Custom layouts with Durkin Toolkit

I've been deploying an ACT! database with custom tables using the Durkin Toolkit.

Although having done this before, I once again found that I'd forgotten to copy the customised forms.

Here is how you get the customised forms (layouts) onto the workstations and laptops using RDB's (Remote Databases) - you need to copy the files from

DatabaseLocation\DatabaseName-database files\Layouts\_Toolkit\

on the server hosting the ACT! database to the same location on the workstation.

Thus if your ACT! database on the server is at D:\Data\ACT\Yourdatabase.pad,

the location would be D:\Data\ACT\Yourdatabase-database files\Layouts\_Toolkit\

and you would copy it to the workstation with the RDB to, for example: C:\ACT\Yourdatabase-database files\Layouts\_Toolkit\

Hoping that helps some of you trying to find where those layouts went...

Scheduling tasks for others

When you schedule a task for others in ACT!, you get a drop-down list of people you have permission to schedule for. No problem, but what about when staff leave?

There are a couple of things to do here but deleting their user record is NOT one of them. Make the user 'inactive' - do not delete them, the reasons why are the subject for another post another time.

However, this means that they are still in the above mentioned list, you can still see them in the list of people you can schedule for.

I've seen some people rename the user from "USERNAME" to "zzUSERNAME" so that the appear at the end of the list, but it's nice to be neater, right? Yes, I'm glad you agree ;-)

In fact it is a really simple solution that works perfectly (thanks to KR for the pointer). You simply edit the user and change their security role from "Standard" (or whatever it was) to "Browse".

They now no longer appear in the list. Now that's neat.