I haven't found a way to edit multiple fields on an entity with just the keyboard, the way you can when you first create one (type, hit tab, type, hit tab, etc.)
From the details page, there's no "edit" button to get that dialog with all the editable fields. And from a list, the dialog, by default, has all the fields disabled. It would be cool to have a simple way to do this, as I find myself frequently typing, then clicking, back and forth...
Thanks!
Joe
Hi Joe, we are headed in a spreadsheet direction where you'll be able to do all the things in cells in list mode that you can do in a spreadsheet. That means we'll move from row selections to cell selections, and you'll be able to copy/paste, drag corners, etc. I'm also making a ticket here on our end to do the same thing for the field widgets (the things on the detail pages).
However, in the grid now you can hit return in a cell to go to the cell below, or hit tab to go to the cell to the right (or shift+tab to go to the left). Have you tried that?
Don - would the "spreadsheet direction" include things like calculated fileds? Example: I have an entity with the fields "Timecode Start" and "Timecode End". It would be great to add a field that stored a simple formula to calculate the difference between "TC Start" and "TC End", yielding the clip's duration.
I hadn't tried it -- that's pretty much what I was looking for! Though it's only good for fields that are displayed in the list (which I know you can change on the fly, but still...)
Pliny, we also have "calculated fields" on our todo list, which we think we'll model off of Excel. However, the thing we get stuck on when we discuss this if if those calculations can happen the fly when the page loads, or if we need to calculate them via triggers and store the value in the database. The first one is much easier, but is limited. For example, you wouldn't be able to sort, group, or query those fields since they're not in the db (not an issue if you have all the data on one page, but here that would cause performance issues - we'd like to only bring onto the page what will fit on the page, instead of pulling down all data to run calulcaitons to then see which records go in what order). Calculating the values of a summary field based on a trigger (so any time the timecode start or end fields change, trigger the calculation) solves the issues above, but is pretty complex to implement in a smart way that doesn't cause performance issues. This one has been on the burner for months now and we're still thinking through how we'll do this.
But no doubt this will be valuable. I constantly run into scenarios in my own Shogun usage that would benefit from calculated fields. We're thinking about it...
Very good points. One purpose of this, for me, would be to display TRT totals -- which I could not do under Scenario #1. And I get that Scenario #2 is a flaming BBOS. But thinking about this some more, #2 is really the only way to go. Otherwise -- like you say, I cannot calc totals, group, sort, etc.
as one of the people who (recently) request this I would definately say #2 (ie they need to be queryable)
frankly even having to trigger a manual refresh by clicking on an 'update calculated fields button' (ie so it wasn't necessarily happening by trigger every time something changed) would be better than not having them...but I guess that may be 'dangerous' since you could potentially be looking at incorrect values...
FYI to the thread, you can build these kind of triggers now via the API. The only issue there is what Stu just pointed out... the UI for the summary will not update automatically when you edit dependent fields because the API script is calculating the summary behind the scenes and updating it in the db. You'll need to refresh the page to retrieve the new value. More info on how to do this is here.
But alas, we have turned this topic on Editing multiple fields on an entity using just the keyboard into a topic about calculated fields. I've started a new topic on Calculated fields so we can keep discussing there.