How to "multiple select" more than one page of records, in an AJAX table

[jcamps]

Hi,

In the plugin version of QV, selecting rows in a table is autoscrollable. For example: you have for example a list of 1000 customers, sorted descending on units sold, and ranging from 100 to 1000. To select all customers with more than 500 units, you can scroll halfway down the table, select the customer with exactly 500 units, the move the mouse up. The plugin will automatically scroll to the top of the table, thus selecting all customers with 500 or more units sold.

For us this is a very usual business requirement.

The problem is, we have migrated to an AJAX environment where this is no longer the case. The table does not scroll so you only select customers that are currently shown on screen.

I'd like to know if there is any solution, or if anyone has come up with a different approach for the same business requirement in AJAX.

Thank you,

[Oleg_Troyansky · Accepted solution]

I'd say it's brutal to ask users to scroll down to select pages and pages of Customers (no offence!). I'd suggest one of the two:

1. Use the feature "Searchable" for your Expressions (in the Presentation tab). This way, users should be able to type ">500" and get the list of the Customers. They won't get selected though.

2. Offer an input box with a variable and a button "Select". The user enters the value "500" and the button facilitates an Action that selects Customers with more than 500 units. To make it more flexible, you can allow selecting what field to select in (Customer, Item, Salesperson) and what measure to calculate (Units, Dollars, profit margin). This way, you let users define their search criteria and get dozens of Customers selected at once.

cheers,

Oleg Troyansky

[jcamps]

Hi Oleg, many thanks for your answer.

Many times, users don't know what threshold to use, they just check customers until they see "that something" that makes them decide, then click and drag to the top (it's under 1 second time, and usually better than typing on the keyboard).

Also, we already had something similar to your option "2", but it is in a different form and they use this kind of selection based on a specific table. We could not replicate this kind of selector on all the tabs and tables.

BUT, your first option (searchable column) did the trick - in fact, it DOES select customers in our case (probably because the expression is a $(function) that is quite complex).

Anyway, making most expressions "searchable" will be a development rule from now on.

Thx!