Clint Covington: Software design, Microsoft Office Access : Templates

Reader question about macros and VBA

Clint Covington — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 14:26:00 GMT

A reader recently asked:

Is there any way on Access 2007 to keep wizards and Switchboard Manager coding in VBA, any way developers "HAVE" to code for most applications.
If a customer is buying an apllication from us, he is not going to trust what he bought?.
Switchboard manager was great in its code handling.

Good question. Let me back-track a little into the annuals of the decision to move the button wizard from VBA to macros. There are a significant percentages of Access databases that are built by information workers that have very little code. One of the many goals for Access 2007 was to expand on this and allow IWs to build better applications without writing code. The new security model allows users to run databases without any VBA code enabled (this is important for many organizations). As you know, trusted locations make it much easier to deploy databases with code. Our wildly popular templates are functional databases that don't have code. Feedback on the templates have been positive.

We started running into scenarios where IWs opened a database and added a switchboard or button that didn't work. Users were confused--they didn't work because the database wasn't enabled. As many of you have complained about over the years, the wizards also wrote out poor examples of VBA (doMenuCmd 97 kind of stuff). To fix the problem we converted the wizards to write out embedded macros that run in untrusted databases. We also spent time cleaning up the code they generate to provide users with better learning examples.

We did consider a flag to write out either VBA or macros but the feature was one of many things we wanted to do that didn't make it into the release. :-( Beta 2 shipped and we got lots of feedback from beta testers (Pat Hartman and John Viescas were particularly vocal) that they wanted a way to convert embedded macros to VBA. As a late change we made it possible to convert embedded macros to VBA. You can find the command on the Database tab under Macro.

Do we think everything should be written in macros? No--they aren't a replacement for VBA. VBA will continue to ship and be supported in the future. Macros are turning out to be useful for simple actions that took a few lines of code. We find that IWs are much more successful making small changes to macros than VBA. I have yet to hear a perf complain on macros verses VBA, so performance shouldn't be an issue. Long-term, we intend to continue to innovate in this area and make macros more useful for broader developer scenarios.

Thanks for your question and hope this explains our logic.

Tell me about your Inventory application

Clint Covington — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 02:41:00 GMT

Sorry I haven't posted for a few weeks. I recently took an enjoyable NCL cruise with ports in Costa Maya, Santo Tomas De Castilla, Belize, and Cozumel. It was rewarding to spend a week playing hard with my lovely two little girls and Taunya. Love that!!

Back to work...

As I have mentioned in previous posts, Access templates are wildly popular and provide a foundation for many new Access applications. Improving the templates and expanding the number of templates offered will continue to be important as we move forward. The Inventory Management happens to be one of the most popular templates we ship, yet the scenarios and potential data models vary wildly. Some inventory applications track specific items while others track quantities. Some scenarios require re-ordering with and with-out purchase orders. As you know, the scenarios get quite complicated.

The Access 2007 version of Inventory is a good starting point but we think there are plenty of ways it can be improved. Some people on my team are going to be spending some time thinking about different user models, scenarios, and possible data model alternatives. I’m a huge fan of listening to customers and hearing more about the inventory applications in the real world.

For those of you with existing Inventory Management applications it would be helpful to learn more about your scenario, navigation model, data entry forms, data models, etc. I would be most grateful if you could take a few minutes to tell me more about your application. The outline might go something like…

Describe your business scenario.
How many tables, forms, queries, and reports are in the application?
How long have you been using the application?
How many records are in the biggest tables?
How many people use the application?
How many people concurrently use the application?
What is the backend database?
Describe the business rules that govern the application.
Describe and provide screen shots of the applications opening screen.
How do people navigate the application?
Describe and provide screen shots on how people enter data into the application.
Provide a simple screenshot of the relationship window with the most important tables.
What reports are most commonly used?

Rest assured, the time and effort you spend describing your application will be super helpful for the next iterations of templates and influence Access 14 development.

