Technical Desk - Colour Coding Your Views

"A picture tells 1000 words" or at least seeing your views with colour coded item text conveys immediate meaning. This feature is very easy to set up in Commence, but often overlooked.

To use the colour code feature, you firstly need to decide what the criteria is for setting the colour. You can use any field that is of type Selection or Check Box, as well as a Connection. Then you set up a colour code template, mapping the field values to your required colours. Finally implement your colours in the view by using the template you have created.

Sales Example

Let’s assume you want to rank your contacts to record their level of interest and time to purchase. This enables you to prioritise your follow ups and quickly identify the contacts that are more likely to purchase. You decide you want to break your contacts down to the following:
1 Urgent Action Required
2 Buying
3 Serious
4 Unlikely

Add the new field using Customise > Database and selecting the Category tab. Make sure you set the type to Selection, and define the available selections as shown above. This field will be automatically added to your Detail Form; you can go ahead and set up your contact with the appropriate selection.

To colour code the items in the view, go back to Customise Database, and click the Color Code tab. Before we can set the colour code on the items, we need to define a colour code template by selecting the category, and clicking Add. Choose the Selection Field you added above and give the colour code a name (e.g. Contact). Then you can select the colours to match each of your selection values:
1 Urgent Action Required - Red
2 Buying - Crimson
3 Serious - Blue
4 Unlikely - Grey

Finally, to see this in a view, open the View, then go to Customise > Design View. Click on the Colours tab and under the colour coding you can select your Colour Code name. You should select Colour Code Item Text and you can also optionally choose to display a legend. The view should then look something like:

It would also be possible to set a Colour Code based on the status of a Check Box or Connection value. Using a Connection value can be useful to show a different colour for each employee. Up to eight different colours can be shown in a Colour Code.

Help Desk Example

Another typical scenario where you may want to colour code you view is to convey information about Incidents that have been logged in the Help Desk. In Commence RM: Australian Edition, this has already been set up for you!

Help Desk Incidents are categorised as follows:
No Engineer
No Follow Up
Closed
Open
Escalated
Normal

An Escalated incident appears in Red, Open is Blue, Closed is Green, No Follow Up is Crimson, etc. This provides immediate visual feedback without having to delve further or even read the status.

In this example, it is not immediately obvious how the colour is being set. It is still a selection, but the user cannot alter this manually. This information is being handled automatically by Commence, though a combination of Agents and Scripts. This is explained in more detail in "Forms Expert: Setting a Colour Code Field".