I'm having some trouble re rendering a part of an outputPanel, i want to display some different form elements depending on the status of an order. I wrote the following code in my bean:

@Stateless
@Scope(ScopeType.EVENT)
@Name("alertDetails")

..
 @Out(value="alertDetailsHtmlPanelGrid",scope=ScopeType.EVENT,required=false)
private HtmlAjaxOutputPanel htmlPanelGrid = null;

 @Factory("alertDetailsHtmlPanelGrid")
 public void refresh(){
 log.info("Preparing");
 app = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getApplication();
 htmlPanelGrid = (HtmlAjaxOutputPanel) app.createComponent(HtmlAjaxOutputPanel.COMPONENT_TYPE);

 log.info("Generating HtmlPanelGrid using ows : "+orderWorkflowStatusId);

 HtmlOutputText text;
 text = (HtmlOutputText) app.createComponent(HtmlOutputText.COMPONENT_TYPE);
 text.setValue("You are looking at alert : "+orderWorkflowStatusId);
 htmlPanelGrid.getChildren().add(text);

 text = (HtmlOutputText) app.createComponent(HtmlOutputText.COMPONENT_TYPE);
 Random generator = new Random();
 text.setValue("Random value : "+generator.nextInt());
 htmlPanelGrid.getChildren().add(text);

 log.info("done building HtmlPanelGrid , no of children : "+htmlPanelGrid.getChildCount());
 }

In my view i have commandButton which is in a rich treenode

<a:commandLink reRender="alertDetailsPanel" value="#{item.description}">
<f:param value="#{item.id}" name="orderWorkflowStatusId"/>
</a:commandLink>

The alertDetailsPanel is defined as :

<a:outputPanel id="alertDetailsPanel" >
 <a:outputPanel binding="#{alertDetailsHtmlPanelGrid}"/>
 <br/>
 <h:outputText value="#{alertDetails.random}"/>
</a:outputPanel>

The jboss log tells me the refresh() method is called when i press the link.

12:03:46,433 INFO [AlertDetailsBean] Preparing
12:03:46,435 INFO [AlertDetailsBean] Generating HtmlPanelGrid using ows : 2288045
12:03:46,435 INFO [AlertDetailsBean] done building HtmlPanelGrid , no of children : 2

When i look at the a4j log i don't see any changes in the binding values, but the random value has changed.

<span id="alertDetailsPanel"><span id="_id73">You are looking at alert : nullRandom value : 1334727162</span><br /> 196772874</span>

The contents of the panel with the binding do not change, it does render when i load the page.

Is this a bug or is there something i am doing wrong ?