harmi said:
Hi NG,
has anybody experience with the issue that it's possible to have
the same form opened up more than 1 time in the same Access-Session.
Should this be prevented, means not beeing allowed?
Should it be the standard, that it is only possible to open it once?
What could be the impact of this possible scenario?
There are certainly some scenarios were allowing the same form to be open
more than once can be really very handy for your end users.
A good example is when they're doing data entry and the phone rings and they
have to bring up another customer using the same form. If you have a design
that allows a form to be open multiple times, then they can simply minimize
the current data form they're working on, and then launch another one and
deal with a customer on the phone.
Should it be the standard, that it is only possible to open it once?
I think it godo the way it is now. You would have a lot of problems in which
users would be opening the same form over and over. You would wind up with a
case in which by the end of the day a user would have the same form opened
25 times. That would mean 25 records that could potentially be opened and
ready to be written back to disk, but not yet saved. Then, you run some
stupid you-tube video and your pc crashes or freezes up. Now, you have 25
records that are not going to be saved.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you're building an application as can
allow the same form to be opened over and over, you better have a real
bulletproof solid stable and good performing application. Well behaved MS
access applications tend to be more reliable than a outlook or word or even
running a web browser.
It can also be confusing for the user because they can potentially open up
to the same record more than once, often a user does something, goes back to
work to do something else, then realizes they have to bring that same record
back up again. If they don't look at what they have open already, then they
simply launch another form. So, it can become like launching multiple web
browsers all day long.
Also keep in mind I think if you're going to allow multiple copies of the
same form to be opened, I think you should adopt a design in which you
launch the form to one record. In fact I explain this classic search for a
record displayed the list, then launch the form to one record in the
following article of mine:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Search/index.html
In the above the user searches for a record, you display the result list,
then they can click on the one record and a form is opened to allow a
editing of that ONE record. This can design works quite well when you allow
the form to be open multiple times because the form only edits ONE reocrd. I
don't believe one should allow record navagation if you allow the same form
to be open multiple times as then they can trip over each other.
Another interesting thing is users tend to perform or prefer a sense of
closure. Thus they seach for a reocrd, display the reocrd, and then do their
work. When they close that form to seach for the next customer (or whatever
they are working with), then they are also FORCED to close the form. This
not only makes them feel better that they just completed a task, they also
are forced to save the reocred by closing the form.
By the way a number of my clients right now often need to open up another
form and I don't allow multiple copies of one form to be opend. So, when I
walk on site, I see them actually running multiple copies of the
application. So in place of modifying existing application to allow multiple
copies of one form to be opened, a simple solution is to just have the
customer launch another copy of your application and they can work with two
people on the phone at once (or whatever reason they don't want to back out
of the current data entry form).
