Posted by As discussed in our previous post, we are making changes to the Export Entity Wizard to facilitate exporting entities to separate files automatically rather than in just one combined file - great for head-office users sending entities out to their sites.
So our pain point arose where our user at the start of the FBT season rolls over all sites from the prior year and then has to manually export each entity individually - with a large number of entities this can be time-consuming.
The changes
After investigating how we could make this process easier within our existing wizard workflow, we only needed to make one minor addition - adding a checkbox option:
Workflow
So the workflow now where you choose to export to individual files is as follows:
- On the What to export? dialog, select the checkbox Export selected entities to individual files
- On the Select entities to export dialog, choose the entities you wish to export
- On the Export location dialog, choose the location where you wish to export your entities to (Note: choosing two or more entities will hide the Filename entrybox - see below)
With a bit of code re-organisation internally and the addition of a new checkbox option we have managed to keep the workflow very much similar to the existing process.
Filenames
As per the current process, where only one entity is chosen you will have the option to name the file. Where two or more entities are selected, the wizard will automatically generate a filename for you using a combination of the product name (and year), entity name and current date and time. We will also check for existing files and mark your export as a copy so we don't over-write anything for you (although in most cases the filename should be unique).
Outcome
This change has been relatively easy to implement but will have a big impact for our user! We look forward to hearing how it improves their workflow going forward!