Millions of Access template downloads, 5 new free databases

Clint Covington — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 07:52:00 GMT

Can you believe, 3.5 million Access templates were downloaded from Office Online over the last 12 months?! This includes nearly 1 million Access 2007 and over 2.5 million Access 2000-2003 templates.Quite an uptake for such a new release.

To capitalize on its popularity, we are back to work building new databases and polishing what was shipped in the box and have just released to Office Online an update to 15 exisitng templates and launched 5 new templates including Inventory. This update also includes a bunch of small bug fixes and the following two new features:

Filter Favorites, and
Images on buttons.

What's cool about this update is that if you have Access 2007, the new templates show up in Getting Started as long as you have an Internet connection and don't use the Local Templates category...Check out the screens below, or browse the Access 2007 templates on Office Online.

New Templates

Call Tracker

Inventory

Personal Contact Manager

Time and Billing

Time Card

In the Box Templates

Assets
Contacts
Events
Faculty
Issues
Marketing Projects
Projects
Sales Pipeline
Students
Tasks

Updates to Beta 2 templates

Business Account Ledger
Customer Service
Home Inventory
Lending Library
Personal Account Ledger

Interactive chart/form filtering code sample

Clint Covington — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 16:45:00 GMT

One of the most enjoyable design challenges I have had over the last couple of years was redesigning how users can filter inside Access and Excel. The new filter dropdown menu and context menus were lots of fun to explore different designs and think creatively about how users interact with data. I wanted to make filtering simple for everyone to use but powerful enough to answer most hard questions. One of my key goals was to build a system where users could create 90% of WHERE clauses without using the query designer. It was really fun to watch users be successful use the features in the usability lab.

Recently, I have been hunting the web and rich applications looking for different ways to visualize and interact with data. I noticed in the Microsoft Access 2003 Conversion Toolkit that a chart was used to filter tabular data. I thought it would be interesting to create a view that showed trends and data but yet was also useful. The Sales Pipeline template is an example of an application where trend-lines excite users. With a little code and a chart sub-form you can sprinkle a dab of visualization with a pinch of interactivity.

Clicking on a year, month label, or bar in the chart above will filter the Est Closed Date to the year or month selected. For example if you click on Jun you will see all sales opportunities in the month of June. Clicking on the 2007 label will show all the sales opportunities with an expected closed date in 2007. It is even smart enough to maintain filters on other columns as you filter. for example, if you filter where category = hot and click on the April month you will see all records where category = hot and in the month of April.

You can download a working sample of the Sales Pipeline database http://clintc.officeisp.net/Blogs/2006/43%20-%20Chart%20Filtering/Sales%20pipeline_chart_filter_demo.zip.

Using the new split-form you can resize the height of the chart and datasheet with the chart growing or shrinking to fill the view.

Add the Chart

Step 1. Open the Open Opportunities List and select all the controls. Remove them from the stack so that you can size the form window smaller. Move all the controls in the detail section up into a cramp space. Turn on the split form resize bar by selecting the form setting the Split Form Splitter Bar = true.

Step 2. Create a new chart called Filter Chart Sub-form. I won’t go into the details of polishing the chart and the chart settings. Add the chart to the form covering all the controls in the detail section. I found it useful to select the sub-form and setting Top = 0. Select the sub-form and set the Anchoring property to stretch down and across.

Step 3. The next step is to make sure the chart is always updated when the user adds, updates, or deletes records. I added three simple embedded macros on the AfterUpdate, AfterInsert, AfterDelConfirm events to refresh the chart.

Make the Chart Interactive

Step 1. Add reference to c:\program files\Microsoft Office\Office12\ offowc.dll.

Step 2. Add the following code to the chart sub form. The code should be fairly straight forward. You use an API call to change the cursor from an arrow to a hand when the user hovers over the bars, month, or year labels.

When the user clicks on a bar or label it builds an approriate filter string. The first iteration of the demo removed all filters and applied just the new filter. So if the user had filtered by category and applied a filter to Expected Closed Date they would be viewing all categories again. I fixed this bug using the ClearFilterFromSelectedField runcommand to remove just the current column filter instead of the entire form filter. This is a new command in Access 2007.

