Enhancement Request - Last Edit Date

[nbradley 0]

Under Preferences, Reports TMG enables very good control over the updating of the "Last Edit Date" field when Flags are updated from either the List of People Report or the List of Events Report. If you forget to set the Preference Field the way that you want it both of these reports will still ask the user whether or not they want the "Last Edit Date" updated.

 

Unfortunately for me no such control exists when Flags are manually updated. I make hundreds of flags changes whenever I buy a new CD of BDM indexes or when new data becomes available on-line. I regard Filters and Custom Flags in combination as one of the most powerful features of TMG.

 

I would love to be able to use the "Last Edit Date" to filter for genuine database changes since the last time I shared data with a particular group of co-researchers (for example). I could then restrict the data that I send them to only those people who have had changes or I could set up a custom index in Second Site so they easily find people who had been updated.

 

Currently, every time I manually change a flag the "Last Edit Date" field updates and becomes somewhat meaningless. It would be very helpful to me if the Preference, Reports option also allowed control of the Last Edit Date when Flags are manually changed.

 

 

Neil Bradley

Western Australia

[LornaHenderson 0]

...

Currently, every time I manually change a flag the "Last Edit Date" field updates and becomes somewhat meaningless. It would be very helpful to me if the Preference, Reports option also allowed control of the Last Edit Date when Flags are manually changed.

Neil Bradley

Western Australia

I strongly support this.

 

If I'm really really determined not to change the last edit date however, I will run a LOP report to set a flag, even if it is for one individual rather than use the flag window, but that's a lot of trouble to go too.

[Jim Byram 0]

Flags are data. Where do you draw the line? It's not editing a person to change the sex or adopted or birth order or multiple birth flags? The LOP and LOE mechanisms are not typically used to change flags of the above types. You need to propose a better mechanism than just turning off changing the Last Edited date if any flag setting is changed.

 

For example, the Flag Manager could have a checkbox or toggle for each flag as to whether it would effect the Last Edited date (like the active switch). Some default flags (sex, multiple birth, birth order, adopted) would be permanently marked to make the Last Edited change.

 

(I'm guessing that most people would prefer that Living not be permanently marked to change Last Edited.)

 

Alternatively, Terry suggested a global on/off switch that excludes certain flags.

[nbradley 0]

Good point Jim.

 

My want/need/desire is to do with custom flags. I would be happy with any mechanism which allowed me to control the updating of the "Last Edit Date" on Custom Flags.

 

Individual control of flags would be a bonus. I'd settle for a preference option which controlled all custom flags.

 

Cheers, Neil

[LornaHenderson 0]

Flags are data. Where do you draw the line? ...

 

For example, the Flag Manager could have a checkbox or toggle for each flag as to whether it would effect the Last Edited date (like the active switch). Some default flags (sex, multiple birth, birth order, adopted) would be permanently marked to make the Last Edited change.

...

 

Alternatively, Terry suggested a global on/off switch that excludes certain flags.

 

It would be icing on the cake if I could select this per flag, but I too would be happy with custom flags in general.

The flag changes I'm talking about are things that help me select people for assorted lists, indices, gedcom outputs etc. that aren't changing the base data for the person per se, so to me, aren't really "edits" to the data for the person, yet currently change the last edit date.

It has always seemed a little inconsistent to me that you get the option to NOT update the last edit date when doing this via a LOP LOE, but not via the flag window.

[Michael Hannah 0]

I can understand the desire for this enhancement, but I would suggest that the only meaningful enhancement was a special toggle that would simply turn on/off the automatic updating of the "Last edited" information. Not something I can currently think of using, but at least that would provide total control.

 

As two possible customizations, have you thought about both a custom flag and/or a custom tag. I have a custom flag (actually a couple) that I use for editing "work in progress". I can set values of "E=needs to be edited", "P=partially complete, in progress" and "Y=yep this person has been edited", or other values like "N=not really edited" or "R=really edited, the edit date is for real".

 

I have also seen suggestions of a custom tag in the Other group for every person, called "Last edited" or other similar names. The date of this tag can then be set manually to whatever you wish with the memo describing the last thing you edited, and you can deselect the tag from output reports. You can easily give everyone such a tag with the TMG utility. It is added work to manually change the date of such a tag yourself, but at least TMG does have the flexibility of a "work-around" way to accomplish this. Whether this added work is worth it is a matter of how important such information is to you.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

I have also seen suggestions of a custom tag in the Other group for every person, called "Last edited" or other similar names. The date of this tag can then be set manually to whatever you wish with the memo describing the last thing you edited, and you can deselect the tag from output reports. You can easily give everyone such a tag with the TMG utility. It is added work to manually change the date of such a tag yourself, but at least TMG does have the flexibility of a "work-around" way to accomplish this. Whether this added work is worth it is a matter of how important such information is to you.

 

Or, for a date record of specific tags edited, you can put the day's date in an unused tag place field like L9 or L10. A format of {yy/mm/dd} simplifies LOP and LOE filtering by date, date comes before, date comes after - and F3 makes for quick entry of the date.

 

Virginia

[LornaHenderson 0]

Interesting workarounds, but far too much work for me.

 

I want the last edit date to udpate as it currently does in far more cases than not, and it works just fine for my "recently editted" index on my Second Site generated web pages.

It's the few flag only changes that I don't particularly want it to change for.

 

(I always add a mth and year to my citation detail so that I know approximately when I got what info, which is enough for me)