Current action in civicrm's session

[sdragnev]

I'm not even sure what this is called, but I find that the way civi keeps track of what you're currently doing can lead to weird and unintended results.

For example, click on the Edit link for two different contributions so you now have two edit contribution forms open.
Modify the contribution that you clicked on first and save.
Civi modifies the second one instead!

It thinks that you're now editing the most recently opened contribution even if you aren't.

This is just one example but you can try many other combinations of "doing two different things at the same time" which results in varying states of confusion for civi or the user.

Depending on how people use the system, this behaviour can create serious data issues and because there is no error or other notification, the user is left thinking that everything has gone well. Only a visual confirmation after the modification would reveal the issue, but that's not part of most users' workflow.

Considering that the page URL has all information that the form processor would need (in the above example, contribution ID, contact ID and action [update, add, whatever]), why does it not use that but instead goes and checks elsewhere?

Sorry if this is already discussed somewhere else - wasn't sure how to search for it.

[sdragnev]

Perhaps this topic is better suited for the Features Request subforum.

My bad!
If anyone can move it, that'd be ideal.

[joanne]

I agree that the current behaviour is a problem.

I have been caught out and had to untangle a mess which fortunately I noticed at the time. I have also had to untangle problems created by others that weren't noticed at the time (just as well we have logging enabled).

I am now the only person at work who is "allowed" to edit existing contributions.  I haven't found a way to enforce that restriction using permissions, but everyone else knows they shouldn't do it.