Access Item Genie demo for Organizing / Tracking your Items

[Mike Krailo]

One thing I think would be useful is a "Bulk Add Edit" feature.

I would build it like this.
Unbound Combobox in the header to select A location
A continuous subform with the item details in tabular view.

I think someone else mentioned about this feature in the other thread, but I'm not quite sure what the benefit is yet. I know I have had to move many items in one of my BOM applications before (no tree view), and I always used a manual update query to do that if needed which was only rarely. I guess I need to think about the possible scenario's better.

Then you can select a location node and open to the form (at the correct location) and bulk edit. If you want you can change the combobox and go to another location. If you want to do that I will add to the right click and put a button on the main form. Have not had time.

I'm trying to imagine what would ever need to be bulk edited, but maybe there are other uses that would require this functionality. About the only thing I can think of is modifying the category or type of item in bulk. Which reminds me, I don't think that field is in the table yet. That would be a good one to have in there (ItemType or ItemCategory). That way you could view or group items by category even if they are in different locations.

Another thing could be a Summary Tab this could have some sub reports with Summary data.
Total costs , total value, number items etc by Location and totals.

Yes, that shouldn't be too difficult. That was similar to the original item genie app's dashboard page but it could just be in a separate Summary Tab.

 

[MajP]

I'm trying to imagine what would ever need to be bulk edited, but maybe there are other uses that would require this functionality. About the only thing I can think of is modifying the category or type of item in bulk. Which reminds me, I don't think that field is in the table yet. That would be a good one to have in there (ItemType or ItemCategory). That way you could view or group items by category even if they are in different locations.

I was thinking more like you go out to your shed and get a list of everything in there. You have 25 things, no cost data, no value data etc, but you at least want to get them in your list. To load them up one by one it is a few button clicks. If you pop open a continuous form for that location then you can quickly log in those items. You can come back later and put the details in. If I am in a continuous form view I can quickly see what data is correct for items. If you wanted to update value information then you can go down the list and audit/update.
I will add categories and a category table.

 

[Mike Krailo]

I was thinking more like you go out to your shed and get a list of everything in there. You have 25 things, no cost data, no value data etc, but you at least want to get them in your list. To load them up one by one it is a few button clicks. If you pop open a continuous form for that location then you can quickly log in those items. You can come back later and put the details in. If I am in a continuous form view I can quickly see what data is correct for items. If you wanted to update value information then you can go down the list and audit/update.
I will add categories and a category table.

That's a great idea. I didn't even think of that. The item name and picture can go into a list, and then possibly an asking price for each item added and posted to FB or other place to sell your list items. So the items them selves are not removed from the location, but simply used in a list. That makes sense why in the original item genie app he was making lists like that and had fields for sold date etc...

Most peoples items fit into certain categories, so searching by category or displaying items by category would be nice. The way the item genie app works, every time a new category is entered, it populates the combo box to make the next entry easier.

 

[MajP]

Got most of the updates.
You can now adjust the HitValues. They are now a property of the Class. You would not want to do the TempVar as you did. This would then tightly couple that class module to a specific application. Now it is configurable for any treeview application.

There are probably a lot of other user settings you may Want. I demoed the Font and Font size. I should probably make the Font a combo box of tested font names. It is a textbox now, but if you pass a bad name it will fail. There are all kinds of formatting that can be done.
There could be different fonts, italics, colors, etc to differentiate Locations and Items.
I think it would be good to make the Items slightly smaller than the locations and possibly a different background or foreground.

I added categories and current value to the forms.
I still need to add a way to add new Categories. Either a form or not in list event.
I added the bulk update feature

You can change the combo and go to a new location.
The cmbo demos the "Treeview style" combo

I put the update V7 in the original post.

Probably can add the feature to select icon Sizes.
Need to add a summary tab for Cost, quantity, etc. reporting.

 

[Mike Krailo]

Wow, you have been busy today. I was playing around with the delete node thing and got that working but I see you are way beyond where I was with everything. I really like what you did with the Settings form, that was an improvement for sure. I was opening the form in design view and back in normal view to get the new settings loaded, how are you updating the tree view setting to take effect after closing the form?

All I changed was update the tab order and get rid of the scrollbars so that shaded part at the bottom doesn't show up. I hate that. I think I did that on the main form too.

The one glaring problem I noticed right away is that hovering on the buttons makes the text turn all gray like the gray background. So that's no good, but overall much improved with the font size settings and the delete node all working now. I also see the value in bulk edit of branches like that. Easy to select all buttons and modify the hover fore color. Done.

