As the subject reads, I have several use cases where it would be really useful to change the values in a picklist to only include certain values when data in another object changes, is this possible to do from within a trigger?
e.g. Update a picklist of active employees when people leave or join the company.
Out of the box - no.
Picklists can be controlled with Metadata API (and in future maybe Tooling API too) - but from Apex point of view you need a callout. Either to external system that'll leverage the Metadata API or have a look at Adding Columns dynamically to Salesforce Reports - there's an interesting "mdapi" plugin that you might decide to use. Bear in mind destructive changes (like removal of values) are pretty annoying to execute...
In this particular example it's very tempting to say "you're doing it wrong" :(
A lookup to User will out of the box hide users that aren't active. Problem solved.
What are you going to do when the organisation will grow (through acquisitions?) and you'll hit the limit of max 1000 picklist values? http://help.salesforce.com/apex/HTViewHelpDoc?id=picklist_limitations.htm (probably even sooner depending how much of the 15K limit you've used already)
Personally I consider a picklist with anything more than 50 entries a crappy UI / user experience. Well, unless there's some kind of autocomplete paired with it. Scroll, scroll, scroll...
Related
I should model a system that clients can apply some configuration on separated entities.
Let me explain with an example:
We have users that have a config tab in their dashboards.
We have a feature to send notifications on their browsers and we have a feature which we can send an email to them.
We also have a feature as a pop-up.
The user should be able to modify our default notification message, modify our default email template, modify our default text on email or elements.
For the pop-up, The user should be able to modify the width and height of the pop-up, change the default texts, modify background color, change the button location on the pop-up.
And when I want to send an email to the user I should apply these settings on the template then send the email. Also when the front-end wants to show those pop-ups, wants to get these configs from my API and apply them.
These settings will be more and more in the future. So I can not specify a settings table with some fields. I think it is not a good idea.
What can I do? How to design and model this scenario? What are the best practices?
Can I use a NoSQL like MongoDB instead of a relational database?
Thanks a lot.
PS:
I am using Django to develop this system.
I have built similar sub-systems before, by hand.
I don't know much about Django, but do some research to see if it has any "out of the box" or community developed / open source add-ons that do what you want.
If you have to do it yourself...
A key-value pair is not going to be enough, but it's close. You only need a simple data structure:
ID (how your code recognizes this property), e.g. UserPopupBackgroundColor.
Property name (what the user see's / how they recognize this property in the UI), e.g. "Popup Background Color".
Optional - Data type. This is essential if you want to do any sensible input validation. E.g. pop up height should probably expect an integer, and have a sensible min/max value on it, where as an email address is totally different.
Optional, some kind of flag to identify valid properties.
That last flag is bit of an edge case, but it's useful if you use the subsystem to hold more properties than you want users to have access to. E.g. imagine you want to get a list of all properties and display the list to the user - are there any 'special' ones you need to filter out that they should not see?
You then need somewhere to put the values, and link them to the user:
Row ID / GUID. You can use a unique constraint across the User and PropertyID if you wanted to instead, but personally I find a unique row ID is a reliable and flexible approach for most scenarios.
UserID.
PropertyID - refers to ID mentioned above.
PropertyValue
Depending on how serious you need to get, you can dump all the values into the one PropertyValue column (assuming you're persisting this in a database) - which means that column needs to be a string, or, you can add a column per data type.
If you want to add a column per data type, don't kill yourself. The most I have ever done is:
PropertyValue_text (text/varchar)
PropertyValue_int (or double)
PropertyValue_DateTime (date/time - surprise!!)
So when I say 'column per data type' I mean per data type your stack needs/wants to handle - not the 'optional' data types you define in the logic - since that data type is partially just about input validation.
Obviously if you use different logical data types, you can map those to data type columns in the database. The reasons for doing this (using the different data types in the database are:
To reduce the amount of casting you need to do (code to database, and vis-a-versa).
To leverage database level query features, which can be useful. E.g. find emails values and verify them; find expired date values; etc.
It takes a bit of work to build all this, but it's powerful once you get set-up because you can add any number of properties. If you are using the 'full' solution with explicit data types then adding new logical data types isn't too painful if you already have a few set-up.
Before you design and build this, think about future reuse, and anyway you can package it up for later - or community use. Remember it impact all layers (UI, logic and data).
