InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by WayneK on 2016/10/16 11:32

Hello,

Could some of the vets offer some advice on using search? I'm still finding it awkward and unintuitive even after reading the help file again. Here are a couple of questions but any additional advice on using search would be appreciated.

1) How do I edit an item shown in the search list? In Ecco Pro search result items can be edited like any other. In my omnibox search results, selecting an item selects the whole row but you can't edit any fields.

2) How do I go to the item in its grid? If I click on the grid in the "Shown In" column, it takes me to the grid but not to the specific item in the grid. To find the item, I have to do another search inside the grid. This is the biggest problem I'm having with integrating search into doing actual work. It seems like clicking on the grid link should take you to the specific item in that grid. Surely there's a way to do that.

Wayne

Comments

Hi Wayne,

The live-search window is read-only. 2 options for you:
1. Edit values using the Properties pane. The search window does not update but I'll fix that in v84
2. After your search, hit enter to show the search results in the Search grid, which is a "normal" grid
To show a specific item(s), use the cursor keys or mouse to select items in the live-search window and click on Show items in the Search grid or Show items in the Current Grid.
In v84, I've added this:
- New: Live-search: clicking on the Shown In grid, opens the grid and now puts the focus on the correct item

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

Thanks, Pierre. I'll give that a shot.

Wayne

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

Hi Wayne,

The live-search window is read-only. 2 options for you:
1. Edit values using the Properties pane. The search window does not update but I'll fix that in v84
2. After your search, hit enter to show the search results in the Search grid, which is a "normal" grid
To show a specific item(s), use the cursor keys or mouse to select items in the live-search window and click on Show items in the Search grid or Show items in the Current Grid.
In v84, I've added this:
- New: Live-search: clicking on the Shown In grid, opens the grid and now puts the focus on the correct item

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[/quote]

Is there a reason for using a special grid with less possibilities than a normal grid (e.g., can't mark items, can't easily edit, etc.)? (Apart for the live search option, which I don't use as it's way too slow in my DB)

The built in search functionality has always been problematic to me : Not easy/fast enough to get what I want... quickly.

Maybe does it work for a super small DB, but probably not for Dbs used for research (with a lot of text and many classification fields).

So instead of the fast search mode, other solutions I need to use :

1- Create my own filters in some other grid,

2- Use the advanced find (Edit->Find->Advanced Find -- associated it to Ctrl+Shift+F) which IMO is much quicker than the quick find/fast mode. (It's convenient to filter by a certain field -- like tasks -- a bunch of text results, instead of searching the whole DB, and then going through that list, etc.)

To me it always seemed that to be really useful, the "fast search/quick find" window should integrate what's already in the "advanced find" dialog (as advanced options) and... allow easy editing, marking, etc. like any other normal grids.

Instead of having 2 separate interface, integrate the 2.

If that's not possible, some suggestions for "Advanced find" which, really, I tend to use more:

1- Offer to not replace the source of a grid in which the results are shown! This can be really annoying. ~~I suggest to always~~ Offer to hoist the results in that grid. (maybe except for search/scratch)

2- Since it's "advanced", allow some of the same cool options the quick find/fast mode presents. E.g. Show items in new search grid (instead of recycling the same one), Show items in current grid, Show marked items, Show favorites, Show orphans, etc.)

3- Allow filtering the text results not only by one field, but by several fields, maybe using somekind of field pane (properties pane?)/drop down, with each field being fillable/checkable

(Evernote 1.0 used something like that, a while back, in the left pane, IIRC : you could multiselect tags to filter your notes by). In IQ, this is of course possible with columns in a grid (but not directly in the fast search window), using a search form and changing the column set. It might be enough for quick filtering -- although maybe not as quick as some other solutions out there.

4- Still in the "advanced find" dialog : I think the "Source view" expression could be replaced by "filter by..." or "Show...", which would probably be less esoteric.

Thanks for reading...

[Edited for hoist part, suggestion 1]

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

[quote=Armando]

[/quote]

Could you show me in a screencast the responsiveness of the live-search ? My main, fairly large, DB is working just fine (updates in less than 0.2 seconds)

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

[quote=Armando]

[/quote]

Could you show me in a screencast the responsiveness of the live-search ? My main, fairly large, DB is working just fine (updates in less than 0.2 seconds)

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[/quote]

Sorry meant search as you type. What is "Live search"?

As for search as you type, I don't have the time to screencast anything these days. Lets say it takes between 8 and 10 s between searches.

[Edit : note that I'm not particularly worried about the "search as you type" functionality. It's the other aspects. As far as I'm concerned, I'm fine with the tools IQ has for searching, using my own grids etc. I just find that it's hard to quickly find something specific with the that tool : the quick search grid/window. ]

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

[quote=Armando]

Sorry meant search as you type. What is "Live search"?

[/quote]

1. Live-Search

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[quote=Pierre_Admin]

[quote=Armando]

Sorry meant search as you type. What is "Live search"?

[/quote]

1. Live-Search

Pierre_Admin

IQ Designer

[/quote]

It was late (or early!) and I suddenly thought "maybe Pierre means something else by 'Live search' ". :)

I actually became confused when -- after reading your post -- I saw both "Search as you type" and "Live search output" in the "Quick search" drop down dialog.

In any case, it doesn't change much to my observations. Like I said : the quick search window doesn't allow me to find specific data (and work on/with it) in my DB quickly enough. Lack of a few options maybe (to directly filter in that window, etc.).

My 2c. If it doesn't seem important or doesn't affect other users, I'm able to manage otherwise, no problem.

IQ geek

Windows 8.1

CPU: Intel i5 2.6ghz

hi Wayne,

I'm definitely not a vet, but I did have one thought - on your question about editing an item in the search list, you could do this via the fields for that item in the Properties Pane.

On your other question, about going to an item - I can't figure out the rationale for what goes in the Shown In grid. Why is it sometimes blank and sometimes not (some subitems have nothing there which I guess makes sense, but other subitems do, even though they have no "tick" for that grid), why does it sometimes have Scratch, when I never use that, why do some items have the Search grid in there but others not, etc...

DavidF.

DavidF,

Thanks for the suggestions. I, too, noticed that sometimes the "Shown In" grid is blank for some reason, even though the item is assigned to a grid. Looks like Pierre is going to be making some improvements, so that should help.

Wayne

My understanding is that Shown In refers to grids that are open, not all the grids to which the item is assigned. DavidF writes that he never uses Scratch and I have no explanation for that,

Of course, I could be totally wrong, but this has been my experience. Knowing this has made Shown In useful to me.

Jon

Sony Vaio Z, Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 800 GB SSD

Windows 7 Professional 64 bit