Fun with $FormulaClass (Page 2)

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Fun with $FormulaClass (continued)

If your design elements are hierarchically named, you can show them in a categorized view by selecting everything to the left of the first "\" in a column and categorizing and sorting it.

What you can do
Since you can view the design element forms just like documents, you can also select and copy multiple design elements at once. This is especially cool when it comes to agents since the R4 interface only allows you to copy one agent at a time.

As mentioned above, if you have hierarchically named your design elements you can easily select a group of related design elements and copy them into a database all at once. See Figure A for an example of how related design elements can be grouped together in a view.

FIGURE A

You can view related design elements on one screen and copy them to a database as a group. Roll over picture for a larger image.

You can create a central database from which you manage the design elements for all of your databases (I'll talk more about this later in the article).

Before I go on to an example of how you can really harness the power of $FormulaClass to help you manage the design of your databases, let me explain the step-by-step procedure to change the $FormulaClass field of a view to show different design elements.

Step-by-step instructions for changing $FormulaClass
What follows are the step-by-step instructions for changing $FormulaClass to see design elements.

Step 1: Create a view
Create a view that has "SELECT @All" (without quotes) as the view selection formula. Create a single sorted column with $Title as the formula.

Step 2: Create an agent
Create an agent that runs "Manually From Actions Menu" and "Run(s) Once". Note that @Commands may be used. Here is the code for the agent:


Sub Initialize

     '--This agent changes the $FormulaClass field of a view to "4" to show Forms and Subforms

     Dim session As New NotesSession

     Dim db As NotesDatabase

     Dim view As NotesView

     Dim doc As NotesDocument

     

     Set db = session.CurrentDatabase

     '--CUSTOMIZE:Change the name of the view below to customize

     Set view= db.GetView("FormView")

     '--You now have a handle on the design element of the view.

     

     Set doc = db.GetDocumentByUNID(view.UniversalID)

     '--CUSTOMIZE: The code on the line below changes the $FormulaClass field.  

     '--See chart above for other values.

     Call doc.ReplaceItemValue("$FormulaClass", "4")

     doc.Save True, True

End Sub

Step 3: Run the agent
Please note that you must run the agent every time that you change the design of the view. What I did, and what you'll see in the sample database, is to put an action button at the top of each of my customized views that runs the agent to change the $FormulaClass field for that particular view. This way I don't have to go hunting through the menus for the correct agent; I just click the action button.