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Thomas Trombone
Posts:33
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| 09-12-2009 10:27 AM |
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Here are a few "wish list" requests involving the Replace operation:
1. The ability to save a set of replacements and call them up again at a later date. For example, I often update the same three fields on our Status/Condition tab (Inventory Status, Recorded By and Date Recorded.) Obviously the Date Recorded often changes, but Recorded By is usually one of a handful of values (department staff members.) It would be nice to be able to call up the "Set of Replacements for objects found by Pete" instead of having to define all three fields and insert values "Found" and "Pete" over and over again.
2. The ability to replace only the selected records out of a large set. At the moment the only options are the current record or all the records in the result set. You might wonder why it's not just as easy to simply select and discard the records I don't want to replace. The reason is that sometimes I will have a large set (say, 100 records) and I want to run the same replacement operation on them all but with different values for some of them (20 of them will have today's date inserted, 30 will have yesterday's date, and so on.) Using the "discard selected, then replace all" approach means I have to call up the same set, sort, select and discard records for every subset that has different values to be replaced. It would be much easier if I could just run the replacements repeatedly on the different selected subsets in the same window.
3. The ability to delete all currently defined replacements at once, instead of having to click the little red X and then click "Yes, I want to delete this substitution" for every single one (sometimes I have a lot of replacements defined at the same time.) Not as important as the first two items, but hey, this is a wish list...
If anyone knows how to do any of the above with the current client, I'd much appreciation learning how.
Thanks,
Tom Trombone
AMNH Ornithology
trombone@amnh.org
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Thomas J. Trombone
American Museum of Natural History
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DucPhong Nguyen
Posts:17
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| 09-12-2009 10:34 AM |
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For #1, I agree that this feature would be most desirable. I'm tired of having to recreate the replacements each time. Of course, for this to work, one would need to be able to select specific replacements and apply only those.
For #2, you can select the records needing replacement and hit the Replace button (not Replace All). This will appy your replacement against the selected records. This is a similar behavior to when you run reports, Report will generate a report against selected records.
For #3, this would be nice and great if it exists in other types of EMu resources, i.e. Groups. My Groups build up and I would like to delete many at once.
Ducky Nguyen
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Thomas Trombone
Posts:33
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| 09-12-2009 10:42 AM |
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> For #2, you can select the records needing replacement and
> hit the Replace button (not Replace All). This will appy
> your replacement against the selected records. This is a
> similar behavior to when you run reports, Report will
> generate a report against selected records.
Thanks, Ducky! I didn't know that worked. For that matter, I didn't know it worked for reports either :)
> For #3, this would be nice and great if it exists in other
> types of EMu resources, i.e. Groups. My Groups build up and
> I would like to delete many at once.
The version we're running has a separate Groups module, in which this can be done easily. (I think it was implemented with version 4 but don't quote me on that.) Maybe what we need in version 5 is a Replacements module... |
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Thomas J. Trombone
American Museum of Natural History
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DucPhong Nguyen
Posts:17
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| 09-12-2009 10:49 AM |
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Re. Groups, yes we have that too but it's a bit cumbersome to run multiple searches to pull up the right groups and delete them (I for one cannot remember the titles of my groups!) I prefer to do my groups cleanup within the module that I'm currently in :-)
Ducky Nguyen
NMAI |
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Thomas Trombone
Posts:33
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| 09-12-2009 11:02 AM |
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Posted By DucPhong Nguyen on 09-12-2009 10:49 AM
Re. Groups, yes we have that too but it's a bit cumbersome to run multiple searches to pull up the right groups and delete them (I for one cannot remember the titles of my groups!) I prefer to do my groups cleanup within the module that I'm currently in :-)
Ducky Nguyen
NMAI
Out of curiosity (and not to belabor the point) but how is it any easier to work with groups within another module than by using the Groups module directly? In the Groups module I can search for all groups from a given module, and within that I can search for all groups that contain a given record (or set of records.*) What can you do when you call up the groups list in, say, Catalog that you can't do by searching the Groups module for module=ecatalogue? (Hey, I didn't know about replacing selected records; maybe I'm missing something here too!)
Tom
* This reminds me, another nice wish list item would be if the field in the Groups module called "Group IRNs:" (which appears to have a column name of Keys_tab) were made into an attachment field in Search mode, so one could jump from that field into a given module, call up a batch of records, and then run a query to see which Groups contain any of those records. |
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Thomas J. Trombone
American Museum of Natural History
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DucPhong Nguyen
Posts:17
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| 09-12-2009 11:16 AM |
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There is better management within the Groups module for sure. In my opinion it's an issue of usability for the average end user. The Groups module is designed for the more advanced user who knows the real names of the module, writing texql statement, etc. Most of our users have been trained to use the Groups tool from the file menu and have learned to manage their EMu resources (lists, sorts, reports, etc) this way. It makes sense to improve the functionality at the common interface level.
Re. the extra wish list item for Group IRNS... one workaround is to query for your records in say Catalogue, switch your list view to display only IRN, then copy and paste the results into the Group IRNS field in Groups, and run the search. But yes, making it an attachment field would be fab.
Ducky Nguyen
NMAI |
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Thomas Trombone
Posts:33
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| 09-12-2009 11:22 AM |
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> In my opinion it's an issue of usability for the average end user.
> It makes sense to improve the functionality at the common interface
> level.
Got it, and I agree completely. (I keep forgetting other institutions actually have many end users!)
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Thomas J. Trombone
American Museum of Natural History
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Thomas Trombone
Posts:33
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| 10-12-2009 8:13 AM |
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P.S. One more minor wish list item regarding the Replace function:
When defining a new substitution, it would be nice if the "Text to find:" and "Replace with:" boxes recognized the F11 and F12 keys for attachments and lookup lists, so I didn't have to take my hands off the keyboard when defining them (pretty much everything else can be tabbed through, but not those two fields.) A minor issue, but one that would enhance work flow when defining several substitutions at once. |
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Thomas J. Trombone
American Museum of Natural History
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Karen Biddle
Posts:69
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| 22-01-2010 10:49 AM |
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Hi Thomas,
I agree with you on this one... there are certain fiddly data replacements that I run on a periodic basis and if I could just do my record retrieval and then retrieve the desired replacement script, that would be GREAT!
-Karen Biddle |
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