 

[MajP]

The one glaring problem I noticed right away is that hovering on the buttons makes the text turn all gray like the gray background. So that's no good, but overall much improved with the font size settings and the delete node all working now.

Making modern nice looking forms, is definitely not my strength. My forms look like it is still 1990. There is a lot of discussion on the forum on this topic. Some people have an eye for this. I do not.
I like to add some buttons like discussed here

Solved - How to Create Tile-Style Buttons on MS Access Forms?

Hello everyone, I have come across a user interface in MS Access that features tile-style buttons, as shown in the attached image. These buttons have icons, labels, and a modern appearance, which makes the form look more professional and user-friendly. I would like to implement a similar...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

or like here

Emmanuel Katto : How to Customize MS Access to Look Like a Standalone Application

Hi, I'm Emmanuel Katto from UK, looking for a way to make my MS Access database appear as a real desktop application. The goal is that when the app is launched, only the forms should appear, and there should be no traces of MS Access like menus, toolbars, or the navigation pane. I want it to...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

 

[GPGeorge]

Making modern nice looking forms, is definitely not my strength. My forms look like it is still 1990. There is a lot of discussion on the forum on this topic. Some people have an eye for this. I do not.
I like to add some buttons like discussed here

Solved - How to Create Tile-Style Buttons on MS Access Forms?

Hello everyone, I have come across a user interface in MS Access that features tile-style buttons, as shown in the attached image. These buttons have icons, labels, and a modern appearance, which makes the form look more professional and user-friendly. I would like to implement a similar...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

or like here

Emmanuel Katto : How to Customize MS Access to Look Like a Standalone Application

Hi, I'm Emmanuel Katto from UK, looking for a way to make my MS Access database appear as a real desktop application. The goal is that when the app is launched, only the forms should appear, and there should be no traces of MS Access like menus, toolbars, or the navigation pane. I want it to...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

I just uploaded a 2nd demo based on the code in a demo originally provided by Arnel, but using a design approach I learned a few days ago from Greg Regan at an AUG user group meeting. I kind of like the style of the large, simple icon images but it would work with a lot of different styles of images. I'm not that competent with interface design in general though.

 

[Mike Krailo]

@GPGeorge I assume you are talking about the navigation buttons. There are of course many ways to modernize the access interface and it's kind of driven me towards web development. The user interfaces are much harder to create, but they look awesome. I think we all would love to see a fully functional web browser control that doesn't have any bugs in it. That's where I was going last year until I realized that many of these interfaces take up a lot of resources such that you need pretty up to date hardware for them to run at an acceptable level.

I made a really nice accordion menu system both using regular access controls and one using the modern web browser control and I much prefer the web browser control version but the darn thing requires up to date hardware or it's just too slow to load. I hope that things improve with using that control eventually but why is it that creating a standard web app works a hundred times better than it does through Access. It's like they are purposely holding all the capabilities back on us.

 

[Mike Krailo]

You can now adjust the HitValues. They are now a property of the Class. You would not want to do the TempVar as you did. This would then tightly couple that class module to a specific application. Now it is configurable for any treeview application.

I missed this comment earlier, you are exactly right with your point on the coupling. I just wanted to get it working and wasn't thinking about the class. Adding the extra properties is definitely the way to go to keep the class fully independent. I've been going through the app after each of the revisions to see what you did and it's all making sense now.

 

[MajP]

@Mike Krailo
I uploaded V8. My effort in making a decent "menu". It is definitely better looking. I added a summary tab with cost and value roll up.

You can configure the size of the Icons. However, I think the choice should be limited because I think 16,16 is the smallest useable and maybe 24 by 24 max. So this could be a setting in the application settings and maybe the choices are S, M, L. (16,20,24).
There may be a desire to give the Locations and Items different fonts, sizes, forecolor, or back color to make them stick out more. Items could have different fore or back colors, underline, italics, bold/light etc. Maybe simply make Locations bold and items not. Things to consider.

 

[Mike Krailo]

Looking good Pete, that's really good. I would have stuck with the blue theme on the colors but the tree view menu change is really great. I'm slowly loading all of my important items into it to get an idea how much each room is worth. This is very useful IMO. Hopefully after my physical organization project is completed (about 90% done), I'll finally be able to find any item in an instant. Took me a couple of months to get where I'm at now and it was a lot of work.

