Ok, so it seems to be working perfectly AFTER I pulled the dataTable out into a separate .xhtml due to the hiding/showing (use of <s:div rendered...>) becoming a problem. I am redirecting as follows: pages.xml | <!-- added for the dynamic column support --> | <page view-id="/filterRoles.xhtml"> | <navigation from-action="#{userRoleSearch.viewRoles}"> | <redirect view-id="/dynamic.xhtml"/> | </navigation> | </page> The order of method executions in a JSF file is very tricky and illogical to me. The fact that sometimes a method called from a JSF gets called several times (seen in the debugger) is very illogical as well. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4089897#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...