TF Usability vs. Functionality

[AngriBuddhist]

Although I’m no spreadsheet master, I can bang away until I have something pretty powerful, if not very elegant. This has made creating my first database quite simple.

Not only do I understand the available functions, but also the need to keep the bigger picture in mind, even when focusing on the smaller details, much like Tap Forms itself.

It’s immediately apparent that TF is weighted more towards Usability than Functionality in every facet of it’s design. That’s the bigger picture. Make 100% of what 80% of your potential customers need as simple as possible to accomplish, even if at the expense of the smaller details, the needs of the other 20%, the power users.

This is the correct approach. It’s what makes using Tap Forms the experience that it is.

In the last week or so of using the iOS version of TF, I’ve built many forms and only about 15 test records. I’ve seen and learned a lot about the software, including…

1. Crash loop which required a reinstall.
2. Search can break when initiated from a Link From field.
3. Using a Picklist as your first text field in a form, adding a new Pick as your Record name, can save you tons of time later.
4. Random crashes when just tapping a button.
5. Fields sometimes require their options to be retoggled before they work properly.
6. Reordering Categories never works the first time.
7. Adding an additional Section Heading without text, above a Heading with text, gives the iPad version a more defined break between sections.
8. Only 1 One to Many link limit.
9. Link fields aren’t searchable.
10. Advanced Search is great for not so advanced searching. Try creating the number of Saved Searches to find a correlation between 10x15x10x30 variables. If you could Apply multiple Saved Searches at once, you’d have to create 65. Since you can’t, it’s 45,000.
11. Starting a search from a Form with a Link To can, for my needs, reduce those last numbers to 40 and 300.
12. Add Icons to your Forms. It really makes Linked fields look great.
13. The tap target for a Picklist within a Record’s field should extend further to the right, preferably to the edge.
14. Editing Picklist selections within a Record’s field (tapping anywhere except the Picklist icon), is extremely tedious, given that it’s presented all in one row.
15. If Editing Picklist selections is something you need to do, add multiple of the same Picklists to your Form, choosing up to 3 options per Picklist. This way, all or most of the text appears in the one row when Editing.

I’ve learned limitations, work arounds and shortcuts. However, because of the limitations, I’ve also started looking at other iOS database apps and learning what trade offs they have.

The other top 5 App Store database apps, that I’ve tried or researched, have functions that TF does not, like searchable Link fields, or Saved Sorting that can be combined with Saved Searches. Those two functions alone are very enticing. However, Tap Forms has the simplest and best UI of them all. Customizing Forms is much easier and the presentation of its Records is way more straightforward and pleasant.

It could be that I’m in the 20% of users that TF just isn’t for, that I’ll end up using another app and suffering through a crappy UI in order to have more powerful functions. There is, of course, a new version of TF just around the 1-3 month corner. However, I can’t wait that long to see what the differences may be.

Is there a possibility that we could get a preview of the changes in the next version? I’m sure that would be a big inconvenience for Brendan. Could a Beta Tester create a preview, with Brendan’s consent? Is there a way to get “read only” access to the Beta forums, in order to assess whether TF2 is the database for me?

Maybe I’ll just give it another few days of scouring the forums for work arounds and hints at what TF2 is.

[Brendan]

Thanks for all that great feedback. I’m going to copy your post and keep it handy so I can refer back to it from time to time.

It’s true that Tap Forms doesn’t have a lot of power user features and yes, it’s definitely designed for the majority people to understand and use. I try to make it as easy to use as I can and I know there’s lots of room for improvement still.

I don’t want to talk too much about the beta version. I’ve given hints here and there from time to time, but I’m not ready to post a list of changes or give free access to the private beta forum. I’ve asked all my beta testers not to post screenshots or talk about the beta. Hope you understand.

[AngriBuddhist]

I do understand.

I’ve bought both the iPhone and iPad version. I have a Mac but wouldn’t be using it while entering data into this database. So, another $40 to have a Mac license, to see if you’re looking for more beta testers, to possibly find out that TF2 isn’t for me, meaning that I’m out $60, or to find out that it is and then pay another $20 for the new iPhone and iPad versions, well, that’s $80 spent in two months for essentially one iPhone app and one iPad app.

And my options for good iOS alternative are all pretty horrible to use.

