is there anyway to block user from closing the browser before finishing submission in SmartForms?

Hi Steve

I'm not aware of any way to prevent a user from closing a browser before an event is triggered.  Smartforms doesn't have any rules that trigger on the browser level (.e.g when browser closes).

There is probably a way to capture the window unload event before a browser tab closes in Javascript, but it would prove difficult to hook this up to a Smartforms event. In any case this won't stop a user from using task manager to close the browser.

Can I suggest that you look at your form logic and see if you can only trigger any data saving events on the submit event. If you are using listviews to capture data and then a submit button to start a workflow, look at doing all of the data saving in the submit button rule.

What if you show a popup message box as soon as the submit button is clicked. Saying something like, "processing!!! please do not close window, window will close automatically when processing is complete." and the end of the submit rule you add a rule to colse the window automatically. 

Hi Steve,

I think instead of looking for a way to block a user from closing a browser before finishing submission or to do rollback transactions if a user does close a browser during the submission, rather look at improving your performance so that the view executes the rules faster.

I suggest playing around and changing the 'when actions execute'.

Example: Looking at the rule construction below you will see that when the advanced condition is executed that all items in it are then completed one after another and then the message is show, then a SmartObject is executed.

By changing the "then complete the following one after another and then" actions your performance can be increased depending on the selection made.

When Button is Clicked

1. 
   
2. then complete the following one after another
   
3. then complete the following concurrently
   
4. then start the flow asynchronously
   
5. then complete the following in a batch
   

At the moment I think that 'In a Batch' is the fastest action.

1. 
   
2. then
   
3. also
   
4. and
   
5. asynchronously
   

Please see these documents for references:

How to change when Actions execute in the Rule Designer

Understanding Rules

my rules structure doesn't allow me to change the way of execution too much, because I have couple of events that updates records in the database, for example:

Hi,

I have a question on why you are executing a create and update on each smartobject?

If you are using K2 SmartBox smartobjects, you can create all the fields necessary using only the Create method.

If you can do everything only with the Create method you effectively would halve the time it would take to execute.

Please let us know.

Regards,

JohanL

Hi Steve,

Thanks for explaining why you need the extra methods, it makes sense.

To be honest, I don't think there is anything natively in K2 smartforms which will stop the user from closing the window.

You can try investigating something with JavaScript that will stop the window from closing.

You can put the JavaScript in a hidden Data label (haven't done it myself but theoretically it should work) which will then capture the  window.Close method and can take action from there.

It is a long shot, but might work.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

JohanL