You will need to modify the variables sFilterField and sFilterControl in the BuildSQL function to point to the field name and control name you want to filter in your own app. I haven't tried it but there shouldn't be any reason why this technique doesn't work in report browse as well. If anyone out there wants to modify the buildSQL routine to support filtering on strings--send me the updated sample and I will post it to the community following this blog.

Anyways, here is the code:

Option Explicit

Private Const HandCursor = 32649&
Private Declare Function SetCursor Lib "user32" (ByVal hCursor As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function LoadCursor Lib "user32" Alias "LoadCursorA" (ByVal hInstance As Long, ByVal lpCursorName As Long) As Long

Dim WithEvents oChart As ChartSpace

Private Sub Form_Load()
    Set oChart = Me.ChartSpace
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Click()
    Dim sVal As String
    Dim sYear As String
    Dim iSeperator As Integer
    
    Select Case Me.ChartSpace.SelectionType
    Case chSelectionPoint
        sVal = Me.ChartSpace.Selection.GetValue(chDimCategories)
        iSeperator = InStr(1, sVal, "-")  'make sure we only filter for year or month and year
        If iSeperator = 0 Then 'selection is a year
        
            FilterByYear sVal
        ElseIf InStr(iSeperator + 1, sVal, "-") = 0 Then
            'selection is a month and year
            sYear = Trim$(Mid$(sVal, 1, iSeperator - 1))
            sVal = Trim$(Mid$(sVal, iSeperator + 1))
            
            FilterByMonth sYear, sVal
        Else
            Exit Sub 'selection is a day or somthing of a lower level that we don't filter for
        End If
                  
    Case chSelectionCategoryLabel
        'set the source object to the proper form
        sVal = Me.ChartSpace.Selection.Caption
        Select Case Me.ChartSpace.Selection.Level 'check to see what level was selected on the x axis
        Case 0  'year
            FilterByYear sVal
        Case 1  'month
            sYear = Me.ChartSpace.Selection.ParentLabel.Caption
            FilterByMonth sYear, sVal
        Case Else
            Exit Sub 'selection is a day or somthing of a lower level that we don't filter for
        End Select
        
    End Select
End Sub

'filters the db list by month
Private Sub FilterByMonth(sYear As String, sVal As String)
    Me.Parent.Form.Filter = BuildSQL(Trim$(sYear), Trim$(sVal))
    Me.Parent.Form.FilterOn = True
End Sub

'filters the db list by year
Private Sub FilterByYear(sVal As String)
    Me.Parent.Form.Filter = BuildSQL(Trim$(sVal), "")
    If Me.Parent.Form.FilterOn = False Then Me.Parent.Form.FilterOn = True
End Sub

' builds the SQL that will filter the form
Private Function BuildSQL(sYear As String, sMonth As String) As String
    Dim sFilterField As String
    Dim sFilterControl As String
    
    sFilterField = "[Est Closed Date]"
    sFilterControl = "Est Closed Date"

    If sMonth <> "" Then 'passed in year and month
        BuildSQL = "(" & sFilterField & " >= #" & FormatDateTime(sMonth & " - " & sYear) & "#) AND (" & sFilterField & " <= #" & DateAdd("m", 1, FormatDateTime(sMonth & " - " & sYear)) - 1 & "#)"
    Else 'just passed in the year
        BuildSQL = "(" & sFilterField & " >= #1/1/" & sYear & "#) AND (" & sFilterField & " <= #12/31/" & sYear & "#)"
    End If
    
    'Clear the filter from the field the chart is filtered on.
    'If you want to clear the entire filter, just set Me.Parent.Filter = "".
    RemoveFilterFromField Me.Parent, sFilterControl
    
    ' If there is still something left of the filter
    If Me.Parent.Filter <> "" Then
        ' Append
        BuildSQL = BuildSQL & " AND (" & Me.Parent.Filter & ")"
    End If
End Function

Private Sub RemoveFilterFromField(frm As Form, strControlName As String)
    frm.SetFocus
    frm.Controls(strControlName).SetFocus
    
    On Error Resume Next
    DoCmd.RunCommand acCmdRemoveFilterFromCurrentColumn  ' This command is new to Access 2007.
    
