I know that I can filter Excel (and have done) to filter based on active status and then remove inactive inventory items and then proceed to work on the task I was busy with.
However, I am wondering if there is any user case for copying the inactive inventory and non-inventory items to the clipboard? I can’t really see any real need to include inactive items in a batch update.
There has been another discussion in similar spirit. It was discussing server time out when copying batch details and one of the suggestions to solve this was being able to batch update a filtered list.
I couldn’t find that thread but I think it’s a good idea.
Yes. Someone might want to reactivate many items without editing each one individually. Suppose you stopped carrying a brand and deactivated all related inventory items. Then, a year later, you regained dealership rights for the same products.
Well perhaps there could be an option to filter inventory that you want to batch update as @Ealfardan suggested. This would solve a number of different issues and make batch updating more efficient.
How do you propose such functionality be added. Any search / selection control would need to be added to all batch update screens for consistency. I suppose batch update could only put the current selection in the clipboard is a selection is made.
The wider issue is how much is really gained vs the cost of change. Currently all records are uniformly exported, external tools are used to search / select / change only those that need updates.
An alternative is to pre-filter in Manager, export a subset then use external tools are used to search / select / change only those that need updates.
The double filtering would be valuable if the cost of exporting records which are not changed was high. Such as a limited capacity, slow process or error prone. I’m not sure these limits apply though.
To be honest, I had not thought about it that much. As you say and I pointed out, it’s trivial to filter out the unwanted stuff in excel. So one does have to determine what is gained vs the cost of the change.
I would recommend pre-filtering in Manager to include/exclude inactive items as this will be the default item to exclude in the majority of cases. Then review whether there is any benefit to other filters?
I have been making use of the copy to clipboard and batch update extensively over the last week.
I appreciate that there will be genuine instances where people want the inactive items within inventory and non Inventory Items copied to the clipboard but this is likely to be very much more the exception than the norm.
While I agree with the suggestion to pre-filter within Manager and then copy to clipboard, that should be a long term solution. A quick and simple on/off filter to include/exclude the inactive items before copying to the clipboard would really be beneficial as 99% of the time people are wanting to update live items. Could this please be added to the ideas category.
I am reluctant to add this suggestion to the ideas category. As you say, @dalacor, you first began using Batch Update about a week ago. Many others have been using it extensively for years, but no one has ever suggested eliminating inactive items. Doing so would run counter to the underlying concept of batch updating, which is to allow bulk operations on an entire set of transactions or subsidiary ledgers.
Powerful sorting and filtering functions are available in spreadsheet applications where other modifications are being made during a Batch Update. It seems best to leave them there, rather than making Manager more complex. If you want to eliminate inactive items from the spreadsheet, it is easy enough to do so. You only need to paste back in the items that are being updated.
Unfortunately that is a the main reason not to do it. The problem is everyones use case if different and for everyone a “small” change would make it better for them. But taken collectively the programmer would forever be making “small” changes to the net detriment of the resultant program.
In my opinion it would be better it enhance “Find and Recode” to address are broader range of task and leave batch update for external processing of a database table (ie all data with all processing done externally).
I agree with your prior find that format updates as a result of Manager changes should not be shown in history as user changes. A better solution would be to only change internal formats when there is a reason and when that is the case it should be done by Manager when an old database is opened (ie changes recorded in history due to a Manager program update).
I actually fully agree with you. The only reason that I suggested the inactive/active items toggle is because I was hoping it was a quick addition that could be added now, otherwise we have to wait three years for the pre-filtering or find and recode option to be implemented.
I suspect that most others have used the batch update to do precisely what I did the first time I used the batch update and they do the batch update infrequently - perhaps every couple of months. As result it was not a huge problem for them due to the infrequency. But in every case, I suspect that they removed the inactive items from excel when doing their batch update.
In my case, once I batch updated the payments/receipts form, I started using the batch update to export to excel so I could review all my inventory and non inventory items in terms of suppliers, Product types, codes, Item Names, descriptions and prices. This necessitated me doing the batch update several times on one day and it quickly became annoying to have to first remove the inactive items before filtering anything else.
I still maintain that wanting to batch update inactive items is very likely to be the exception rather than the norm, however, I will accept that it will just have to wait until find and recode or something else is implemented/improved to address this issue.
I think i also need the filter function before Batch Update (filter first > then batch update), because Batch Update will copy everything to clipboard. As the records became more and more over time, it would be not efficient to copy the whole records, say 20.000 records, in order for us to just update few hundreds by bulk. Or is there any solution to it?