Maybe like this:

 

[Mike Krailo]

I just noticed the Office location was moved into the DinningRoom and when I attempted to move it back as a root location I couldn't figure out how to do it from the menu or right click methods. I thought we had it all figured out. This would have worked as desired had there been one single root node (My House) and all the rooms or other locations were inside of it. But going from a regular node to a root doesn't seem possible from the current menu choices.

Of course, simply deleting the Parent_ID for the Office location from the table puts it back where I wanted, but having that one additional option of making current node a root node should be on both menus or making the Parent_ID part of the location menu would do it as well. What do you think?

Here is the way I'm going to organize my tree going forward. This also adds my house as an item under it so it can be part of the total value figure.

Just noticed the totals are not updating when adding new items. I had the qryTotal in the forms recordsource before and a simple me.requery took care of that. I see you moved the App Settings there now. The query for item totals needs to look more like the following.

SELECT Sum([tblItems].[ItemValue]*[tblItems].[ItemQuantity]) AS [Total Item Value]
FROM tblItems;

Also, when using the checked nodes move option the order of the nodes gets reversed! I assume they are getting processed in reverse during the move but that is a negative effect of the checkbox move.

One other thing is moving or dragging an item up to the top of the list won't stick. As soon as the app is relaunched, it goes back to the bottom of the list again. I'm guessing this is because locations have priority over items in respect of order in the tree. Must be the UNION query has location records above item records.

 

[MajP]

DinningRoom and when I attempted to move it back as a root location I couldn't figure out how to do it from the menu or right click methods.

Yes that is probably needed.
You should be able to at least drag and drop a node into space outside the tree. But that would not work once the tree gets big. As the scroll does not work when dragging.
I add a "Move Current Node to Root". I did not get around to allowing you to bulk move to root. That may be useful if you want to "unlocate" items and then move to correct location.
See V9 above.

 

[MajP]

Just noticed the totals are not updating when adding new items. I had the qryTotal in the forms recordsource before and a simple me.requery took care of that. I see you moved the App Settings there now.

There is a method now tp RequerySubforms in the Item Genie Utilities. It need to be called in a lot of places (add, delete, move etc.) I think I got most of them. But check where it does not work.

Also, when using the checked nodes move option the order of the nodes gets reversed! I assume they are getting processed in reverse during the move but that is a negative effect of the checkbox move.

Did not notice that, but would need to reverse the loading. Because as you add it back it adds to the top of the list not the bottom. (I will add to V10).
For now if you modify this line to iterate in reverse order it should work

Private Sub MoveNodes(ByVal DestinationNode As Node)
  Dim CheckedNodes As Collection
  Dim Nd As Node
  Dim i As Integer
  Set CheckedNodes = tvw.GetCheckedNodes
  For i = CheckedNodes.Count To 1 Step -1

One other thing is moving or dragging an item up to the top of the list won't stick. As soon as the app is relaunched, it goes back to the bottom of the list again. I'm guessing this is because locations have priority over items in respect of order in the tree. Must be the UNION query has location records above item records.

That is a design decision it could work the other way if you want. You would just need to modify the union query for now. It does order Locations then by tree sort order. It could be a setting preference. For now if you want it then modify the union.

Select * from qryNodeLocations
UNION Select * from qryNodeItems
ORDER BY 4 DESC , 6, 1;

4 Desc says to sort first by locations then by items. If you delete it will sort in the order you move them in the tree. Now you can only sort inside a level. You cannot move a node up into another branch.

 

[MajP]

V10 posted. Should fix the move order. Added the requery in a couple of places. Used the blue menu motif. Also added a recalc to that method to recalc the total on the main form. I did not change the query in my case or provide a user setting. May add that later.

 

[Mike Krailo]

4 Desc says to sort first by locations then by items. If you delete it will sort in the order you move them in the tree. Now you can only sort inside a level. You cannot move a node up into another branch.

At first I thought that was the way to go as well, then are started thinking about how there would only be one single item representing the house or property listed as an item to record the value of the house itself (high value item). All the other locations under My House would be pure location divisions within the house. The same thing would occur when we get to a shelf location. That location will always have one item in it directly representing the value of the shelf itself.

EDIT: I didn't read what you said closely. I understand now about moving the nodes. I'll just leave it alone as it's really not a big deal. I just wanted to see the house item right under the My House location.

V10 posted. Should fix the move order. Added the requery in a couple of places. Used the blue menu motif. Also added a recalc to that method to recalc the total on the main form. I did not change the query in my case or provide a user setting. May add that later.

Awesome, this is certainly shaping up to be a very useful application.

EDIT: Did you forget to attach it?