sem
6
Perhaps it helps to load external data in a group and from there populate custom states. Do this when the page load workflow runs.
The idea is that on page load, external data (best to use a view for most important data) is fetched when the data group is empty. After that it will populate the custom states and those custom states can be used in your app. Now, when data changes and you are sure it has changed you set the custom state. Now make sure when the workflow where data is changed finished you do a refresh of the data group so that new data from external database is fetched. This will now be loaded into the custom state and all is good.