Hi all,

I'm fiddling away, trying to rebuild my Q&A database to be better and stronger with Sesame, and I have a question the manual doesn't address.

Currently in Q&A, our call management software uses the Calculation button to manage a series of 12 date/note lines.  Each time F8 is pressed, the notelines are shoved down one, leaving the top line free for the newest update on a client.

Is there any way to get a 'top to bottom' sorting of subforms in Sesame, to allow me an infinite number of notelines, but keeping the most recent to the top?

Quote:


Chekyboy,

I have been playing with a notes database similar to what you are talking about. Have you thought of other features that you will implement into yours like some canned notes or time date stamping or?  I would love to hear how you plan on using yours. I find that I learn great ideas and solutions from learning how others use similar products.

In testing one of the problems I found was that there needs to be more then one level of notes. For example your call center reps are just entering standard notes that sort in reverse order. But what happens when a manager needs to put in a note that has a more important value like Never call this client or Cash upfront only.

You would want these types of notes to be sticky and always be on top.

The solution we found was to have 2 notes databases, with the subform of the management notes directly above the subform for standard notes. The standard notes sort in reverse order but the mgmt notes stay at the top.

We also put an element called NoteType in front of the multiline text element that contains the note that needs to be filled before you can enter the note. Based on this element we use @color to signify the type of note. A collectors note is in red, Customer service is blue, accounts receivable person notes green etc.

I have plans in the future to try and create different command buttons that will sort the notes based on department (NoteType) so if a user for simplicity purposes only wanted to see collections notes grouped together with a push of a button they could.

Carl, can you think of a way to have the notes as a subform that display top to bottom, but have a Note Entry field above that, and any data typed into that field will be considered a new record for the subform?  That would solve the flipping to the bottom part ...

Carl how do you set up a default sort order, i've skimmed through the manuals to try and find something for this but I haven't seen anything as of yet. Do I need to set up an on form entry programming spec to load the sort spec?

I have done some more experimenting with this. using a default sort spec works but is slow. I also am finding that when reconciling my application I am continually losing my save, sort and merg specs. Anyone else finding this happens?

Thanks I was wondering if it was something like that. I'll also have to keep an eye out to make sure that once the database goes into production that the dsr is refreshed from the db before any programming changes are done so new specs aren't destroyed.

The problem with using the natural linking is I've got to take into account how to export the data later... Although it looks like i'm going to be having to redesign a lot of the database I didn't realize that sesame was hierarchal as opposed to relational - will take a lot of rethinking on how to set it all up. The other thing about the notes is that they are accessed and modified from multiple different forms although with this new design i'm thinking of it might be possible to use natural linking... we'll see. Also its not the pulling up the notes that is slow but the actual sorting of the loaded notes.