Feature Request - Preview Record Selector Search

Hi,

FusionPro Desktop is a great product.

Is there any possibility that you might add a search feature to the Preview Record Selector in the future? Viewing the "Shortest" and "Longest" record is invaluable, but being able to search for instances of data and with the ability to view the expected results would be extremely helpful. Especially, when rules are involved.

Just a suggestion.

Thanks.

-Dave

Instead of a "longest" or "shortest" for simply a single record, I would rather see a "preview of the longest for every field". In another software package I used many moons ago (I believe it was called Darwin), when I asked for a preview of the longest values Darwin would search the entire file of data and come up with a "pseudo-record" that previewed the longest values for "each and every field in the data file". This, in my opinion, would be a more accurate method of testing the templates that we make. The majority of the projects that we do are mailing and this would help us in making certain that the multiple line addresses will fit in the teeny, tiny window spaces that we are allowed by the post office. Yea I could go with a copyfit function, but you know the post office, they require no smaller than a specific size font and the barcode normally fills up around a third of the damn window space to begin with.

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To the original question, I would just open the data file in a text editor and search there. Once you know the line number in the file, you can type that number (or usually that number minus one, since line one of the data file is usually the header row) into the Record Selector dialog to see that record's preview.

Or you could use Excel or some other editor to filter or sort the data so that you can easily locate whatever particular value you're looking for.

Or, you could write some simple logic in your OnRecordStart rule to filter out just the data you're looking for, to compose just those records, which you can then examine, like so:

 if (Field("YourField") != "value you're looking for")
 FusionPro.Composition.composeThisRecord = false;

As for the ability to "preview of the longest for every field," remember that the longest value of any given data field in terms of the number of raw characters isn't necessarily the longest in terms of the actual amount of space those letters will take up in the output, due to different widths of characters in the font. The Record Selector dialog has no way of knowing how the data is used in the template, or what font it's going to be set it, or even, for that matter, whether it's being using in multiple places which could have different fonts applied.

The only way to know for sure that all the data "fits" is to compose the job and look in the log (.msg) file for any error messages about text not fitting. The Preview Selector dialog, or Preview itself for that matter, is not intended as a substitute for this kind of analysis.

And even if you do figure out the longest value of a given data field for the data file you happen to be using when you design the template, you can't know for sure that any other data being composed with that template at a later time won't have longer field data, especially if the job is being collected for MarcomCentral or another web-to-print system.

Regarding postal regulations specifically, your best bet is to use CASS certification. We're adding some CASS and NCOA integration into FusionPro 8, but you can have your data certified by a third party before feeding it to any version of FusionPro.

I agree with DSweet that a feature that shows the longest value of each field at the same time would be helpful, despite Dan's points. I wouldn't replace the existing "longest" and "shortest" preview option, simply add to it.

About half of my variable data work is done in FusionPro, and the other half I use HP's SmartStream Designer which does show the longest value for all fields. It's a nice way to view a "worst case scenario" at a glance.

Thanks Dan.

Yes, we usually have Excel open and switch back and forth between the apps locating and previewing the data. Though it might be faster if it could be done right in the Preview Record Selector.

-Dave

I agree with DSweet that a feature that shows the longest value of each field at the same time would be helpful, despite Dan's points. I wouldn't replace the existing "longest" and "shortest" preview option, simply add to it.

 

About half of my variable data work is done in FusionPro, and the other half I use HP's SmartStream Designer which does show the longest value for all fields. It's a nice way to view a "worst case scenario" at a glance.

I see. You want it to iterate through all the fields in your data file and aggregate the longest value for each field into a single record. That would be an interesting feature. I think, though, that the way this is usually handled is by manually creating a "worst case" record with made-up data.

In addition to my previous caveats, another potential problem I can see with this is that sometimes the value of a field maps to something else which gets output, or there's a transformation which happens such as a phone number formatting rule, so that's another case where the longest raw value of any particular field might not correspond to the longest actual output.