I guess I picked a bad week to give up not needing a database app.

[AngriBuddhist]

Brendon,

I appreciate the time you’ve taken over the last week to respond to my posts. Please understand that I have some particular needs and am desperately searching for a good solution.

I’ll be using my database on iOS. The options for building your own are slim. The amount that are acceptable are even more slim. Of those, TF stands out as the best. And even though TF1 doesn’t fit my needs, knowing that TF2 is around the corner has me hoping that it will.

I understand that you don’t want to talk about the next version in detail. However, anything that you can say about the following will help me decide if I should continue using TF and then also get the next version when it’s released.

I need to find correlations between multiple variables. Something like 10x15x10x30. Those could be lower. They could also be higher. With the way the TF currently handles search, this could lead to an enormous amount, thousands, of Saved Searches.

I believe that being able to stack Saved Searches would massively decrease the amount that are needed. I don’t know the terminology for what I’m describing so here’s what I’m imagining.

Currently, at least on iOS, when you’ve applied a Saved Search, you’re returned to the Search page. At the top of the results is the name of the Saved Search with an “x” to remove it. Below that are the results from that Search. If stacking of Saved Searches is even possible, on the Search page, below the “x Search Name” there’d be a “+ AND” and a “+OR” and then the search results below that. Choosing either of those would take you back to the Saved Search list where you’d choose another option and be returned to the Search page that’s now showing the results from two or more stacked Saved Searches.

I don’t know if that makes sense.

Anything you can say about that, or anything else that would help me with this problem in TF2, would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Brendan]

I haven’t implemented stacked saved searches in the next upgrade, but what you can do is have a saved search and then type in a general search string and it will filter the records down further from the set of records already found by the saved search. Unlike in the current version in which case the search term overrides the saved search and it will search the entire form, not just from the set of records returned by the saved search.

But the way searching works in the new version is that when you define a saved search, Tap Forms generates a new table in the database to hold the results of that search rather than executing the search live on the data in the database. This way it’s super fast to display the found set of records. This is actually an aspect of Couchbase Lite, but I’m using it in this capacity to store the results of saved searches.

In your scenario, I would need to retrieve the records from multiple saved searches and then combine them into a single result set using either an INTERSECTION (to winnow results) or a UNION (to expand the results).

It would certainly add to the complexity of the UI because now you need to be able to present a list of saved searches that haven’t been picked yet and then let the user specify how they want the saved searches to be combined.

If you know of an app that does that already, let me know.

Thanks,

Brendan

[AngriBuddhist]

I like that the new version allows for Saved Searches and then an additional general search. I tried that in the current version.

I haven’t seen what I described in any other app. However, in Airtable, you can have a Saved Search (called a View) and then sort the results by a specific Field, ascending vs. descending. That’s not perfect but at least it can surface the results in a Search like fashion.

Would a Sort option be incompatible with the new version’s Saved+General search?

[John Harris]

Brendan and Angri – I need to jump in here.

You can loose yourself in arcane meanderings about what should and should not be included in the application. We all have features that we like included – but this is not the point. Most of us I am sure want two things above all. We need a stable robust system with good support and documentation.

Brendan, while you occupy yourself with new features you attention is not being paid to making videos showing the features we already have. Up until recently the online manual was still showing the old interface. One-to-many is not explained in any degree of clarity. Backup and restore is not working on my system. These are the things that need to be addressed.
Please don’t pander to Angi’s requests. Stay focused.

My database is very powerful – I don’t need more features!

John

[Brendan]

I have someone working on an updated manual for me and I am also hiring someone to make some screencast videos for me. So it’s coming.

There’s always someone who needs this feature or that feature. I listen to everyone and take everything under advisement. Sometimes it’s necessary to ask further questions to clarify a feature request and sometimes I even discuss ways that it could be implemented. But it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be able to implement that feature in the next update or update after that or whenever. I receive hundreds of feature requests for improvements to Tap Forms. Not all of them make sense, but a lot of them are good ones. I pick and choose the features that I believe I can implement in a reasonable amount of time that I feel will benefit most of my customers. I also implement features of my own that I feel will make Tap Forms a better product overall.

John, what’s the problem with Backup & Restore on your device? Mac, iPhone, iPad?

Do you have a specific question about how One to Many relationships work that hasn’t been explained well in the manual?

