Tricks for building an Open Form GoTo in the Builders

GoTo’s are one of the best features of SmartList Builder, Navigation List Builder and now, via the Drilldown Builder, Excel reports and SSRS reports.  Here are some points to remember when building your Go To:

• You can only open forms that have fields that users can enter the key data into.   Sometimes this isn’t obvious.   At first look the Item Purchasing Options would seem like it wouldn’t work – the key field Item Number is greyed out.
   .
  But if you hit the Save button the item number field becomes accessible.
  
  In contrast, there are no buttons on the Manufacture’s Item Number Maintenance that will make the Item Number accessible.  You can’t build a GoTo to open this form.
  

 

NOTE – some of the most popular forms that can’t be accessed with a GoTo’s are available as Advanced GoTo’s (or Execute Procedure in Navigation List Builder.) 
SmartList Advanced GoTo’s – Payables Transaction Inquiry, Purchase Order Inquiry, Receivable Transaction Inquiry, Sales Inquiry

Navigation List – Execute Procedure – SOP Inquiry, RM Sales Inquiry, RM Cash Inquiry, PM Transaction Entry Zoom or PM Manual Payments Zoom ** In GP2010 these are also available in SmartList Builder 

• The name of the Window is the Name on the Top bar of the screen (This is the “Window Display Name”)
• To determine the Product & Series:
  • use the Support Debugging Tool (I like to got to the Security Information, select by Menu and on the Menu Explorer on the Dictonary is listed on the right) For the series you will need to use trial & error
  • GP’s  Tools | Resource Descriptions | Window
• To open the form with the related record(s), you need to reproduce the same steps, in the same order, that users do to pull up data on that form.  (So go do just that!)
• Always build your Go To in steps and test for EACH step.  First open the form without any tasks, test.   Then add your first task, test.  And so on.  If you make a mistake you will know exactly where your problem is — nothing will happen when you select your Go To.
• On SmartLists – I always test by selecting the Go To in the SmartList Go To dropdown (selecting the upper right window icon and clicking on my Go To name) rather than double-clicking on the list item to trigger the default GoTo.  This allows me to isolate problems with the Go To from problems with the Default Go To (Which, unfortunately has its own issues – to be discussed in a later post.)

For step-by-step screenshots of building a sample Go To in SmartList Builder, check out this post: http://janakirammp.blogspot.com/2009/07/smartlist-builder-building-goto.html

Sometime opening the form is easy but getting the form open with the data related to your SmartList data is a bit trickier.   That will be the subject of the next post in this series – Adding Tasks.

Until then, Happy building!
Devon

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