I just came across the issue that I had a combobox with values taken from a "formula item".

But: the values didn't refresh on a partial refresh. I found that in the script editor for "values -> formula item" there is no choice between "compute dynamically" and "compute on page load". So I guess it's hard-wired to "compute on page load", which explains why the values don't compute again on a partial refresh.

Luckily, we have the source view of the XPage. And what you perhaps didn't know yet (but what I'm going to tell you right now) is: when you see a piece of server side javascript in the source view of a XPage, there is a leading "$" or "#". These prefixes define if that javascript is computed dynamically (#) or computed on page load ($).

So, brave as I am I just tried to change the $ prefix of the combobox values' javascript to a # and ét voilá, the values are computed on a partial refresh.

Remember two things:

(1) the prefix "#" means "compute dynamically, "$" means "compute on page load"

(2) the source view is your friend if you miss some switch or property in some editor