ChadSmiley Blog

The 5 Simple Steps

1. Select the document(s) to update.
2. Click your toolbar button.
3. Select the field to update.
4. Select the data type or action to be performed
5. Enter the new information (if prompted)

Limitations

• For best results update less than 100 documents at a time, because a list of the updated documents' UNID must be kept.
• Field value is limited to 255 because of the @Prompt limitations.
• When updating multiple documents only the documents that are selected and visible (expanded) in the view will be updated. Notes needs to be able to navigate to the document!

Features

• New data type/actions:
  • + Append Values - Appends new values to a field.
  • Sort Ascending - Any type of list.
  • Sort Descending - Any type of list.
  • Replace - with the ability to update multiple fields at once.
  • Replace Substring - with the ability to update multiple fields at once.
  • Unique - Removes all duplicate elements in a list.
  • Implode - Prompts for separator and converts a list to text.
  • Explode - Prompts for separators and converts text to a list.
• Thank you to Lefty Tsamis for the ability to update multiple documents with the same value.
• Lefty Tsamis also added the ability to check the data type of the field for the selected document and have that be the default type instead of always being text.
• Thank you to Vladislav Gorbunov (Creator of FieldControl) for adding the use of the Notes.ini to store the last field that was edited.
• Vladislav Gorbunov also added the +Append Values data function.
• Added additional checks so fields are not set to errors.
• Added Status Bar notification of what happened.
• Sorted the data types to find them easier.
• Added confirmation of update for more than one document.

Code Break Down

Setup

First we need to determine the fields that are available. We will use the currently selected document. To clean up the code we will create a temp variable just for the window titles. Then define all of the possible data types or actions that will be allowed on a field. I just ran across an interesting tip about Formula Language's dirty secret so I changed my data types definition to be a string and then explode it out into an array.

Field Selection/Add

Display a list of all available fields with the ability to enter new ones. When a selection has been made set a local environment variable of the selected field, so the next time using Edit Document field this field will be selected.

Determine Field Type

Based on the field that was selected lets look at the value of the field and determine what type it is and have that be the default field type. If there are any problems the default field type will be text. Then we can actually prompt what the new field type should be.

Special Field Types

Some unique prompts need to occur for Replace, Implode, Explode, and Replace Substring.

Multi Value

Need to convert the array into a string separated by ; which is the character used to explode the string back into an array later.

Replace & Replace Substring

When Replacing or Replace Substring allow updating of multiple fields at once. Then determine what to search for. This would be really helpful changing a name because someone left the company.

Imploding and Exploding

When exploding multiple characters can be used to separate text. By default the value is a semicolon. When imploding only one string is allowed.

Determine New Value

We have the field and the data type now the last information to gather is new value. The name field types will use the PickList to gather the new value ( s ). Some field types like Unique and Remove Field do not require any prompting.

Update the Field

Finally the field can be updated. The UNID variable will be used to remember which documents have been updated. It is deffinitly amazing how something evolves over time. To think about this little bit of code started four years ago and how much time it has saved me. Thanks again to everyone who has helped add new things over the years.


Download all the code