[AngriBuddhist]

Hi John,

I’m glad to hear that TF, in its current form is powerful enough for you. I can also feel you’re pain. It’s very frustrating when something that you depend on doesn’t work the way it should. I’ve only been using TF specifically, and any database at all, for under two weeks. Yes, I’ve seen a few bugs but am completely unaware of any pressing stability issues and am not suggesting that any feature take precedent over such issues.

If you want a super stupid explanation of One to Many vs. Many to Many, I’d give it a shot.

[AngriBuddhist]

And I say “super stupid explanation” because the only way I can think to explain it is pretty dumb.

[Jimmy Uptain]

Hey Buddhist, I’m gonna assume that the random crashes are on the iPad/iPhone version.
What I have found and can replicate is this.
If I have several headers (and I do), collapsing the first header will result in crashing when messing around in an expanded header.
If I keep the first header expanded, no crashes.
Sorry Brandon for not reporting it, but after I found the workaround, I sorta forgot about it.

[Brendan]

I just tested having a Section Heading as the first field and I collapsed it and it seemed to work ok. I’m not entirely sure what you meant by “when messing around in an expanded header”, but I assumed you meant visiting some fields, saving them, editing some data, etc. It seems to be functioning ok for me. At least in my new version.

[Brendan]

Oh, also that was the iPhone version I just tested. I’ll test with the iPad version too.

[AngriBuddhist]

Hi Jimmy,

For myself, the random crashes have been things that I couldn’t reproduce.

The most headers that I have in a single form is 8. In the iPad version, I tried “messing about” in a section and closing its header and “messing about” in a section and then closing a different header. Neither caused a crash.

If you can give a more exact number of headers and a more detailed description of messing about, I’d try again to reproduce this on iPhone/iPad.

[Brendan]

Also, uploading or emailing me the Tap Forms Form Tempalte (.tff) file can actually be very helpful because then I could reproduce the crash using your exact template.

[John Harris]

Hi Brendan,

Great to hear that there will be Youtube screencasts. Your database is making my life a lot easier. Thank you.

John

[AngriBuddhist]

Brendan,

With the new Saved Search + General search support boolean operators?

[Brendan]

Tap Forms uses the SQLite FTS search engine for general search. By default all search terms are “ANDed” together. You can put “OR” in between search terms to get an OR search. OR must be in upper case. For example “Terminator OR Hunger” would return all movies with the word Terminator and all records with the word Hunger in the content somewhere.

But if you need more advanced searching it’s best to just use the regular saved searches and combine the rules.

[AngriBuddhist]

So, the way you handle Saved Searches + Generalized search field searches in the upcoming version of TF does support booleans?

[Brendan]

It should. What Tap Forms is doing in the new version is executing two searches and then intersecting the results. It’s using the Saved Search to return those records, then the FTS search to find all of the records that match the search term, then intersecting the two result sets.

Is there a specific kind of search that you’re trying to accomplish where you need this?

[AngriBuddhist]

I may have solved my Search problem but it’d be dependent on using the new version which I cannot, obviously, test on. So, please let me know if this scenario is possible in TF2.

I start in a record with a Many to Many Link To. There’s actually 30 MtM links between these forms, creating Variable 1. I tap one of those links which shows 500+ records. I then add 1 of my 120 Saved Searches, which have 2 rules (Varibles 2 & 3). Once I have those results, I add my last search (Variable 4) into the general search bar.

Within a Record>MtM Link>Saved Search>General Search

Would this work in TF2?

[scneophyte]

I’m late to party here, Angri, but I just tried your scenario and couldn’t fulfill step 2: “add 1 of my 120 Saved Searches.”

I was able to click on a Linked Record (One to Many) to see all linked records and then use the General search to further refine those results.

Just clicking on a saved search after clicking on a Linked Record executed the search on all records; not just the linked ones.

Full disclosure: I’ve been using TF5 for < 10 days.

Maybe an option (feature request) could be an option to, when viewing the linked records, save them to a new form using the existing form as a template. That existing form could have saved searches. The new form could even be a temporary form that required confirmation when moving off of it to save the form or drop it.

I’m curious how your database search has panned out. I’m cautiously optimistic that TF5 will provide me with the functionality I need, though I am still testing.

[Author]

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