Jason, I agree, there are a lot of great features in the new dev studio and its worth taking the time to get used to them. I think you missed the most important new feature for me though. That is the ability to "Show Relationships" and then easily navigate to the related workflow. This feature allows me to load a form and then do a top down drill in to all of the workflow on the form. If I want to change or remove a field I click on the show relationships menu of the field and it brings up a list of all of the references. If I have an active link I can do a show relationships and find all the fields and active link guides related to the active link. If I want to change what happens when a button clicks I bring up all of the related workflow for the button. This is a far more intuitive way to work than the old admin tool. I loved the old admin tool and became pretty proficient at using it but I would never go back now.
I think there is a huge increase in efficiency to be had from using the "show relationships" function effectively. It is worth taking your time to learn how to use it, it will repay the investment many times over. I have noticed a substantial reduction in debugging time. Show relationships means less bugs and much quicker troubleshooting of the bugs that do get through. I know we used to have a limited show relationships feature in the admin tool but that wasn't updated in realtime, wasn't reliable nor as comprehensive as the new function. It gets my vote for the most significant advantage of dev studio over admin. Coming in second would probably the ability to update selected properties of a whole bunch of fields at once. Honourable mentions to the outline view, the online help & syntax checking (fix the bugs in it though) and to the ability to open lots of workflow views with different searches etc. The down side of Dev studio is the number of quite fundamental bugs still in it. All of them have workarounds but I'm looking forward to the soon to be released patch 4 to hopefully fix a lot of them. It also uses a lot more memory than the admin tool. I'm finding that a 1Gig machine is not enough any more, even under windows XP. The other benefits of 7.5 that really impress me lately are the improvements made to the mid-tier. I have made the decision to phase out the User tool for not just my end-users but for myself as well. The performance, stability, re-caching and logging capabilities of the web client are now in my opinion better than the 7.5 user tool. I love the ability to close the logging window to start a fresh log instead of having to jump in to options and change the log file name. I love that I don't need to log out to have my changes take in the web client. I love that all the new 7.5 user interface features work in the web. I love that the web client now works on browsers other than IE. While I'm on the subject of developer productivity improvements I'd like to plug another one of Misi's free utilities. I have just found out how useful Misi's web based utility for generating lots of change fields active links automatically. I have been copying and pasting all of the fields I want to create a change fields entry for into a temporary view. Creating a def file, and then specifying the view name as a parameter for creating the appropriate active link def file. It sure beats endless button clicking to create a bunch of change fields. I still use rrrChive a lot also. It's an unbeatable utility for server migrations and for keeping a dev environment in sync with prod. I'm pretty optimistic about the future of Remedy development at the moment. Rod On 3 February 2010 05:59, Jason Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > ** > > We went live with ARS 7.5 last April. At that time I figured I might as > well get used to this thing called the Dev Studio and force myself to use it > unless I absolutely could not (yes there are still a few bugs that require > the Admin Tool to make a change). > > It did take a few weeks to get used to and it did slow my production down a > little while I was learning the features. Now that is over I love it!!!! > There are a number of things that can be done much faster in the Dev > Studio. There are a handful of things that do take a little long or may > require a few more clicks but the positives far outweigh the negatives. > > Hopefully this will help those who are still getting used to the Dev Studio. > > One of the first things is to Minimize all of the windows that are Restored > by default. This is a great help with the workspace size issues. I do a > lot of development on my laptop without any problem. > > I minimize every window (tab). Once minimized an icon is sent to one of > margins surrounding the application and grouped by Shortcut Bars. Click on > the appropriate icon to show that tab. It will automatically minimize once > you move away from it (such as opening a form/AL/Filter/etc). > I find that initially opening a tab that lists objects from the icon, that > the viewing area is a little small vertically. You can easily drag the > bottom down to make it larger. I have not figured out if I can set the > default size as a preference. > > Press the period key to move a field > > This was a major frustration point at first until I figured out how to move > a field with the arrow keys. Selecting a field and pressing an arrow key > used to move the field now it just selects the next field making it > impossible to nudge fields around. > Select a field(s) and then press the period key. Now you can arrow the > field(s) around. > Be careful not to bump your mouse while you are moving field with the arrow > keys, they’ll jump around the form very quickly. Just press Esc to cancel > the move. > I just found this out 5 minutes ago… Keep pressing the period key and it > will change what property you are changing (position, Field Width, Data > Length) > Moving between fields could be really handy if I could figure out how to > open/get to the properties without using my mouse (you can navigate and set > properties from the keyboard). > > Setting the form size > > This was another pain point until I figured out how to do it. > Open a form, click Layout from the menu bar then Show Actual View Size. You > will now have some handles to drag the form to the size you want. > Once you get used to this it is a nice feature because you have to purposely > change the size of your form vs. using the last size it was saved at. > One note: Ctrl+Alt+M is supposed to toggle this mode on and off. I find > that I have to choose Show Actual View Size from the menu the first time > after opening a form and then the key combination will start to work. > > The Working Lists replaces the View By Form functionality > > Right Click on the Working List node and select "New View by Form List. > Save it and add the forms you want to see. > Then double click the new Working List to open (Right click to edit the > forms) > > Single List, View by Type and View by Form > > When you are working in a Working List or Application there are 3 buttons in > the upper right corner. These change how the objects are grouped. > > Single List: lists all objects together. Very nice to sort by Modified > time and you can see all objects (Forms, Filters, ALs, Menus) that were > recently changed. > By Type: Groups objects by Type. This is what we are used to in the Admin > Tool, Forms grouped together, all Active Links grouped together, etc. > By Form: Groups objects by their primary form. > > Combining these with the Filter Options is a very quick way to find objects > (copy and paste from a def/log file) > > Outline > > This will show all fields in the view that is active > Clicking a field will automatically jump that the field on the form. From > there you can quickly click the Properties button. > There are two options for how you view the Outline. > > Tree Overview: Will show the fields in hierarchical format in relation to > their parent container. A page holder (AKA a panel) will have its pages > listed below it. Below that Attachment Pools and Table fields will have > their attachments or column listed below them. > Table Overview: Shows Field ID, Name and Label. You can sort by any of > these columns! > > Tab Order > > You can now set the Tab Order by changing an integer property of fields > (Select and Edit) or by clicking on the objects in the same tab order you > want (Increment on Click). > > Find > > Ctrl + F with a form open will bring up the Find Field dialog. Here you can > find a field by entering a Label, Name or Field ID. > > The content assist feature > > This is a form auto complete that many IDEs already have. > > Ctrl+M to maximize an object and hide to other tabs. I find that I do this > less since I minimize the tabs first thing and have more working space. > > Now that I think about it, this is a really quick way to minimize all of the > tabs in bullet 1 > > Multiple field properties > > There is more that can be done to multiple fields at once and a little less > cumbersome. You can grab a group of field and drag the handle to increase > or decrease their size at once. You can even select multiple fields from > the Outline field list and adjust properties. > Obviously you can change only shared properties that make sense if you have > different field types selected. (Permissions, views, hidden/visible, label > location) > > Much more Copy and Paste capabilities. Most properties and references are > text fields where you can copy text. > Run Process library > > You can select a run process from within the Dev Studio. No more looking to > the workflow guide to find the exact Run Process syntax. > There is even documentation as to what the RP does and some examples > > HTH, > > Jason > > _Platinum Sponsor: [email protected] ARSlist: "Where the Answers > Are"_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor:[email protected] ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
