Objects are the individual items held in a dataset.

Understanding objects #

For example, one object is one company in an Accounts dataset, one project in a Projects dataset, or one request in a Requests dataset. An object holds a value for each property of its dataset, may carry files, and may sit in a workflow state.

Objects can be worked with in three places:

• in Manage objects, the administrative view inside application settings;
• in a Table widget on an application page, which is where most users work with them;
• in a Text Grid widget or Form widget, which show or edit one object at a time.

Which of these a person can use, and what they can do there, depends on their permissions and on how the widget is configured.

Open Manage objects #

To open the administrative view:

1. Open the relevant application.
2. Select Application settings.
3. Open Datasets.
4. Select the three-dot menu on the dataset.
5. Select Manage objects.

Auclio opens the dataset’s objects in a table, with the total number of objects shown at the top. This view is available to administrators regardless of what widgets exist, which makes it the right place to check data while building an application.

Create an object #

To create an object:

1. Open Manage objects for the dataset, or open a page with a Table widget that allows adding.
2. Select Add new row.
3. Fill in the values.
4. Select Submit new row.

Auclio checks every required property, every uniqueness rule, and every minimum and maximum before saving, and reports what is missing rather than saving an incomplete object.

Depending on how the table is configured, the new row appears pinned at the top of the table for you to complete, submits itself as soon as every required value is filled in, or opens in a dialog you complete before the row is added.

If the dataset has a default workflow, Auclio places the new object in the workflow’s start state.

View an object #

Select a row to see its values. Where a details page exists, opening the object there gives a fuller view, including its related objects and its files.

Dropdown values are shown as the label of the object they point at, not as an internal identifier. Where the target dataset uses dropdown colours, the value appears as a coloured chip.

Edit an object #

To edit an object:

1. Open the object.
2. Change the values.
3. Select Save.

Read-only properties cannot be edited. This includes properties Auclio calculates, and, on connected datasets, properties the external system owns.

Closing an object with unsaved changes prompts you to discard them.

Every object also has an identifier, shown in the edit dialog with a Copy ID button. You need it occasionally when building permission rules or conditions that refer to one specific object.

Delete an object #

To delete an object:

1. Select the row, or several rows.
2. Open the context menu.
3. Select Delete row, or Delete {n} rows when several are selected.
4. Confirm the deletion.

Deleting an object deletes its values and its files. It cannot be undone.

An object that objects in a child dataset point at as their parent cannot be deleted. Auclio refuses the deletion and names the property that still references it, so delete or reassign those child objects first.

An ordinary Dropdown reference is not protected in the same way. Deleting the object a dropdown points at leaves that reference pointing at nothing. Check the relationships in a dataset before deleting from it.

Edit multiple objects #

Bulk edit applies the same value to several objects at once.

To edit multiple objects:

1. Select the rows you want to change.
2. Open the context menu.
3. Select Bulk edit {n} rows.
4. Choose which properties to change and enter the new values.
5. Select Review Changes.
6. Check the summary.
7. Select Apply Changes.

Bulk edit works on between 2 and 10 rows at a time. Every property you change must belong to the same dataset, so you cannot mix in properties that arrived through a join.

The existing values in the selected properties are overwritten for every selected row. Auclio warns you before applying the change, and there is no undo.

Create objects through a Form widget #

A Form widget is how users create objects without ever seeing application settings.

Place a Form widget on a page, add one field per property the user should fill in, and configure the submit button. When the form is submitted, Auclio creates the object in the dataset the fields point at.

Required properties that are not on the form must have a default value, otherwise the object cannot be saved.

See Widgets for detailed instructions on configuring a Form widget.

Edit objects through a Table widget #

A Table widget can be read-only, or it can allow users to add, edit, and delete objects directly in the grid.

The three capabilities are switched on separately on the widget’s first configuration step, so a table can allow editing without allowing deletion, or allow adding without allowing either.

Users can also sort, filter, group, and rearrange columns, and can save those choices as their own preferences so the table opens the same way next time. Preferences are personal and do not change what anyone else sees.

Editing in a table respects the same rules as editing anywhere else. Read-only properties cannot be changed, required properties must have a value, and permissions decide whether the row can be modified at all.

Open an object details page #

A details page shows one object on a page of its own, which is where related objects, files, and workflow actions usually belong.

To send users there from a list, add a link to a column of the Table widget: set the link type to Page, choose the details page, and map the page’s parameter to the row’s object. Selecting the value in that column then opens the details page for that object.

See Pages for detailed instructions on building details pages.

Import objects #

Objects can be loaded in bulk from a file. This is available for datasets stored in Auclio.

To import objects:

1. Open Application settings.
2. Open Datasets.
3. Select the three-dot menu on the dataset.
4. Select Import rows.
5. Upload the file.
6. Map each column in the file to a property in the dataset.
7. Start the import.

Auclio accepts CSV, TSV, plain text, and Excel files, up to 25 MB.

The import runs in the background, so you can close the dialog and carry on working. Rows that fail validation are skipped and counted rather than stopping the import, so check the result summary when it finishes and correct those rows separately.

A file can also be used to create a dataset from scratch. Choose Import from file instead of Blank dataset when creating a dataset, and Auclio proposes a property for each column, with a data type inferred from the values it finds.

Export objects #

There are two different things called export, and only one of them carries object data.

Application export covers structure – datasets, pages, widgets, workflows, and permissions – and deliberately excludes the objects themselves, so an imported application starts empty. It is not a way to move data.

A Table widget exports its own rows. Right-click the table and select Export, then choose CSV or Excel. This is the way to get object data out of Auclio.

Two limits are worth knowing. The export contains the rows the table has loaded and the columns it displays, not the whole dataset and not properties you left off the widget. And it respects the current filters and sorting, so what you get is what you are looking at.

Where you need every property, add the missing columns to the table first, or use Manage objects, which shows the dataset’s full set.

To take a copy of object data out of Auclio, copy the values from a Table widget.

Keep this in mind before deleting a dataset, because deleting it removes its objects with no way to retrieve them.

See Applications for detailed instructions on exporting an application’s structure.

Troubleshoot missing objects #

If objects do not appear where you expect them, check in this order.

Check that:

• the widget is connected to the dataset you think it is;
• no filter is applied to the widget or left over from a saved user preference;
• the dataset actually contains objects, by opening Manage objects;
• your account has permission to read the objects, and not only the dataset;
• no object-level permission rule is limiting which objects are visible.

For a connected dataset, also check that:

• the dataset’s query conditions still match the objects in the external system;
• a refresh has run since the objects were created there;
• the connection is reporting a healthy status.

The most common cause is permissions. An administrator bypasses permission checks, so a table can look complete to you and empty to a user. Always confirm with a non-administrator account before concluding that the data is missing.

The second most common cause on connected datasets is that a refresh has not run. Open View refresh history on the dataset to see when the last one completed and whether it reported errors.

See Configure permissions and Connect Auclio to M-Files for detailed instructions on these two areas.