Over the years I’ve seen my fair share of Method customizations and have really enjoyed getting my hands dirty with some projects. I won’t bore you with all the details except to say it’s easy to lose yourself in this Method Wonderland. To help avoid this, I use every possible trick I know to keep me on the right path and in the clear. And now I’m passing some of that wisdom on to you!
Meet my new BFF Call Another Action Set. It’s a Method action that basically refers to another group of actions living in another area of Method just waiting to be re-used. I’ll always take a little extra time with action sets if I think I can reuse the work in another area! The best part, it’s not that difficult.
Consider a simple screen that performs BMI (Body Mass Index) calculations by clicking buttons like Calculate, Calculate & Save, and Calculate & Email.
When designing the screen, most of us would initially add actions to the Calculate button and manually add the same actions to each of the other buttons.
Sure, that works, but the clever designers would realize they could ‘copy’ these calculations from one button to the other buttons. That sounds better…right?
Consider what happens when you need to make a tiny, relatively insignificant adjustment to the calculations. That adjustment then needs to be made in a LOT of other buttons, and doesn’t look so tiny and insignificant now that you’re wasting time!
A true Method Geek would realize some of that functionality (the calculations) could be called upon from one single location when needed and ultimately save a lot of time and overhead.
If you find a function that you can call and repurpose, you reduce the amount of actions used and the time it takes to initially design and test your work. Reducing the number of custom actions also reduces the time needed to upgrade or make changes to your workflow when the time comes to do that. Let’s not forget this also keeps things clean and easy to understand in design. I mean, nobody wants to jump behind another designer’s mess where they’ve created 3 monster routines that do the same thing 3 times over.
We now have one central button with actions to perform our BMI calculations allowing us to keep things simple. To learn more about this and other tips or to ask questions, feel free to post on our community forums. We’re more than happy to help.
Cheers.
Val