Custom Controls are gone but not really?

I created a very in depth customization that ran quite a few queries and filled in some grids, boxes, etc. on a form I created. Somehow, the entire UI I created disappeared. Kept all my code, but everything on the display was gone. Frustrating, but things happen.

I recreated the entire thing from scratch. Opened it this morning, and it was fine. Closed it and came back later and everything is “gone” again, but not really…

The controls still show under custom controls and custom properties, but do not show up in the tree view of controls.

The form is blank:
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The code, which refers to all these “missing” controls compiles fine:
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Anyone have any ideas?

I wonder if this is a case of the AnchorWidth, AnchorHeight, etc. properties blowing up your UI layouts… There are a few posts on this site about this.

Long story short, if you go into the Custom XML editor and delete every single AnchorWidth, etc. property, it usually clears up the issues. I have started doing this religiously and I swear by it. Make sure you don’t delete the “Anchor” properties though; only delete the two-word properties beginning with Anchor. I think you have to press the delete key on your keyboard as there is no delete button to click on that screen.

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Tried this, but didn’t fix it:
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I have not tried Toms approach, but it may be worth a shot.

I often find this happens to my forms if I change the underlying BAQ, then update the dashboard. To fix it, I open the dashboard in customization view and see that there are no controls. I close it and open it again, and usually the controls are all there. I try not to rebuild my fields because I know they are hiding there somewhere. It takes a couple of tries to get the dashboard to resynch with the new query definition and the customization.
Good luck!

Tried Tom’s approach to no avail. Also tried deleting all custom properties for controls beginning with epi (I have none that begin with those letter as I renamed those controls but thought maybe XML properties pointing at the old names might be an issue, that didn’t help either.

Hmmm. I missed the part in your first post where you showed the custom controls were gone from the tree view… That I have never seen before, so I was on the wrong track with the Anchor properties…

No problem. Was worth trying even if it didn’t fix it. I’m game to try anything at this point.

This does come up when I try to verify the customization in customization maintenance but doesn’t help me much. Maybe someone else has familiarity with it.

Try to open the customization in developer mode. You should see that there are no controls as you said. Try to save your customization with a new name, just to be safe. Then close your dashboard, and reopen it with your customization again in developer mode.

This happens to me all the time. - specifically the “Object reference not set…” error. I think the code and control elements get out of synch somehow.

Usually just opening, closing and reopening will do the trick. On the other hand, if your customization does have some bad code in it, you can fix that first in customization maint. Then load up your dash and customization. it may take a few tries. If you aren’t sure which is the offending code, then just comment out all your code, and see if the form will launch.

Opened and saved as ted10DayB. Reopened using original (ted10Day) and new one (ted10DayB) neither one worked any different.

Code compiles with no errors, but just to check I commented out all code:
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Saved, closed, reopened and no change.

Customization shows no errors other than the one in the snip above, which is the Exception Object reference not set to an object.

I’ve tried opening, closing, and reopening. I also cleared my cache (even deleted the files in AppData) with no luck.

Thanks for the responses. Gives me things to check even if they aren’t the magic one that is going to fix it.

If you’re willing to attach the BAQ, Dash, and customization I can take a look.

ted10Day.xml (727.5 KB)
tedAvailableLabor.baq (31.1 KB)
tedSchedVsAvailDailyDept.baq (51.9 KB)

There’s not actually a dashboard as I’m doing this on a UD19Form. Reason being that I’m running each of these multiple times with different details being input. Input from user is simply a department (if they want results for just a department) or that combo is left empty and then it is ran for all departments.

To summarize what this is supposed to do (and did, at least temporarily):
It pulls the schedule in by day, checks the calendar for the department to figure out how many hours are working hours for that department (to figure out how many hours are actually scheduled), then the second query determines by employee calendar and department, how many hours are available. The idea is to give us a 10 day comparison of what the machines are scheduled and the labor we have available so we can see whether we have the employees needed to keep up with the machine demand.

I feel like an idiot here. I always do customizations on a dashboard, how did you apply a customization to UD19Form?

No need to feel like an idiot on something you haven’t done before. Ignorance != Idiocy

To apply it to a menu item is through menu maintenance:

To create it, must open in developer mode. Bottom of main menu page, turn on the wrench:

It will ask you when you open the menu item, which customization you would like to use (if there are some) or choose base to create one off the base form. It then opens the form normally. Under Action is listed customization or you can right click and choose customization. From there, it’s very similar to how it works on a dashboard.

Hope that was all clear. If not, let me know. Once again, appreciate the help greatly.

Hmmm, check out this thread, it might be the bug discussed here

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So this probably is what happened as I used save layouts to hide the tree view…

However, I just reopened and it’s all back…

Now how long till it all disappears again?

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Yes! That’s exactly how I customize my dashboards. I just had never tried that before. Thanks for that little tidbit! On a positive note, I loaded up your customization just fine without any errors. Of course our department codes don’t match, so I don’t get any results, but the refresh button works and runs the code attached, just returns no records.

Now as far as getting yours to work… I would suggest a refresh. We know that the files you posted here work without error. Try deleting your BAQs, and customizations. If you are working in Pilot, request a refresh from live to ensure that everything is fresh. Then load up your BAQs and import your customization. If it works like it did on my end you should be all set.
Good luck!

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I wasn’t certain if that was how you were customizing your dashboards or just using the customize tracker view that you can do within the dashboard itself.

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Quite the bug, huh?

I would think/hope/expect it is patched in the latest point update of whatever major version you’re on. If not then shame on Epicor…

Unfortunately I’m going to guess no on a patch since I’m on the latest version of 10. We are planning on transitioning to Kinetic this year so hopefully this won’t be an issue then (although I’m sure everything else will be)