InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by markfoley on 2009/05/27 20:24

Hi guys,

Just had a quick look at the filters and have a couple of questions:

The letter filters are cool, I notice though that if I click "U" for example it looks for those that = "U" rather than those starting with U - "U*"

If I then change the filter to U* in the 'welcome' grid you'd expect to see the 'user manual' row present, but it isn't there.

Then I go to the to-do's and click "C" for the filter. It shows Item = C in the toolbar, and the two items starting with C (call john, call mary) are there.

Both cases are filters on the 'item' field, the only difference is the indent. If you click 'S' on the welcome grid it does indeed show the SQNotes (root level) row and children.

Does that mean the filter only applies to root level items?

Cheers

Comments

There are 2 large filter category:

Grid level filters (source, filter, date filter, alpha filter)
Column level filters

Grid filters act on all items that meet the grid criteria. Column level filters act on all displayed items.

What is the difference? Well, as items can have sub-items, those subs may not belong to the grid. They are shown because the user clicked on the + expand button.

So... if you want to filter on what is displayed, you can use the column filters. If you want to filter based on the items belonging to the grid (all items in the database which meet the grid criteria), then use the grid level filter.

In your particular example, the Welcome grid, only the SQLNotes item belongs to the grid (oups... I must update the sample app with the new name)

Thanks for that Pierre.

Interesting! I'll have to have a think about in what cases I might want to do each.

Is there any visual indicator of what is 'in the grid' and what isn't? I had a look at the welcome grid to see how I'd know that title was the only one 'in the grid' but had no luck.

cheers

No there is no visual indicator of which sub-items belong to a grid. Items which are shown but don't belong fall in 2 categories:

Context parents: These are shown in blue by default (Tools>>Options to set the context parent color)
Children (or sub-items): No visual effect of indicator

It is a good suggestion to have such a visual indicator. Possibilities are (comments are welcome!):

# column backcolor (easiest to implement)
a optional checkbox next to the item: checked if belongs to the grid, unchecked otherwise. (easy to implement)
separate column, containing colored cell and/or letter code (P, I, C for parent, item, child) and/or an icon (hardest to implement)

-----------------------------

p.s. In the meantime, you can of course create a smart field which would do that for you (see Smart Fields (aka smart folders) for general info on smart fields.)

To create to this, create a new yes/no field:

name: InAdrsBook

type:yes/no

options:<source>SELECT ID AS itemID, -1 as InAdrsBook FROM AdrsBook;</source>

This creates a field which will be checked for all items which belong to the grid. Replace all AdrsBook with the grid name if you want it for another grid.

WARNING: You should never drag this field to the grid, as this would create a circular reference. If you do so, opening the grid will give an error and no items will be displayed. No data will be lost of course.

Interesting! Thanks for the info Pierre.

Some people probably understand the model better that me, but I think changing the # field backcolour would do the trick.

Do people always display that field? I notice the To-Do's one and the scratch one in the example DB don't show it. I think it's ok though, you could just make that # column a few pixels wide if you only want to see the colour but don't care what the actual number is.

Perhaps the IDItem should get the same treatment, some people (like me) will probably prefer to use a global reference on the left instead of '#' which will be unique and stay constant even if you move items between grids/views etc.

Cheers

great ideas.

I agree with Marks comments -

Mark, you probably know that field is always there - you can reduce it to no width but it always there - it's also needed for selecting items in the default configuration

I had this problem when it came to linking, i.e. I frequently link items to a contact. At times I couldn't discern which item was actually the contact item. I solved this by making all my Contacts bold. Now that Pierre has allowed font formats to flow through the 'Quick Search' dialog, I can easily pick them up.

Furthermore, the bold contact items stand out as ItemParents in different grids... sometimes a useful thing.

I couldn't figure out how to insert screen dumps into this msg to illustrate so I've attached them.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1

>I couldn't figure out how to insert screen dumps into this msg to illustrate so I've attached them

Nothing wrong with attaching them, but you can read Web site User manual and specifically Inserting images in posts for more info.

Thanks for sharing with us how IQ works for you

Thanks Jan!

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

There are 2 large filter category:

Grid level filters (source, filter, date filter, alpha filter)
Column level filters

Grid filters act on all items that meet the grid criteria. Column level filters act on all displayed items.

What is the difference? Well, as items can have sub-items, those subs may not belong to the grid. They are shown because the user clicked on the + expand button.

In your particular example, the Welcome grid, only the SQLNotes item belongs to the grid[/quote]

I made a post about this yesterday but didnt check if it went through (didnt I guess . . )

Pierre, what is "Filter as you type" on page 2. Grid Auto-Search

I believe it's a general thing but it's not clear from that page

Anyways bottom of that page it says:

> Both of these features act on all loaded items, whether visible or not (i.e. collapsed). Loaded items are items that have been visible at some point in the grid since the last refresh.

If it's the same as column filter, that statement doesnt tally with your description

can anyone answer this one?

[quote=Tom] Pierre, what is "Filter as you type" on page 2. Grid Auto-Search

I believe it's a general thing but it's not clear from that page

Anyways bottom of that page it says:

> Both of these features act on all loaded items, whether visible or not (i.e. collapsed). Loaded items are items that have been visible at some point in the grid since the last refresh.[/quote]

was trying to figure out if that relates to the column filters which only work on visible items according to Pierre above

@Tom: Filter as you type is a column filter. The only difference is that instead of selecting an item from the column filter dropdown button, you can type and the grid will filter.

(a bit off topic, but maybe worth noting : unfortunately the filter as you type option is still very CPU intensive. Unusable on my computer on most grids.)

maybe I should start a new thread...

[quote=Armando]

(a bit off topic, but maybe worth noting : unfortunately the filter as you type option is still very CPU intensive. Unusable on my computer on most grids.)

[/quote]

same here, and it wont let you 'escape' from the search till it's finished.

Quick check: Took 27 secs to filter <400 items with very few sub-items. This was looking for the word 'Templates'. The longer the word the longer it takes.

Pierre, Is there any way you can get it to wait till the user is finished typing before filtering actually begins ? It filters after each letter typed - to the extent you have to wait quite a while before the typed word actually shows

The grid supplier has promised to fix this issue...

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

@Tom: Filter as you type is a column filter. The only difference is that instead of selecting an item from the column filter dropdown button, you can type and the grid will filter.[/quote]

well I wanted to update the documentation but I need some clarification please

Pierre, you say above

> Column level filters act on all displayed items.

and the page Filter-as-you-type and Auto-Search

> Both of these features act on all loaded items, whether visible or not (i.e. collapsed). Loaded items are items that have been visible at some point in the grid since the last refresh.

I did a quick test and both column filter and autosearch only seems to work on currently displayed items

unless you object I will change that quoted statement from page (Filter-as-you-type and Auto-Search)

[quote=Tom][from:]

Filter-as-you-type and Auto-Search

> Both of these features act on all loaded items, whether visible or not (i.e. collapsed). Loaded items are items that have been visible at some point in the grid since the last refresh.

[/quote]

I reinstated that line on that page - it certainly seems to be the case now - maybe I misunderstood it at the time... (probably= read too quickly!)