I’ve tried to create a sample covering this case to make sure I’m right in what I’m stating and alas I wasn’t right. Unfortunately I was basing my information on older versions of Origam, where it was sufficient to touch a virtual field in the workflow method to put dataset into dirty state. We even had to introduce a special workflow step AcceptContextStoreChanges (Forcing not dirty status in screens with workflow method).
In current version even setting a database field to a dirty state won’t yield dirty state in the UI. Dataset delivered from workflow method is handled as unchanged (not dirty). I can’t find the pull request responsible for this change, but I suspect it is the impact of change how worfklow handles context store state on input.
To sum it up - at the moment it is not possible to force dirty state and there were some changes with more profound impact than initially expected.