Why don't you take the same approach as Remedy have, and make all of these Tasks, that way you can assign different tasks to different people/groups, and they do not have to trawl through the whole form to find the few fields they need to fill in. As for making fields required or not, why use Change Field, why don't you use, say for example Lose Focus to change the label of the field you want filled in, if they fill in one field. For example say they select A in field 1, and on selection of A you want to make fields, 3,5 and 7 required, you use change fields to change the label to bold. Then use Active Links to check on submit whether the fields are filled in, if not, then Set Focus on the first field with an error messsage, do them in order, so the user experience is better, rather than putting just one Active Link giving error on multiple fields. I have done stuff similar to this lots of time, let me know if you need any more details, contact me off-line and I will help. And as Joe said, as far as I am aware Active Link guides DO run on the web. You could equally use Filter Guides if you do not want to use Active Link guides. thanks shafqat
--- On Thu, 11/20/08, Joe DeSouza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Joe DeSouza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: employee setup form best practices? To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, November 20, 2008, 12:03 AM ** Correction to your statement: Active Link Guides DO work fine on the web/mid-tier.. Wherever you got that from you got wrong information. I think the only A L related action that isn't supported on the web as of the latest release is the Macro option and to a certain action the Run Process action if there is no supported java process to run that is equivalent to the process you run from the regular WUT client. That being said some of the older macros from pre version 4.5, can be converted to native ARS actions using the convert functionality built into the admin tool, such as the actions that might have been defined for opening another form wherein pre version 4.5 was only possible through a macro. Joe From: Phil Murnane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 5:25:49 PM Subject: Re: employee setup form best practices? ** Brien: You're right in that a Change Field action cannot make a field become Required. I think the "no Active Link Guides in Mid-Tier" is an old limitation, though; and shouldn't affect you with ARS 7.1. It sounds like maybe you're mixing a couple of different topics: 1. Data Integrity -- many people find it's best practice to use only Filters for data integrity checking. That being said, there is some benefit to doing basic checking in Active Links when your application will be run through a browser, in that the end user will see better performance. Active Links can also make the uesr experience better by providing visual clues (eg, in the case of multiple validation failures, changing all failed fields to red labels). Filters will always enforce data integrity rules regardless of what kind of client is talking to ARS (not all clients understand Active Links). Setting fields as Required is a nice convenience, but I've worked on applications where the development guidelines state not to use the Required attribute in order to prevent failed DSO transfers or for other considerations. 2. Presentation -- I'd suggest a more modular approach to your application. Regardless of whether the end user is entering a new employee or updating an old one, all the same rules generally apply. So why not use the same screen (form/view) for data gathering regardless of the operation being performed? Most data entry screens are accessed from a control panel of some sort, so have the end user choose new/edit from the control panel; then the system will present the data entry screen, which always looks the same. The basic idea is to separate the control panel type of functions from the data entry functions. Alternatively you could have two different forms ("New Employee" & "Update Employee"), but that increases complexity of the application and can lead to an overall increase in cost of ownership (maintenance, performance, etc). Yet another approach can be used when the data entry screens start getting too complex/crowded, and that is to use dialogs to build "wizard" type functionality into the application -- BMC uses this approach extensively in their complex ITSM forms. Just Some Thoughts, --Phil (another Arizonan) From: Brien Dieterle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 2:44:22 PM Subject: employee setup form best practices? ** I'm building a custom form to handle changes for new/existing employees-- things like account creation, email setup, shared group folder permissions, new computer setup, office phone setup, furniture and even name changes. I am duplicating an existing form from a different system that did all of this on one form using dynamic html to hide and show fields as selections are made. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to how to handle a big form like this, or if this is the wrong approach entirely (should it be split up into smaller forms?). My first problem is that the form starts with a basic information gathering: Select employee type: New or Existing. Now, depending on what you select there are different fields available to fill out (by hiding/showing different page holder tabs). The pain comes when certain fields are required only when a certain choice is made. (If you select "New", well, you better provide a first and last name, right?) It doesn't seem like you can change a field to be required on-the-fly using "change fields" (is that correct?). So I am left with leaving them blank and using filters to check the required fields, or using activelinks to set the unneeded "required" field to bogus values like "N/A". Not a pretty picture. My gut says when something is difficult it is probably wrong. Active Links Guides look like an idea but this needs to be web-based (ALGs don't work on web?). Thanks for any tips! ARS 7.1 patch 003 MS-SQL Tomcat Brien __Platinum Sponsor: www.rmsportal.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" html___ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor: www.rmsportal.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
