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System documentation
Many of the entities have a field called Description where the developer can enter text describing the Field or Table, etc. In some cases this text is made available to users as help text. All very good.

However I have found myself looking for a place to put system development notes, which are of no interest to the user. I could of course do this offline but I think it would be better to be able to do it online.

Suggestion: provide an additional field for each entity in which developers can leave notes for themselves and other members of the development team
ID
789
Category
Customization
Author

Philipp Matuschka (MMB)
Date Created
11/5/2014 4:03:54 AM
Date Updated
11/3/2016 3:54:57 AM
Status
Implemented
Score
90
Promoted By
James RossDave Ah Chingmartin oliver
basenineRick Cogleygerardo garcia
Daniel Vazquez GerScott MillerPhilipp Matuschka (MMB)
Comments
basenine 1/12/2015 8:52:16 PM
A "Developers Notes" section just under the "Description" field in the Edit setup of any column...Description can be left for "Help" with the "?"..."Developers Notes" is only visible when in setup mode
Rick Cogley 1/14/2015 2:37:24 AM
I strongly agree. I'd love to have this, and, have it available via the REST API. That way I can put my notes in the "dev notes" section, and other useful descriptions in "description". Then when you dump it out to json or xml via REST, you can diff the files (or stick them in a git repo, for instance.) --Rick
basenine 2/5/2015 7:17:17 PM
I had instance for this again just then. I have a note for the field function for myself but it will obviously show when hovering over the "?".

On top of notes, a "Scratch Pad" for copying and pasting old formulas whilst testing newer formulas would be handy
Rick Cogley 2/5/2015 9:56:50 PM
Agree with Basenine's point of having two fields, a "Developer Notes" field and a "Scratch Pad" field, the former for a design description that is not needed for users but is useful for devs, and a Scratch Pad for a kind of quick storage buffer.
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 2/6/2015 7:48:42 AM
I just comment out the old formulas with // so don't necessarily see the need for the scratch pad

But still looking forward to the having the help text separate from the developers notes.
basenine 2/6/2015 3:46:04 PM
That's a good idea Philipp (//)
I'll give that a go. Cheers
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 2/8/2015 10:51:42 AM
On a similar but slightly different note, I've just noticed in SetUp mode in the top right hand corner the little Help pull down. I don't know how long this has been there, but today is the day I saw it.

I would love to see this in User mode, with the content of the help coming from the table description field
Kirill Bondar  Staff  2/9/2015 5:15:56 AM
@Philipp - we are thinking in this direction. Indeed we want to add extra Help fields and using Help pulldown we can display information for dedicated view pages (and probably construct help for dashboards using table and view descriptions).
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 2/10/2015 10:03:08 AM
Kirill

That sounds great. I look forward to seeing this develop.
Rick Cogley 2/13/2015 5:57:44 PM
If you add fields to use for developer docs, please do add them to the available fields in the REST interface, so that we can dump them out when needed. Thanks for considering!
basenine 2/19/2015 4:18:41 AM
@Philipp,

the // has helped me out time and time again - great tip!
Cheers
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 2/19/2015 11:46:02 AM
@basenine: A pleasure
@Kirill: one place I noticed the // doesn't seem to work is in access for table records. It accepts the //, ignores the code behind it. But when you call up the record access again later, it has lost the code.

basenine 5/22/2015 7:53:27 PM
Developers Notes.....mmmmm
I need this again. I find that sometimes I alter a Column or deprecate it with a time and reason for deprecation.

In Formula fields this is ok - I can work with the //
But an area specifically for notes is still very welcome
basenine 4/13/2016 2:04:22 AM
It would be handy (right now) to have two Description Fields - one for setup (used by admins) and one for Forms (for help/description for users).

(I'm sure this was posted somewhere else on here - but I couldn't find it when searching)
basenine 4/13/2016 2:05:45 AM
gee zuz!
That was instant!
Scott Miller 4/13/2016 2:10:24 AM
Deleting 40 descriptions (which had proved very useful with the setup) at 1:00 am this morning, this was very apt!
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 4/13/2016 5:00:22 AM
There's another track about this from about a year ago. But I entirely agree. Need to be able to have one set of notes for the developer and one which is visible to the user as Help text
basenine 4/13/2016 5:08:58 AM
I reckon I created the last thread too!! Couldn't find it though 😜
basenine 4/13/2016 5:12:50 AM
System documentation
Nup. It was you @phillipp
Kirill Bondar  Staff  4/13/2016 5:26:05 AM
Merged with:
990 - Setup Description different from Form Description
Kirill Bondar  Staff  9/9/2016 7:06:41 AM
Descriptions are now Notes. Column's description used to display toolip is now Tooltip and new text box for Notes is added.
https://www.teamdesk.net/blog/whats-new/notes-field-holds-comments/
basenine 9/9/2016 7:19:58 AM
Yay....woo hoo even😉
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 9/9/2016 9:01:09 AM
Kirill

This looks great. Thank you very much.

Any thoughts on our exchange of 8 and 9 Feb 201. See above.
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 9/9/2016 9:01:19 AM
2015
Kirill Bondar  Staff  9/13/2016 5:24:19 AM
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 9/13/2016 8:01:24 AM
@Kirill

This looks great, thank you very much. I will start using it immediately

As always just one more suggestion. How about a Table level help, which you could optionally prepend to Dashboards and Views. The most obvious example for me is that I have row colour coding in each table. If I could document this just once at table level and it then automatically propagated to Dashboards and Views that would be fantastic.
Kirill Bondar  Staff  9/13/2016 9:50:21 AM
@Philipp: I guess we are moving away from initial topic. Here is Colour Label Legend on View header, and I guess having this implemented somehow (no ideas how, however) would be much better than adding table-level help text field just for single purpose.
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 9/13/2016 10:01:00 AM
Kirill

The colour legend was just an example, so the idea referred to would be too "narrow" for what I am thinking about.

In any event, you are right about moving away from the initial topic and I am very happy with what has already been delivered. I was just pushing that one step more.
Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 11/3/2016 3:54:57 AM
Kirill

One of the downside effects of this implementation is that when I see the list of columns in setup mode, I can't see what is in the help fields. Previously of course all of this was in the Notes field and I found it very useful to scan down through this while reviewing columns. Now I have to click into each column to get the full picture.

As the description of the column is a combination of the Notes and the Help text, I wonder could the list of columns display that combination to us.

Thanks
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