Tips and Tricks

It’s very useful to work with many tabs or windows in parallel, e.g., to run a report in one and keep entering records in the other. For this, press Ctrl key and click on any form entry in the menu, or click the right button of the mouse to display the context menu and click on "Open in new tab" or "Open in new window".

If your intention is to filter only by Record name in Detail sections, don’t use the Record filter button but use instead the quick filter available in the Record selector box, where the wished record name can be typed and, after pressing the Enter key, the resulting list will be displayed.

You can sort more than one column, keeping a specific order, e.g. sort by column "A", then by column "B", and so on.

For that, after sorting the first column, hit and hold Shift on your keyboard, and then click on the second column you wish to sort (one click for ascending, two clicks for descending), and then the third column, etc.

Note that the order will be indicated by a number together with the sorting arrow icon.

Sometimes, forms can behave in a strange way due to changes such as configuration and design of the application at run time. If reloading the form or refreshing the browser does not help, you might have to clear browsing data. The procedure for this depends on the type of browser, but here we present the most common ones:

After this, your application should work as usual; otherwise, report it to your local administrator.

If you wish to add multiple lines in a Note field placed on a Table section, press the Shift + Enter keys.

Rows can be selected to delete multiple records at once or to copy and paste to a MS Excel sheet, and viceversa. Use Ctrl+Click to select rows one by one, Ctrl+Click+Drag to select consecutive rows or Ctrl+Spacebar to select all rows that have selected cells.

For copying-pasting cells, read important notes here.

You can work with application forms not only by using the mouse to click on icons, records and fields but by using keybord shortcuts, which is a practical way to do certain actions; for example, the keys Ctrl+Spacebar can be hit to select the current row in a Table section. Take a look at our key bindings here.

Work on important configuration changes during non-rush office hours if possible, to disrupt users the least. Alternatively, notify all users in advance about such changes; for example, by posting it on a Start form or with Notifications.

Set any form you want as the application’s start form after users log in. There you can communicate the support contact details, the status of the business, system maintenance times or simply welcome the users with your company’s logo. To do this, open the Application preferences form, and set that form in the Desktop start form drop-down field, which will apply for all users within that application. To assign it for a specific user, set Start form in User admistration instead. Note that there a version of this setting for mobile mode.

It’s very useful to work with different tabs or windows in parallel, e.g., to configure in one and test in the other. For this, press Ctrl key and click on any form entry in the menu, or click the right button of the mouse to display the context menu and click on "Open in new tab" or "Open in new window".

Check out some good tools to review users' information and activity, and data changes: User administration, Logged in users, Login log, Logged data search and Extended logs.

Before you begin creating forms and user accounts, take a little time to decide the naming convention you will follow. For instance, for forms it could be Table name + Role (e.g., "Customer orders - Mgmt"), and for users, firstname initial and lastname (e.g., "JSMITH", for John Smith), with different prefixes for in house users, consultants, subcontractors, etc., or simply following the company’s username nomenclature.

Try to keep forms exactly with the same name as their corresponding menu items, to avoid confusion on what a certain form in the menu is called "for real". Otherwise, you can always find which actual form the menu item will open by selecting such an item in the Menu configuration, then select Details in the drop-down box, and read the original title of the form in Extra information.

If you need to get rid of a form, but you are not sure about deleting it or not, try to hide it instead by unticking its Show in menu setting under Details of the Menu configuration. Another option, but putting more effort, is to remove its access rights in the Form rights administrative form.

If there are fields containing sensitive data that you don’t want the users to filter by in forms, remove such fields from the Record filter like this: in Data model editor, select the table the fields belong to, go to the Field groups tab, select the original table group, select the desired fields and click the deletion icon above. Since the fields are deleted only in the field group (i.e., still exist in the table), the users will not be able to see them or use them in while making a filter. In case you change your mind, you can always add them again into the group to display them in the Record filter.

Copying a rule may be useful, for instance, when several rules have to be created with the same criteria but different actions, and you want to avoid the manual creation of rules, one by one. Instead, simple select the wished rule in Rules manager and click Copy, then Edit to go and change a specific part of the rule. For copying rules between applications, use the Configuration bundles form.

You can configure application forms not only by using the mouse to click on icons, components and properties but by using keybord shortcuts, which is a practical way to do certain actions, for example, the keys Ctrl+S can be hit to save the form instead of clicking with the mouse the Save icon.

Even though it’s possible to choose one Record group from several available in Detail, Multi and Table sections, it’s not supported for other components such as Repeater, Gantt, Buttons and mobile-mode forms, where the message "Cannot determine record group where to insert this or linking record" is displayed. To avoid this, we recommend you to set up a Default record group for that table, and create rules to move the records to the proper group.

It might be necessary to have a form where users can only create records, i.e., no searching, no edition of previous records. For this, simply create a form with a Detail section without Selector, and with the property "Open in created mode" checked.

Do you have a panel working as popup in your form that blinks for a second once you open the form? In that case, or in any case where you have a hidden panel blinking upon loading the form, do the following:

Imagine that you have "Form A" with a Table section where jobs are listed. Once you select one, a button is enabled to open "Form B" where you will see the detail of the job’s invoice, if it has one; otherwise, the detail of the estimated cost.

You could of course have 2 copies of "Form B" with the different layouts, but a smarter solution is to set up variables from the origin form to be used on the destination form.

For that:

Note that you can: