Narrowing a list

The one filter bar every table in the product carries: search, conditions, sort, totals and export.

Every table in TRANXACT — a module list, a report, a drill-down, an aging matrix — carries the same bar. Learn it once and it is learned for all 1298 screens.

Search sits beside the filter conditions rather than at the far end of a toolbar because they are the same act at two levels of precision. They used to be apart, and that taught people that some screens could be searched and others only filtered — which was never true of the data underneath.

What search looks at

• Every column shown on the list, including the ones that come from another record — the supplier’s name on a purchase order, the department on an employee. If you can see it in a column, search finds it.
• Case does not matter: "Terminated", "terminated" and "TERMINATED" find the same employees.
• An amount can be typed as the list shows it. "210,000" finds 210000, and so does "210000".

Building a filter

Filter opens the filter editor. It reads as a sentence: "Match ALL of these conditions", with ALL, ANY or NONE to choose from, and the conditions beneath it.

1. Choose ALL when every condition must hold, ANY when one is enough, NONE when a row must match none of them.
2. Add condition adds a row: the column, the operator and the value.
3. Add group adds a set of conditions with its own ALL, ANY or NONE. A group is indented under the one it belongs to and labelled "Group", so "status is open AND (supplier is A OR supplier is B)" reads as it is built.
4. Apply runs the filter. Cancel closes the editor and leaves the list as it was. Clear all removes every condition.

Saying "not" is part of the condition, not a separate switch: is not, does not contain, does not start with, is not on, is none of, is outside, is not empty. Pick the operator that says what you mean.

The conditions in force are shown above the list as chips, one per condition. The × on a chip removes that condition alone; the others stay.

Dates

Every date and date-time column takes the same operators:

A sort or a condition may name a column by the heading you see. A saved view or a link that says "sort by Starts" is understood as the column headed Starts.

Pages

Every list, long or short, shows the same controls under the table: "Page N of M", the rows on this page and the total ("26–50 of 904 records"), « first, Previous, Next, » last, and the page number, which you can type to jump straight to it. Rows per page offers 25, 50, 100 and 200. A download is always of the whole answer, not only the page you are on.

Report screens page the same way: 50 rows to a page, and Rows per page from 25 to 200. Search, filters and sort apply to every row of the report, not just the page you are looking at, and going back to page 1 happens by itself when you change them.

Relative periods

A condition of "this month" or "last 12 months" is stored as the relative expression, not as the dates it resolved to on the day you typed it. A saved view built on one keeps answering the current question every time it is opened — which is the difference between a monthly review that works and one somebody has to re-date every month.

Local views and global views

A saved view is LOCAL unless you say otherwise: it is your question, on your screen, and nobody else sees it. A GLOBAL view is offered to everybody in the company who can open that list or report — which is a company-level act rather than a preference, and it answers to the Global Views permission. Anybody can save as many local views as they like; nobody needs permission to arrange their own desk.

Whoever holds that permission can also rename or withdraw a global view somebody else published — including one published by a colleague who has since left, which used to sit on everybody’s screen with nobody able to touch it.

When you save a view, "Who has this view" is a choice of two buttons:

• Local — only me. The default, open to everybody.
• Global — everybody. Shown greyed out, with the reason beside it, when your role cannot publish views; ask whoever holds Global Views to publish it for you.
• A view’s name must be unique among the views you can see on that list, yours and the global ones together. A second "Open orders" is refused, so nobody has to guess which of two identical names is theirs.

A view that opens the list

Save view has a tick box, Open this view whenever I open this list. Tick it and that view — its conditions, sort and columns — is applied every time you open the list, instead of all records. The words under the box say what happens now:

• The list opens with all records: ticking it makes this view the one that opens the list.
• The list opens with a view set for everybody: ticking it opens this view instead, for you only.
• The list opens with another of your views: only one of your views can open the list, so this one takes its place. The other view stays saved; it just no longer opens by default. The default view is marked with a star.

Who made this row

The Columns menu on every list offers four more: Created by, Created, Last modified by and Last modified. They are off by default — four extra columns on every screen would be a worse screen — and "Show every column" turns them on, as does ticking them. Save the view and they stay on; make it global and they stay on for everybody.

Facets and totals

Where a list has an obvious dimension to cut by — a status, a type, an owner — the counts per value are shown as facets, and picking one adds it as a condition. The totals line is arithmetic over the rows the conditions produced, not over the table, so it always agrees with what you can see.

A printed or downloaded list is laid out as a report: the company and the list’s name at the head of the first page, the conditions it was narrowed by written underneath, the column headings repeated at the top of every page and "Page 2 of 5" at the foot. Money is in the accounting form, negatives in brackets, and the total is double-ruled. The Excel file keeps numbers as numbers, repeats the heading row on every printed page and is already set up to fit the page width.

A download says what the screen says. Excel, CSV, PDF and Print write a language as its name (Kannada, Hindi), a status as the word the list shows, and a choice as its label — never the short code the database keeps behind it.

Wide lists

A list with many columns scrolls sideways at a width you can read, rather than squeezing every column into the window, and uses the whole width of a large screen. The record number stays pinned at the left as you scroll, and so does a short set of row actions. The tick box in the heading selects every row on the page on every list where rows can be selected — including lists such as Order Cost Projection and Currencies — and is not drawn where they cannot.