TeamDesk Blog

Phone numbers are now clickable

We’ve extended TeamDesk to parse data from Phone and Formula-Phone columns and decorate them as Skype links on desktops and tablets and as links to invoke phone dialer on mobile phones.

Skype requires phone numbers to contain country code. If the column’s data is missing country code we infer the code from application’s Language and Locale settings.

At this time the text decorated as a link is your data as entered. Also, we’ve added the tooltip that displays the phone number formatted according to your country rules.

It’s a first step toward the improving the functionality of phone columns. Next we are planning to enable validation and reformatting of phone numbers.

Checkbox extensions

Today we have extended TeamDesk’s checkbox columns and formulas with some handy options.

Now you have a possibility to specify alternative texts for checked and unchecked state. In addition there is an option for checkbox column to let user edit the state via radio buttons. Here are samples:

Editing

All checked

All unchecked

1. Leaving both “Yes” and “No” labels empty preserves existing functionality – checkbox with no label on entry and texts Yes/No on display.

2. If you provide a text for Yes label and leave No empty, we’ll display that label beside the checkbox. In view mode we’ll display the label for checked state and empty string for unchecked.

3. In case of radio buttons, we are trying to fit the both buttons into a single line; if there is not enough space, buttons are displayed one under another.

Of course Display Graphics will suppress text and display checkmark instead, yet there are couple of places Display Graphics is ignored – documents and email notifications for example.

Also, strings provided for Yes and No labels are recognized when importing the textual data from CSV file or clipboard – once you set up the labels you can import the file containing, say, Ja/Nein or Si/No directly into checkbox column.

Search for keywords improvement

Recently we’ve changed how Auto Number column treated by search for keywords. When some condition are met we are able to identify that user is searching for particular record by its unique identity and redirect you directly to it if possible.

First of all you’ll need to alter auto number format options to include some letters or something else that’ll made it unique among other application tables instead of simple number set by default:

Make sure you’ve checked “Allow Find” option also.

After that when searching for “Ref Num” column value:

System will bring you directly to particular record:

We’ve plans for future improvement in that area by parsing content searched for and using different search behaviors depending on it. For example, when TeamDesk searching for an email address system may check columns of E-Mail Address type.

Record Pickers for each relations

Today’s TeamDesk update features an ability to define record pickers for each relation and some UI reorganizations.

First of all, default Record Picker options are moved from the Views section to Table Properties. By default all relations will use these options.

Relation’s options were extended with Override default picker box. When checked, a section to override default record picker options is displayed. There you can set up the list of columns to display, filter and sorting.

Having an ability to setup record picker for each relation eliminates the need to setup match condition between the column and the constant – you can remove these condition and add corresponding “column is (not) value” to a record picker’s or summary columns’ filters.

PowerShell as an interactive API playground

From time to time we encountered situations where we needed to test some API calls and though that interactive playground application would be a nice addition to our API tools. And recently we’ve found a perfect replacement – Windows PowerShell.

PowerShell 2.0 has added New-WebServiceProxy cmdlet to a set of tools, and that’s all you need to start playing with API. Open PowerShell console and type:

$api = New-WebServiceProxy -Uri https://www.teamdesk.net/secure/api/21995/service.asmx?WSDL

Now you can call API methods on $api variable. First method, of course, is Login()

$api.Login("anonymous@teamdesk.net", "")

And the next could be, for example

$api.DescribeApp().Name

PowerShell will output

API Test

Let’s try Query()

$xml = $api.Query("SELECT TOP 1 [Text], [Date] FROM [Test]")

and see what’s inside

$xml.Data.r

PowerShell output is

id   : 2
m    : true
d    : true
Text : Test 2
Date : 2001-01-01

If you prefer to have output in table like format, use Format-Table cmdlet

$xml.Data.r | Format-Table

id         m        d        Text                Date
--         -        -        ----                ----
2          true     true     Test 2              2001-01-01

And it’s not limited to queries only – you can call create/update operations as well.

$xml.Data.r.Text = "Test 1"
$api.Update("Test", $xml)

Enjoy!

Changes to periodic triggers

For a long time periodic triggers where processed at midnight on a daily basis; monthly triggers were processed on a 1st of month. If you wanted to change this behavior you were needed to use a workaround: a time-dependent trigger based on a formula the calculates desired date and time based on a current date/time obtained via Today() or Now() functions.

This workaround is no longer needed. Today, TeamDesk’s periodic triggers were extended with two options – a time to process the trigger (midnight is still the default) and, for monthly trigger case, the day of the month.

Moreover, time-dependent trigger approach for the problem is quite ineffective. Let’s see how triggers work.

The periodic trigger runs once a day/month at specified time. In contrast, time-dependent trigger gets filtered list of records, calculates the date/timestamp column for every record and then checks what records it should process and does it every 3 minutes or so.

In case of workaround, the column the trigger is based on is typically a formula that uses Today()/Now() and adds or subtracts an offset. It calculates to exactly the same value for every record filtered by the trigger and in most cases the application is wasting the time and resources just to find out there is nothing to process.

So, if you are using time-dependent workarounds, we kindly ask you to convert them to periodic triggers. To find such triggers quickly we have extended Performance Tips page found under Setup tab, Tools section to report Nondeterministic Time-Dependent Triggers. If you are in doubt, do not hesitate to ask for help at support@teamdesk.net.

And, by the way, view subscriptions were extended with the same set of options.

Headline Views

Today we’ve added Headline Views to TeamDesk. Like summary views, headlines allow you to display aggregated values but they provide more visually appealing presentation.

The key difference between headlines and summaries is that for headline you can provide “reference point” – a value to compare calculated value to. In this case, headline displays up or down arrow based on comparison result and highlights the value with red or green, depending on whether higher value is better or worse.

Tile Views

If you need to display the information in a compact way, TeamDesk now provides tile views just for that.

Tile views allow you to specify optional image column, a header, a sub-header and a number of columns to display in a main tile section

In many cases the presentation via tile views is far more compact than via traditional tables – displaying 16 tiles takes 80% of screen space, while table barely fits to 300%. Please also note that tile views better adopt to small screens of tablets and phones.

Bad triggers auto-disabled

We are not trying to execute triggers with setup errors such as invalid filter formulas or missing date column. There are however another sort of errors we can not detect in advance. For example, the trigger tries to process too many record at once (this usually means bad filtering logic) or updates the record with values that can not pass validation rule or tries to assign a value that is longer than a destination text field. In many cases, these errors are permanent, but we were spending server resources in attempts to execute the trigger over and over again.

Since today, we are counting a number of triggers' failures. When trigger fails to execute 10 times in a row we are disabling it automatically and adding corresponding record to an audit log.

Custom buttons to initiate actions

TeamDesk was enhanced to allow running workflow actions from custom buttons.

Previously it could be done via setting some temporary field value and using workflow triggers to initiate actions on change in a temporary field.

Now custom buttons have Actions section to list workflow actions to run eliminating the need for temporary fields and change triggers.

What happens when the button is pressed?

First, we calculate all formulas in assignment section and populate columns on a right side of assignment.

Next, if columns to input are specified, the user is presented with the input prompt.

Then we execute workflow change triggers.

And finally we will run actions listed in button's Actions section.