For most Rails connected applications you won’t use Panorama for data entry. However, in some cases this may be the easiest way to get data into your Rails systems. Panorama has a number of features to help make data entry faster and more accurate.
“Smart” Dates
Panorama is very flexible about how you enter dates into the system. You can enter dates numerically (for instance 04/09/10 or 4/9/10) or you can spell out the date (for instance April 9th, 2010 or Apr 9 10). You can use any character as a separator between numeric dates, for example 4-9-10 or even 4.9.10. To enter today’s date, simply type today. You can also enter yesterday or tomorrow. Panorama will automatically convert these entries to the correct month, day and year. If the date is in the current week, you can simply type in the name of the day, for example saturday or tue. To specify a day in the previous or upcoming weeks add the words last or next, for example next tuesday or last saturday.
When you enter a date, you can leave the year off and let Panorama figure it out for you. Panorama will automatically round the date to the nearest year. For instance, if today’s date is 3/9/12 and you enter the date 4/1 then Panorama will assume you mean 4/1/2012. But if you enter 12/1 (or December 1) Panorama will assume you mean 12/1/2011, not 12/1/2012, because 12/1/2011 is closer to 3/9/2012 than 12/1/2011 is. Panorama also rounds dates to the current century. If the current year is 2002 (or even 1992) and you enter the date 7/2/23 Panorama will assume you mean 7/2/2023. If you want to enter a date more than 50 years from the current date you must enter the full date, for example 7/2/1923.
Clairvoyance™ (Auto-Fill)
Many databases contain fields where the same information is repeated over and over. For instance, a checkbook will contain the same bills month after month—rent, phone, utilities, charge cards. Another example is an inventory database that contains many items from each vendor, with the vendor name repeated over and over. Panorama’s Clairvoyance feature anticipates when you are about to enter data that has been entered before, and completes the entry for you. This can save you a lot of typing, and helps improve consistency as well.
To turn on the Clairvoyance option, click anywhere in the field and select Field Properties from the Setup menu. Or you can simply double click on the field name at the top of the column in the data sheet.
When you are using Clairvoyance, Panorama scans the entire database each time you enter a character. As it scans the database, it checks the characters you have typed against the data already in the database. When there is only one possible match, Clairvoyance guesses that you are about to repeat yourself and completes the word or phrase for you.
Of course, Clairvoyance can only be helpful when you are repeating a word or phrase that is already in the database. If you are entering a new word or phrase, Clairvoyance cannot help you—but it won’t get in your way, either. As you type in a new word or phrase Clairvoyance may guess that you are entering an old word or phrase. Just keep typing, and Clairvoyance will automatically erase its guess when it no longer matches what you have typed.
One problem when building large databases is making sure that information always gets entered the same way, especially when more than one person is keying in the data. For example, a single company could be entered in your inventory database many ways—
Fuji
Fuji, Inc
Fuji USA
Fuji Photo, Inc
Fuji Photo Film USA
Fuji USA, Inc.
Clairvoyance helps solve this problem by accurately repeating the information time after time. You may find that Clairvoyance’s ability to insure data consistency is more important than the keystroke savings.
Automatic Capitalization
Panorama has four options for automatic capitalization: off, all, word, and sentence. You can set up automatic capitalization with the Field Properties dialog (click on the field and choose Field Properties from the Setup menu, or double click the field name in the data sheet).
The All option tells Panorama to capitalize every letter entered into the field. Use this option for fields containing abbreviations—CA, NY, etc.
The Word option tells Panorama to capitalize the first letter of each word. Use this option for fields containing names, addresses, etc. Sometimes you may need to override Panorama’s automatic word capitalization. If you need an extra capital letter simply press the Shift key (for instance McDonald). If you want the first letter of a word to be lower
case type the letter twice (Bank Oof America), then delete the upper case letter (Bank of America).
The Sentence option tells Panorama to capitalize the first letter of each sentence. Use this option for fields containing paragraphs of text—for instance catalog descriptions or correspondence.
Learn More about Data Entry
Panorama has a number of other features for assisting with data entry, including default values, input patterns, duplicate checking, automatic calculations, and more. To learn more about these features see Chapter 7 of Panorama Essentials or the Panorama Handbook.