FR: Snapshot listers into button

Help & Support
1

Okay, I know this is a more esoteric type request, but maybe I'm not alone - so I figured I'd bring it up.

I'm CONSTANTLY finding myself needing this, and while there are ways of doing it - it seems like there could be a better way.

Simply put, I'd like to be able to do a one or two click "listers->button" feature.

My situation is that I work in a software development shop in Applications Support. We have a fairly large dev/test/prod environment and dozens (if not hundreds) of applications we support.

So what happens is - we get a trouble ticket it "Fix x on application y". My first action is to set up the DEV and TEST folders in Dopus so I have an easy deployment once I've fixed the issue on DEV. This could go through QA testing, some remediation, little more deployment etc.

But then, we might not touch this app for another YEAR.

For apps that I work on daily, I have created buttons that simply "Go /OPENINLEFT" and "Go /OPENINRIGHT". But I keep finding myself saying "Why isn't there an option to "snapshot" these two listers and dump them into a button?"

This happens weekly - sometimes daily.

Yes yes, I know - there are "solutions" to this (one of which is - stop being lazy and just make your buttons). But if I had my DREAM implementation, it would look like one of these:

This would create a button pop up that grabbed the source/dest lister path and created a basic button:

A REAL bonus would be preserving basic features of the lister state, like flatview, checkbox, sorting field/direction:

I know this feature doesn't make sense for EVERYONE, but I think a lot of power users could easily make use of this.

Thank you for your consideration

2

That's what layouts and styles are for.

3

As I said, of course there are ways to do it. However, neither are quick, nor especially easy and don't lend themselves to any sort of workload. Sure, if you have one app you work with every day - and that's it - of course you would create a layout for it. But you don't spend that kind of time for an app you work on once a year for a couple of days?

Alright, have it your way :slight_smile: Let's have an feature that snapshots the current Dopus, pops up a box to ask you what to name it, saves it under that name, creates a button that sets that layout. Same thing, more work - and frankly, for this situation - you don't need the FULL snapshot of a layout - you need two folders, maybe a couple of settings.

Maybe I'll create a console app to shell out to in order to do it ... crude, but semi-effective.

4

As far as I can tell, that's almost exactly what you are asking for, and Opus already has that built-in.

In fact, the way it works now seems like it requires less clicks than what I think you are proposing. You don't have to go into Customize mode first. You don't have to create buttons or look at the button editor at all. Just select Settings -> Lister Layouts -> Save This Lister (or similar for layouts) and type the name you want (which you'd have to do with something that created a button as well). The new layout (or style) will then automatically appear in the list of layouts (or styles).

If there's something unsuitable about that, please explain the details of that instead of just saying it's unsuitable. Otherwise it's difficult to know what you're really asking for and difficult to know if we're both talking about the same things.

5

I'm with Leo - saving Layouts or Styles for the purpose you describe is very easy - as is displaying those layouts in a dynamic Toobar menu - as items you can then click on very easily to open those folders when you need to revisit that work.

For awhile, I was denoting layouts based on a selectable list of customer names and date strings inserted into the layout name, along with some other free-text 'project' name I'd add to the layout name... with a command similar to the following:

@set cust={Rc|Specify Layout name...|CUSTOM=*+Customer1=Customer1+Customer2=Customer2+Customer3=Customer3} prefs layoutsave=single layoutmouserelative=yes layoutname="{Rs|Specify Layout name...|{$cust}_{date|YYYY-MM-dd}_}
One thing that I'd meant to ask for (but never got aroudn to doing) as a possible feature enhancement is a way to help keep large lists of Layouts (or Styles for that matter) automatically "organized". As an example, in the sort of use I've mentioned here - I might like to show my list of layouts under MULTIPLE Customer specific toobar menu items - one I'd create for each customer - with something like:

Menu Item: Customer Projects
Menu Button: prefs layoutlist="Customer1*"
Menu Button: prefs layoutlist="Customer2*"
Menu Button: prefs layoutlist="Customer3*"

The idea being... I'd be able to filter the list of layouts displayed under a menu item with an optional string value for the prefs layoutlist command... which normally will just show ALL layouts in one big list. Woudl also be nide for such a use-case to have another optional layoutlist=sortasc|sortdesc option to override whatever the layout list sort order is. The intent here is really to be able to SORT the list of whatever layouts you're showing in a toolbar menu this way without having to worry about periodically going into Prefs and manually sort the list there by either moving layouts around or hitting the sort button. And as you go - depending on your naming convention, the list would naturally be UNSORTED without such manual correction.