Report Menu "Include Hidden" option

[Bob Cergol]

Happy New Year Carsten, Bo & Eddy!

I created my first of what will be many "selection lists" -- from my Dataflex application code tables, and other tables, and I specified:
Category = Global
Group = Selection Lists
Name = Division List

I specified for the report to be hidden as these reports will only be used for drop down filter selections in other reports. The docs state that checking the "include hidden" option on the users' reports menu will show these hidden reports. Obviously I'll want to see them for development work.

There are two minor cosmetic/navigation issues with this feature:

1) Checking the "include hidden" option does not refresh the menu display. You must select a different "by" grouping to force a refresh that will display the hidden reports.

2) The checked "include hidden" option doesn't stick. With each log-in you have to recheck it and select a different "by" grouping, to make the hidden reports show.

Its really cool how you can specify the column to use as the filter value separate from the column displayed for the user in the drop-down. It would be cooler yet if you could select multiple columns for display in the drop down -- though I'm not sure I'd ever use more than 3, probably 2 most of the time. Sometimes its nice to show both the code and the description.

Bob

[Carsten Sørensen]

Hi Bob - Happy New Year to you too!

I've put your comments regarding the Include Hidden option on the list!

We usually solve the display of 2, 3 or whatever columns by adding a +Col to the underlying list like (EmployeeID+' '+LastName).

Best regards,
Carsten

[Carsten Sørensen]

... the advantage of using the +Col approach to compile a display value of 2 or whatever number of columns is also that you do it once - and get the consistent display across all the listings that refer to the underlying list for Select combo's. AND you can create whatever format you want like EmployeeName(no) or EmployeeName - Number etc.

Best regards,
Carsten

[Bob Cergol]

Carsten,

I like the solution of using a +column to combine whatever elements are desired. I should have thought of it!
There might be some scenario however where the formatting becomes jagged when the individual elements would look better, left and/or right justified to align them as if they were columns. There's probably a way to achieve this with trimming and padding while concatenating. But that's getting into the realm of obscure, perhaps unimportant, details.

Bob

[Carsten Sørensen]

To be honest the use of the standard HTML SELECT combo in Dynamic AI doesn't allow for too much alignment sophistication in any case - no matter how we feed it. In a future version we will build our own (which would allow for alignments in multiple columns etc.). We have been through a lot of hacks in the past trying to get more formatting flexibility in the SELECT listings - only to discover that we then run into cross-browser compatibility issues etc.

Best regards,
Carsten

[Carsten Sørensen]

Hi Bob,

Status:
1) Checking the "include hidden" option does not refresh the menu display. You must select a different "by" grouping to force a refresh that will display the hidden reports.
==> this has been changed now. The intention was that the Include hidden option (as it is general for all menu options - was a toggle on/off - however you are not the first to request for a forced refresh when checking the option. It is now like that for the next release.

2) The checked "include hidden" option doesn't stick. With each log-in you have to recheck it and select a different "by" grouping, to make the hidden reports show.
==> You would have to re-check after a new login that's correct.

Best regards,
Carsten