Method Community

Hello,

Does method have a beginers guide to customizing?  Everything I find in forums and help seems to assume the user has some previous knowledge regarding the syntax and calls as well as when and were to use them. Is the lack of documentation tied money?  I understand I can pay for custom work, but with a little explanation I beleive most of the things I need can be done with just some basic understanding of the "customize" syntax.  I have been fumbling through and have accomplished a good bit but would like to understand "HOW" I have done what I have.

Thanks,

P.S. 

Overall I love method I'm just broke sinse 2008  ;-0

Hi krp,

Thanks for the message. I apologize for the frustrations -- we take a lot of pride in our customization, tryin gto make it as simple as possible, and I'm very sorry that it's been a bad experience for you so far. We don't have a tutorial per se, but I can direct you to our help center article series on customization here: http://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?folder=methodcrm&article=Best-practices&id=256

If you flip through that, it'll give a good background on customization. I can also recommend you read this blog post, which outlines an example of someone customizing a screen for a hockey pool, here: http://method.me/cs/blogs/methodblog/archive/2013/12/05/how-i-ran-my-hockey-pool-in-method.aspx

Let me know if those two links help.

Naeem

Naeem,

   Thanks for the fast responce.  Both of the links you provided were very vague.  The first I have read and foud it to be a more general overview than what is needed to acctually produce a functional screen with multiple calls to tables and fields within tables, conditional staements and the like . More spacifcally how the tools for producing those calls acctually work and need to be filled out. The second was very intersting but worthless due to the lack of details on how it was done.  Again, it seems some type of previous knowledge is implied.  I get overall how things in method work but knowone ever gets down to spacifically how to do things like, call fields from tables and link fileds from tables and how to have this all work togeather.  I have been simply looking at the stock screens,seeing what was done and trying to desipher how each element works togeather. But it would be more helpfull if each "EDIT" action, action value, attribute and and so on were defined and standalone examples given on how to use them. I am asking alot I'm sure but I cant hurt to ask right!

Thanks

Hi krp,

Thanks for letting me know, apologies for my misunderstanding early on. I do understand the question now, that you're looking for something that gives the foundational knowledge on customization, and really introduces you to the verbage and base concepts so that tcustomization becomes clearer.

Our best resource for this is our video series on customization. They're a series of videos we created every recently that give a great overview and introduction to customization for new users. I suspect these videos wil be very helpful for you in trying to really get a grasp on the main foundations of Customization.

You can find the videos here: http://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?folder=methodcrm&article=Method-V1&id=369#main11

Let me know if those are helpful -- my suspicions are that they're the best introduction and overview of customization to give you a solid background for future customization work.

Naeem

Naeem,

  Sounds like just what I was looking for. Watching now

Thanks

Great Video's, exactly wht I was looking for.  

I now belive that a few SQL staments will get me were I need to be much faster than the inline tools.

Can you tell me the relationship between the "Customer", "Contacts", "Entity", "Activity" and "CustomerEquipment Tables".  

It looks like Field "AccountNumber" needs to be linked to the "Entity" and "CustomerEquipment" and "Activity" Via the "Contacts" Table to relate them all in one SQL stament and populate a screen with info from all tables. 

Any Insites would be great

Thanks

So, looks like "AccountNumber" was not what I was looking for.  I would assume "CustomerRecordID" should be related to "Customer" and "Contacts"

I'll keep looking

Thanks

Hey krp,

Sorry for the delayed response -- yes, you are right, RecordID fields are typically the ones that are linked. I might be misunderstanding your question, but most of the tables you mentioned (i.e "Customer") are views on the Entity table, so if you make a change on the entity table it'll automatically update on those respective tables. The contacts table (and any other table that doesn't sync with QB) is only linked to the Entity table through a field and not a view -- the entity table is what syncs with Quickbooks.