Bulk Update and updaing records

[georgep]

We have a requirement for our Users to be able to update v quickly a large number of records within a tabular type report.  The Bulk Edit/Update on its own wont work for us as we need to - when updating each of the records - to concatenate two Notes fields together along with a  system date within each record and update another field.  We can do this quite easily with JS in aa single  Details Page (simple JS concatenating the two different notes values and adding today's date). However this approach does not seem to work on the Bulk Edit/Update - as whilst we can change a common field value across multiple records we cant get JS to individually do a concatenation in each of the records involved.

Am really interested in any ideas for this.  Our latest thinking - please comment - is to use a Tabular report of searched records to display in std tabular form to the User.  But to have an HTML block at the end that has a URL link they can click.  This would open some kind of hidden web window/tab  containing a Details record that we can apply the JS to (as advised above) for concatenating the two Notes field values and the date within each record.  

We have not quite got this to work and I would be really interested in views from this Forum.   A key stumbling block is to arrange for a Parameter value that can be selected once - whilst at the Tabular report - and then reused/retained as the User works his/her way down the list by clinking on the link quickly opening/closing a Details form (using Auto Submit?).   This parameter value we use to update a field with the records status.  It and the values of the Notes fields that we concatenate and then update another field and really the record changes we are trying to accomplish.

We have tried using a second datapage with a dropdown of the values that would hold a parameter value to pass over.  However it loses its value after the first click.  We were wondering if we could have somekind of dropbox field that we could set once and which would then keep its parameter value held whilst the User was clicking the html link block on the Tabular report and then activating the hidden web window/tab with the Details record.

Any ideas from you experts out there :-)

 

[Mathilda]

On 2/28/2017 at 0:19 AM, georgep said:

We have a requirement for our Users to be able to update v quickly a large number of records within a tabular type report.  The Bulk Edit/Update on its own wont work for us as we need to - when updating each of the records - to concatenate two Notes fields together along with a  system date within each record and update another field.  We can do this quite easily with JS in aa single  Details Page (simple JS concatenating the two different notes values and adding today's date). However this approach does not seem to work on the Bulk Edit/Update - as whilst we can change a common field value across multiple records we cant get JS to individually do a concatenation in each of the records involved.

Am really interested in any ideas for this.  Our latest thinking - please comment - is to use a Tabular report of searched records to display in std tabular form to the User.  But to have an HTML block at the end that has a URL link they can click.  This would open some kind of hidden web window/tab  containing a Details record that we can apply the JS to (as advised above) for concatenating the two Notes field values and the date within each record.  

We have not quite got this to work and I would be really interested in views from this Forum.   A key stumbling block is to arrange for a Parameter value that can be selected once - whilst at the Tabular report - and then reused/retained as the User works his/her way down the list by clinking on the link quickly opening/closing a Details form (using Auto Submit?).   This parameter value we use to update a field with the records status.  It and the values of the Notes fields that we concatenate and then update another field and really the record changes we are trying to accomplish.

We have tried using a second datapage with a dropdown of the values that would hold a parameter value to pass over.  However it loses its value after the first click.  We were wondering if we could have somekind of dropbox field that we could set once and which would then keep its parameter value held whilst the User was clicking the html link block on the Tabular report and then activating the hidden web window/tab with the Details record.

Any ideas from you experts out there :-)

 

I would recommend concatenating fields in a formula field on the table level.

You just need to add one more field to the table and on update write date in it. Then, in the formula field concatenate 3 field. This article should be helpful. In this case you may use bulk or grid edit feature.

Regarding your idea with creating a link in html block. It's possible to implement that, you just need to pass parameters, concatenate value and autosubmit a datapage. I wrote a script to the similar request, you may find it here. However, I think, this is not very user friendly solution, because you would need to hit that link for every record.

[georgep]

Mathilda, thanks for an an interesting answer.  Our problem with this app is that we only need to update when a field value changes + we need to keep a running record of changes over time.  The problem with using a formula field at table level is that it would  allow us to capture a Status change from one bulk update and we could have the formulae field show the date concatenated.  However if there is a further update say in a  weeks time then this will simply overwrite the values and we would miss the details of the transaction that happened on first bulk update.

 

Sad to say but I am still stuck with this.  But thanks for coming back. Any further ideas and I am all ears :-)

 

George

[georgep]

We found a solution of sorts for this so just adding by way of update in case anyone else looks at this.  The Calculated field did not work for us  we ended up finding that its is not easy concatenating a text area field and w test field.  Capsio Support did have some work around but it did feel like we were likely to end up with issues with this method further down the track. 

What we did do though is look at bulding our Notes on trhe fly and using Bulk edit to provide field values with which we could concatenate on the users screen.  In this way what we have been thinking of as 1 large Notes Text Area field became 3 smaller fields appended at the beginning of the main Notes Text area field.  Using html we displayed this within a sin gle panel to give the effect one single field re contents though it was actually 4 fields in one. 

When looked at in a details screen on update we justed some JS to take the 3 smaller field values and then add then to the bigger Text Area field and then black them out.  The next effect was that we could provide a Bulk Update that looked as if it could insert text values into another field (the Text Area one) across multiple records when can then be updated with further individual items at a later date.

 

Morale by looking at issue the other way round we were able to come up with a solution.  Its not tidy but it does work.