record is a change, so things in between those two states are unsaved changes as well)? If so, is there any way to get that bottom corner to show something when the record has not yet been saved?

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Aric Levin - MVP 30,190 Moderator on at

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Hi Allison,

Not as far as I know. You can display a notification bar that says "Record has not been saved", and remove it once the record has been saved. Sorry for being the bearer of bad news...

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awalters 3,079 on at

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Thought about that, but I'm very hesitant to introduce those more informational sorts of messages, since I find the more messages there are, the less people read them. I was hoping to just be able to use things that they should already be used to seeing for that purpose (i.e. "unsaved changes" means it needs to be saved).

I'll leave this open for a bit, just in case anyone has any wacky or hidden ideas...:-) Thanks!

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TomSmelser 1,570 on at

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I think you can show/hide something in footer but never tried. A new record always has Save button at top. That may help.

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Hussein Wahba 223 on at

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Simply, you can add piece of code in page onload which check if page form type is create it add form notification that shows the message that you want, else it removes the form notification.

another solution but it is not the optimum solution is to create a HTML web resource that check the parent form type and shows the desired icon or message.

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awalters 3,079 on at

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Neither of those would get the icon down in the very bottom left corner where the "unsaved changes" icon usually lives, though, would they? Or is there a way to add a web resource down there? (I doubt they'd allow that, but...) I was looking for just a way to trigger the OOTB "unsaved changes" icon to be visible.

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Shidin Haridas 3,499 on at

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Well, OOB, I don't think you can get down to that nice little space in the bottom right corner.

But you can always have a fancy eye-catching web-resource showing up on new forms which basically tries to tell the user the record has to be saved! (I am throwing performance and other factors out the window here with this suggestion!)

Or maybe, it is just basic user training. Any record which has the title as 'New {EntityName}' can be treated as a record that is yet to be saved!

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awalters 3,079 on at

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Yeah - I just very much want to minimize the amount of pop-ups, banners, web resources, etc... Partially because people tend to tune out if there are too many, and partially because my staff is often in remote locations and I do have to be very cautious about performance. So I'm trying to just stick with using the standard system features as consistently as possible, when I can possibly get away with it. The title thing is a good point, though I have to then be sure that for each of the many entities we're using where the name is fairly irrelevant and we're not using it, that it gets populated via workflow. We're generally doing that anyway, but I'm not sure it's happening in every spot. Just something to double check.

Thanks!

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awalters 3,079 on at

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A little follow-up on the footer idea - I tried adding a web resource to the footer, and it doesn't work. (The same web resource works elsewhere on the form.) Seeing posts that indicate this stopped working as of 2016 or so. :-(

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Ben Thompson 6,350 on at

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It's a bug within the create form that is fixed in the Unified Interface - I've just tried to create a new account and in 9.0 as I enter text the save icon never changes.

9.0 (web refresh)

When I repeat the same test using the Sales / Sales Hub Apps (which use the Unified Interface) an "unsaved changes" message appears as soon as you leave the first field you've put text in.

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awalters 3,079 on at

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Interesting. I'm not sure if we're going to end up using the Unified Interface (we're not using Online), but it's definitely intriguing that it's different, and the latter is certainly the way I'd expect/hope it work. Will just have to keep an eye out, and maybe see if I can find or file a bug report. Thank you!

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