Do you really need these images and child records in TrackVia printed docs?

I’ve already tried to generate documents with several systems, but what if there is a better way of doing that? Well, TrackVia also gets a chance to show what can be done within the system. So, let’s check and see if it’s a good solution to create slick docs.

For this invoice I want to build a nice document:


Let’s just try standard print TrackVia uses for record printing:


As you can see the system doesn’t display child record content.

And now I’ll try to do it with a help of TrackVia Mail Merge feature that can be used to print one record or a set of records (any view) with a template that you create using Microsoft Word or a similar word processor.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t support child records as well, that’s why we’ll try to accomplish our task through Items table:


This is the look of mail merge template I created in word following instructions of TrackVia Help:


And that’s how it looks as I applied it to the above shown record:


You can see images are not displayed.

The good news is you can apply your template not only to one record, but to any view:


And that’s how the result looks like:


Conclusions:

Even though TrackVia doesn’t support child records and images by mail merge the whole approach is not bad. Besides, the system uses templates in RTF format what means you won’t have any problem generating the document with the look you want. So, if child records and record images don’t really matter TrackVia is a pretty good choice in this case.

What's the use of free?!

It’s already been a lot of debate on the concept of free and whether it exists at all since the eventual goal is to make people pay.

The truth is that requests to advice free online database that rocks in twitter search appear more often. Are users really expecting to get an outstanding product paying nothing?

The funny thing is when they hope so vendors think how to turn them into paying cutomers as fast as possible at the same time. But if the user didn’t have to pay at the very beginning why should he after all? I think that’s a fair question. If Gmail starts charging users as they reach any threshold you'll see what happens.

When you pay for something you agree it has the value the money its paid for. But when you get it for free it means the product has no value. Isn't it a fact that anything of real worth and quality costs money, from the very start? Let alone the expectations of the service of paid and non paid products. The issue can't not be fixed? That's ok.. I pay nothing anyway. The system downtime is longer and longer? We'll wait a bit.. And try to picture the same situation with the service where money is involved.

And the last thing. What about time spent on all that? Doesn't it has its cost?

So, I'd think twice before saying our product that you get for absolutely free will rock your world..

SalesForce platform. A steam hammer to crack nuts.

I don't even doubt SalesForce can handle 20 000 records.

But I want to show you that SalesForce.com platform is developed for Enterprise and is not a good choice for Individual/Small Business.

Having created their free edition SalesForce guys didn’t bother much and with tweaking or adaptation and just granted access to Enterprise Edition. And this is how the implementation of such a simple thing as converting excel file into a web-database looks like.

First of all you need to create Custom Object (table):


As one can see on screenshots below through one checkbox Custom Objects are integrated with such standard SalesForce objects as Activities (Tasks and Events) and Notes & Attachment:


This is the look of the object we’ve just created:


Note that SalesForce doesn’t create anything through import, so we should create all fields first. There are 4 steps to take for each field.

Choose field type first:


Then put the name and additional parameters depending on its type:


Our next step is to grant access to the field:


And finally we can add the field to page layout:


I repeated this operation for each field and at last all columns were created:


Now we can proceed to import. The screenshot shows it won’t be that easy:


Let’s start importing data, choose Custom Data Object first:


I have no idea why, but somehow it turned out 3 steps are not enough to import data and 7 steps are to take now. You must decide what to do with duplicates next:


Now select the record owner:


And finally we can allow the system to check the file:


SalesForce correctly recognized the file and mapped all field by names:


My first try to import data failed. The system requires data for built-in Record Name column:


I decided to insert into Record Name the field First for I couldn’t do that within my data. But it didn’t help much… SalesForce couldn’t parse date fields and other 19 records:


My decision was to simply ignore these errors and continued importing:


You can see that SalesForce imports data asynchronously and sends a notification as import process is over and you can always check progress:


So, the data is almost ready for reviewing, there is one more thing though. First one should create Custom Object Tab to display it:


Lets input tab details:


Set access rights next:


The third step is to set in which apps (and its despite the fact in Free Edition you seem to have just one app):


Wow! Now we can check our data!


And this is how the form for editing looks like:


Conclusions:

Mission completed. SalesForce imported and handled 20000 records with no problem. But I’d say the very set up process of such a simple thing was a bit cumbersome. The system is overloaded with detailed set up peculiarities which don’t allow you to quickly create a prototype and fine tune it after that.

If I was asked now if there was a reason for other vendors to be afraid of SalesForce platform free edition, I’d rather say NO. On this stage it’s too overloaded with functionality and details. I think regular user is not ready to make decisions each next simple step the system wants him to.

