Feedback on Refresh

The Diagrams application provides functionality to indicate changes made to shape data after the Refresh command has been executed. This functionality makes it possible to know what changes have been picked up from the database - it is useful when database data has been modified by some external application, an addin or by another user in a parallel session. The user can be updated about the changes by highlighting of the modified shape and/or its annotation and also by appropriate messages in the message log.

The functionality is controlled by a number of settings:

The settings controlling feedback given by highlighting a shape and/or its annotation are as follows:

• ‘Reset highlight before refresh’ indicates whether the Reset Highlight command should be executed before the Refresh command is executed.

• ‘Highlight shape with changed attributes’ - if this option is set to true, then a shape that has attributes updated by the Refresh command will be highlighted.

• ‘Highlight changed annotation’ - if this option is set to true, then after the Refresh command is executed and the shape's text has been changed, the text will be highlighted. If the text on the Labels/Multi-labels, attached to the shape being refreshed, was changed, the annotation will be highlighted as well.

Changed shape and its annotation (text and attached label) being highlighted after Refresh

Apart from highlighting the modified shape or annotation the changes are also indicated by messages in the message log. There is possibility to adjust the level of information according to individual user needs using the ‘Message level’ setting. It can be set to the following values:

• 'Summary message for refresh operation' - only one summary message with information of the number of changed shapes will be given:

• 'Message per shape' - a summary message and also one message for each changed shape with information about the number of changed attributes will be displayed:

• 'Message per attribute' - there will be a summary message and also one message for each updated attribute (except attributes listed in ‘Ignore changed attributes’ setting):

Another option controlling the feedback on Refresh is 'Zoom out to show all changes'. When this option is set to True it gives a possibility to zoom out to see all changes, then after the refresh, zoom is adjusted to show all changed shapes on the current page.

To avoid indications on any insignificant changes, it is possible to set attributes which should be skipped by feedback on Refresh. They can be listed as value ‘Ignore changed attributes’. The attributes to be ignored should be separated by commas or spaces like on the examples below:

Referenced attributes cannot be listed in the setting, but they are ignored if any of their parts are skipped, for example, OWNER_NAME will be ignored if the Ignore changed attributes list contains an OWNER or NAME attribute. A change made to ignored attributes during refresh will be skipped in the message log information (there will be no message if the level is set to Per attribute and also the change will not be counted in ‘Per shape’ and summary information). If all changed attributes for the refreshed shape are listed in the Ignore changed attributes list, the shape will not be highlighted even if ‘Highlight shape with changed attributes’ is on. However, if the ignored attribute causes any modification of the shape's text or label text, the text and the label will still be highlighted if ‘Highlight changed annotation’ is set to True.

By default the feedback is given only if the Refresh operation is executed from the menu or if it is called after a drawing is opened and the ‘Refresh drawing on opening’ is set to True. However, it is possible to set the 'Give feedback on automatic refresh' to On to get feedback on the automatically called Refresh operations, for example, after Refit and Resize.