Table user-defined fields are the backbone of many (most?) installations. But we are missing a fundamental capability: Like a car with no brakes, we can only SET things using Global Edit. Global Edit Rules is missing two critical new options:
Add table field values
Replace table field values
Clear table field values
Toggle table field values
Maximizer users waste a lot of time looking for ways around this limitation (macros that don’t quite work, etc.). Eventually, we stop using as many tables as we could because it is difficult.
Here’s an example if it’s not obvious:
Example: We work for “China Best Quality Export, Ltd.”
Our table UDF "Products purchased," has Items:
Auto Parts
Batteries
Cameras
Dog Food
Electronics
Machine Tools
Stuffed toys
Toothpaste
There are 2^8 or 256 possible combinations.
Event:
Customers in the US & Canada suddenly stop buying dog food.
They still buy the same range of other products as before.
The rest of the world doesn't change anything.
So we search for all North American customers and hit Global Edit, but we're stuck:
1. We can set ALL North American customers to dog food buyers, but that's wrong.
2. We can make "dog food" the ONLY thing that our North American customers are buying, thereby erasing our knowledge of what they do buy, but that's very wrong (but I bet it happens fairly often)
3. So we waste time with garbage like
1. rename “dog food” to “old dog food”
2. search for Products purchased = “old dog food” and country is NOT USA and NOT Canada,” (while wondering how to fix entries where somebody didn't enter the country, which would be fairly likely if we're in US or Canada)
3. Add new field, “dog food”
4. Global edit: add “dog food” current list
5. Setup user defined fields: delete “old dog food”
This is barely tolerable in this example,, but impractical to fix a few entries on a day to day basis and has a major affect on the utility of Maximizer (i.e., if I could easily clear fields, I’d be more willing to set them!).
"Toggle" would also be useful at times also.
I'm surprised that this wasn't fixed in Maximizer 2.0. New users wonder "why isn't this working like I would expect," but can't articulate it, and I’ve wasted so many hours trying to write Maximzier macros (which kind of also don’t work) and other workarounds to this.
Maybe if we all send this to suggestions@maximizer.com they might listen?
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