Final tip - when coming up with the property ID's (that the code uses) make them human readable, and use some sort of naming convention so that adding new ones later is easy and follows a predictable path.
Update - Defining Property and PropertyValue in database tables is an obvious way to go. Depending on the situation you can also define Property in code - especially if you don't add new ones or change existing ones very frequently. Another bonus is that if you're in an MVP situation you can use the code effectively as a stub, and build out the database/persistence part for that later.
The reason for my question is to see if you can give me an idea (similar or not) or know of any type of software/web app available for the following that I am going to tell you.
The context
My sister works in the healthcare industry and currently manually handles several different spreadsheets (Google sheets) in a way for her customers and incomes.
My idea
He had thought of an online form for income. This form would have, among others, a field for the customer's name that would be automatically filled in from the customer's spreadsheet as it is searched while typing. If it exists, other fields on the form will also be filled in automatically. If it doesn't exist, once the revenue-related data is populated and submitted, a trigger would update the new customer data in the customers spreadsheet so that the next time the form is used, the field customer name can be auto-completed with the updated customers.
My solution
I have tried a lot of online forms and softwares: Jotform, Caspio, Logiforms, Typeform, Gravity Forms, Formsite, Quinta DB, Airtable, Rest.io, Ninox, Podio, Cognito Forms, Matrify, Zoho ... but without full success.
For this purpose, the only ones that fit us are JotForm (it would be semi automatic since it does not automatically link spreadsheets), Caspio (it is perfect but excessively expensive for us, € 200, since the basic plan does not include triggers), Logiforms ( its trial is very limited and we cannot test if it would really work for us)
I tell you all this to ask for your help and to ask you if you know of any other software, web app, solution or even think of another different workaround to forms that I have not thought of and can help us.
Thank you very much for everything and a hug.
Many examples on the net show you how to use ng-repeat with in-memory data, but in my case I have long table with infinite scroll that gets data by sending requests to a REST API (scroll down - fetch some data, scroll down again - fetch some more data, etc.). It does work, but I'm wondering how can I integrate that with filters?
Right now I have to call a specific method of API service that makes a request based on text in "search" input box and then controller updates $scope.data.
Is it possible to build a custom filter that would do that? And then my view would be utterly decoupled from the service and I could declaratively tell it how to group and order and filter data, regardless if it's in-memory or comes from a remote server, server that can serve only limited records at a time.
Also later I'm gonna need grouping and ordering as well, I'm so tempted to download the entire dataset and lock parts of the app responsible for grouping, searching and ordering (until all data is on the client), but:
a) that dataset is huge (hundred thousands of records)
b) nobody wants to deal with cache invalidation headaches
c) doing so feels so damn wrong, you don't really expect me to 'keep' all that data in-memory, right?
Can you guys point me to maybe some open-source examples where I can steal some ideas from?
Basically I need to build a service and filters that let me to work with my "pageable" data that comes from api, like it's in memory-data.
Regardless of how you choose to solve it (there are many ways to infinite-scroll with angular, here is one: http://binarymuse.github.io/ngInfiniteScroll/), at its latest current beta version, ng-repeat works really bad with large amount of data - so do filters. The reason is obvious - pulling so much information for changes is a tuff job. Moreover, ng-repeat by default will re-draw your complete list every time something changes.
There are many solutions you can explore in this area, here are the ones I found productive:
http://kamilkp.github.io/angular-vs-repeat/#?tab=8
http://www.williambrownstreet.net/blog/2013/07/angularjs-my-solution-to-the-ng-repeat-performance-problem/
https://github.com/allaud/quick-ng-repeat
You should also consider the following, which really helps with large amounts of data.
https://github.com/Pasvaz/bindonce
Updated
I guess you can't really control your server output, because filtering and ordering large amount of data are better off done on the server side.
I was pointing out the links above since even if you write your own filters (and order-bys), which is quite simple to do - http://jsfiddle.net/gdefpfqL/ - (filter by some company name and then click the "Add More" button - to add more items). ordering by is virtually impossible if you can't control the data coming for the server - the only option is getting it all, ordering and then lazy load from the client's memory. So if each of your list items doesn't have many binding by it self (as in the example I've added) - the list item is a fairly simple one (for instance: you simply present the results as a plain text in a <li>{{item.name}}</li> then angular ng-repeat might work for you. In this case, filters will work as expected - say you filter by searched text:
<li ng-repeat="item in items | filter:searchedText"></li>
even for new items added after the user has searched a text, it will still works because the magic of binding.