Does QuickBase care about document generation?

If you still believe in QuickBase Exact Forms and want to create nice documents with its help forget it. It's pretty useless as the practice shows.

I want to test if there is an opportunity to generate documents in QuickBase and I want to check it using very simple invoice.

So this is how it looks like:


QuickBase uses Exact Form to generate documents. It’s a template that is used to put database data into documents like letters and invoices.

You can find it here: Help -> Application Site Map and within the Forms section click the Exact Forms:


It’s a MS Word file with macros for downloading/uploading this template to/from QuickBase:


Unfortunately, QuickBase template doesn’t help in document generation. It means you must erase its content and create the document with MS Word by marking spots for QuickBase to place actual data using field name enclosed by tildes.

Check out the template that I’ve created:


As you can see the control over the look of related detail records is pretty restricted.

After you save the template to QuickBase using "Save to QuickBase" link from Add-Ins tab, in Invoice appears "Print Invoice" link:


To generate your document click the link and here it is:


Well, nothing special… It doesn’t look slick. First of all there is no image on top, second, there is no opportunity to set the look of related detail records and that’s why it looks so poor: the appearance of the document doesn’t correspond to what we’ve created in Word at all.

The reason is while saving your template QuickBase converted it into HTML and this is how it looks as you upload it in Word again for editing:


It has nothing in common with what I’ve created first, doesn’t it?

Summary

If you pursue the aim to generate a nice document in QuickBase don’t waste your time on Exact Form, it’s a hopeless case. To my opinion for getting a nice document as you need it in QuickBase its better to code it using QuickBase API, HTML and JavaScript. The question is if you are capable of accomplishing this by yourself and if you want to. Everybody decides for himself.

Zoho Creator wins or failures?

Yesterday it’s been a lot of hype about the opportunity to Create Zoho Creator Web Apps from Microsoft Access Database.

I also thought these guys rock! But it never hurts to check out yourself. And guess what! I think it will disappoint you too...

This is what I am talking about:

Northwind.mdb and Xtreme.mdb failed to migrate with the same error:


I really wonder if developers always test their products on just one database or does it ever occur to them to try it somewhere else?!

Update

Zoho representative Yoge informed me the issue was fixed:

"We have fixed the issue with migration of DBs containing OLE objects and able to create the application. There is another issue in uploading huge data. This is causing timeout error for the xtreme.mdb. We will fix this issue also and update it."

If so, lets check this out and see how it works now. What I've managed to accomplish is to open Northwind.mdb in Zoho migration plug-in:


And thats it with good news this time. Here is another error message while uploading the database to Zoho Creator:


How many tries do Zoho developers need to fix the problem? What are the stakes?

The System Feature Death Spiral

Is it possible to create a system with the whole lot of features but easy to use and reliable at the same time?

Don’t want to disappoint you, but my answer is pretty pessimistic.

I’d rather say NO.

The thing is that for achieving marketing goals developers strive for more and more functions that only complicate the product and make it quite cumbersome. The reason for this is because vendors try to sell the product demonstrating its new functionality that must beat the functionality of competitors.

The reality is common user daily needs are much simpler and these magic features are not used oftentimes. On the one hand that’s great the system is capable of doing this, this and also that… But I must say that provided functionality is simply redundant in the vast majority of cases.

All that means that as such redundant functions are being created there is no room to properly test it. The end user audience is quite small or simply absent.Thus it really hurts usability and reliability of the product.

The illusion of a rock solution makes sense only for closing a deal. What do you think is the point then?

By-pass route of Zoho Creator to generate docs

Zoho Creator doesn’t offer any special tools to generate documents, but as I suspected in case there is no simple way to accomplish the task Deluge Script and HTML are there.

This is Yoges’ answer how it can be done:

"All Zoho Creator views (including HTML View) has in built print support. HTML view can be used to generate nicely formatted document.

We have a sample application that showcase how HTML view can be used to print a HTML formatted report."

Unfortunately my knowledge of HTML is not enough to generate a good report, that’s why let me simply show you screenshots of the example Yoge provided me with:


Click the button "More Info" to display contact details.


The "Print" button present in the top right corner is mapped to the url pattern that triggers the print action for a view.


This is the part of Deluge Script that generates this report:


As one can see it consists mostly of HTML tags. I’ve marked with yellow color spots where we have to insert pieces of Deluge Script.

So, you should decide for yourself if you are capable of mastering this way of document generation and if it satisfies your needs.