Compare Items
- Morten Lindequist Køhler
Pupose
The purpose of the Perfion Compare Items tool is to make it easy to identify differences between two items with same base feature and to copy values between the two items.
Activating the Compare tool
The Compare tool is available from the context menu in grid when exactly two items have been selected:
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Comparing items
Show Differences / Show All
The Compare tool opens in a default mode showing only features with different values for the two selected items. Notice that Show Differences is selected in the upper left corner and that the two items have different values in all shown features:
Press the Show Differences button once to see all feature values for the two item:
Sort feature list
Features are by default show in order of configuration. Features can be sorted ascending or descending by left-clicking the Feature heading multiple times or right-clicking the same heading and choosing the preferred sorting order:
Choose Clear Sorting to reset sorting to order of configuration.
Managing values
NOTE: All changes to item values done in the Compare tool are kept in-memory until specifically saved.
Editing values
Values for the most common feature types can be edited directly in the Compare tool (in both columns):
NOTE: Editing of some feature types is restricted like this:
Images and files | New assets cannot be uploaded Existing assets cannot be viewed or downloaded Existing asset names can be changed Existing assets can be deleted (via context menu) |
Multivalue features | Values cannot be edited Values can be deleted |
Booleans | Boolean controls are not shown. Boolean values can be typed like this: Two-state Can be edited by typing True or [blank] (=false) Tri-state Can be edited by typing True, False or [blank] (=neutral) |
Remote features | Can - by nature - not be edited |
Copying values
The primary use case for the Compare tool is copying values from one item to another. This can be done via right-click context menus (or related shortcuts) in the two data columns:
As can be seen, the two context menus offer identical functionality except from direction of copy.
Copy | Copy selected values (incl blank values) to neighbouring item |
Copy All Values | Copy all values (excl blank values) to neighbouring item |
Copy All | Copy all values (incl blank values) to neighbouring item |
Save Right | Save changes to item in right column |
Save Left | Save changes to item in left column |
Delete Value | Delete value(s) in selected cell(s) |
Delete Item | Delete entire item in selected column NOTE: Item column is greyed out after delete, but item is not deleted from database until changes are saved |
NOTE:
Any Copy operation will be rejected if unique values are included in data to be copied
Remote and Related values will never be copied between items
Saving changes
As explained earlier, all changes are kept in-memory until specifically saved.
Save one item
Left or right item can be saved individually via the context menu. See Copying values.
Save both items
When changes have been made to one or both items, the Save Both button becomes active. Clicking this button will save all changes to the database:
Closing before saving
If the Compare tool is closed with unsaved changes, the user is prompted to save none, left, right or both:
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