I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction.
Here is my problem: I have a large form/checklist that I would like to make digital for ease of use.
Thoughts: I would like to use existing tools that would be easy to integrate. My first option is Access 2010.
My question: I would like to enter the questions into a database and then use those entries to auto generate a form that can be used to allow the user to input the actual data into the database. An example would be I have 11 Sections of questions and under each section I have sub-sections that can contain anywhere from 1-... how many every questions we need.
Is it possible to use data stored in an Access database to generate a form with Checkboxes that can be used to input data?
Please point me in the right direction. Obviously there is the option of just creating multiple forms or one big form, but I would like this form to easily be changed etc... Less work more automation.
Thanks,
Alex
Depending on the requirements of your project, this may be quite possible. If you want to use Access as both the back-end and front-end, then you'll need to work within a few limitations:
Because Access combines the user interface and design interface into the same screen, it requires a certain amount of trust that the user can't or won't try to get too creative with changing the data, seeing everyone else's data, changing the design of your form because they are bored, etc. There are ways around these problems, but they can get complicated.
Will all your users be using Window's machines with Access 2010 installed and with the original default settings? If so, good. If not, there may be ways that this could still work.
(There's more, but that's all I can think of right now)
To get started, here's a broad outline:
Make a table for your questions. This table would just have the questions.
Make a form using that question table as the source. Leave the checkboxes and other answer fields unbounded. Include a 'submit' button at the bottom.
The submit button will create a sql query to insert the user's answers into a 2nd table.
If you have any specific questions, we here at SO will be glad to answer them.
In order to dynamically and easily change the number of questions in the sections, what I would do is:
In the main Questions table, add a field called Section to allocate the questions into diffferent ones, and another one Yes/No field to select those that are included (you may also exclude them by leaving the section field empty, as you wish). This will solve the problem of changing the design easily. you probaly will need an admin form in order to do this changes, to avoid touching the tables directly, but this is your decision.
Secondly, in order to allow the users to efectively answer the generated form, you have to ask yourself if you want to accumulate the answer sets, and if you are going to control who answers
I've got a WinForms client-server app that displays various offers in a list. Every user (client) has a "rating". An offer consists of various data including a minimum and maximum rating. If a user's rating does not fall in that interval, he should not be able to take the offer.
Of course I could just perform some server filtering and send a list of offers prefiltered for each user to the client application. But that would surely, and rightfully, lead to confused requests "Why isn't this offer showing up? I know it exists, it shows up on [other user]'s screen."
How should I handle this? My favorite solution so far is to grey out the offer and add a tooltip "You can't take this offer because your rating is too high/low" while displaying greyed-out offers at the bottom of the list to leave the actually valid offers easily visible on top of the list.
A disabled option tells the user:
The action is possible.
Just not right now.
But the user can make it possible.
Unless there is some simple action the user can do to change his or her rating (e.g., by selecting some other controls in the same window), do not use disabling and do not show the offers. Disabling may confuse some users who will then hunt around the window for something to do to enable those offers. It’s a great idea to use a tooltip to explain disabled objects, but that’s not a standard and not all users will think to hover the mouse over a disabled option (Why should they? It’s disabled).
Including offers users can’t have, even when disabled, clutters your display, forces more scrolling, and distracts the users from the offers you actually want them to consider. Furthermore, showing unavailable offers can come across as taunting (“ha, ha, your rating isn’t high enough”) and may diminished the perceived value of the available offers by comparison, resulting in lower user satisfaction.
It seems unlikely to me that users are going to go around comparing the offers on their windows, but maybe you have user research saying they do. In any case, you should label the list of offers to make the criteria clear (e.g., “Offers available at your rating” may be sufficient).
If you want to encourage users to increase their ratings, then maybe include something advertising the benefits of an improved rating. For example you could have a link "-Improve your rating- by four points and get -five additional offers-." The first -link- tells users how to improve their rating, while the second lists the offers as a motivator. The latter link should only be there if the offers will still be available if the user actually succeeds in getting four more points.
That sounds like a good way to do it.
As a slight improvement, if it makes sense for your application, you might consider including the actual numbers in the tooltip, e.g.:
This offer requires a rating between 5 and 8. Your rating is 4.