    Debug.Assert Err.Number = 0 Or Err.Number = 2046 ' 2046 is thrown when there was no filter on the column
    Err.Clear
End Sub

Private Sub Form_CommandBeforeExecute(ByVal Command As Variant, ByVal Cancel As Object)
    ' Cancel the ability to drill into days and hours.
    If Command = chCommandDrill Then
        Cancel = True
    End If
End Sub

Private Sub oChart_MouseMove(ByVal Button As Long, ByVal Shift As Long, ByVal x As Long, ByVal y As Long)
    Select Case TypeName(Me.ChartSpace.RangeFromPoint(x, y))
    Case "ChCategoryLabel", "ChPoint"
        'display hand cursor if pointer is over a label or bar
        SetCursor LoadCursor(0, HandCursor)
    Case Else
        'display the normal cursor
        Screen.MousePointer = 0
    End Select
End Sub

Softer datasheet visuals in 3 simple steps

Clint Covington — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:05:00 GMT

Yesterday I was looking at one of our templates and noticed the grid felt pretty busy. I wanted to come up with a design that softens the harshness of the gridlines yet was very readable. Here is what I ended up with...

There are three easy steps to create this view (you can't do this in Access 2003 because of limited datasheet formatting and the lack of alternate row color).

Step 1 - change the alternate row color to the second color in the Access theme colors (I wish there was a color in between the lightest and the second).

Step 2 - Change the gridlines to Vertical.

Step 3 - Use the dialog launcher to change the gridline color to a more silver color. I used the background color in the color picker.

If you use the Access Theme colors it is possible to create a visual disign that adapts to the shell theme colors. Here is the same app in the silver theme.

In a few simple steps it is possible to change things up a bit and create a different visual effect.

Design for filter favorites functionality in forms

Clint Covington — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 04:04:00 GMT

Access 2007 introduces a ton of new filtering tools that make it much easier to cut and slice data in different ways. I’m very happy about the new experience and think developers will spend far less time building filtering functionality because of the built in functionality. However, in all releases there are always one or two features round out the scenario that don’t fit into the milestones. One of the ideas we had planned to implement was the notion of filter favorites for any view. The basic idea is to allow users to save common or complex filters and sorts. Unfortunately, that feature was one of the last cuts we made.

Earlier this summer when I was home on paternity leave I had the chance to play around adding filter favorites to our templates. A key goal for the feature was to make it so simple that most users would be successful using and managing filters/sorts.

One of the goals of our templates is that they don’t have VBA code. We want them to run in sandbox mode without requiring users to enable code. The new functionality is all written in macros without VBA code. You can download a working sample from http://clintc.officeisp.net/Blogs/2006/44%20-%20Filter%20Favorites/Filter_Favorite_Sample.zip.

Let me describe how it works. There is a dropdown control in the upper right corner with a command for saving a filter.

The dropdown control provides users with the ability to clear filters, manage filters, and any saved filters. Selecting Clear Filter will remove the forms filter. Selecting any of the other filters will change the current filter of the document.

It is pretty easy to add new filters to the dropdown. Simply filter the list and click on the Add Filter button. This takes a copy of the current filter and sort and saved it in the Filters table. The user is asked to provide a name and description:

The Show details >> link shows the actual filter and sort SQL strings. I believe it is important to hide unnecessary complexity but provide intuitive ways for advanced users to find it. Most users simply don't need to see that kind of gunk.

If you want to add this functionality to your form it is pretty simple. Import the Filters table, Filters macro, and Filter Details form. Copy and paste the dropdown control and Save Filter button to your form.

As I was writing this blog post I realized you can't delete filters without going to the table. We will get that fixed before the templates are updated. You will also notice icons an all the form buttons--they make it all look much nicer.

If anyone wants to make filter favorites work in report browse with custom ribbons--send me the code and I will post it. Anyone have other suggestions how we can make it better?

Ideas about creating great looking reports

Clint Covington — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 18:53:00 GMT

Lately I have been thinking a bit about report design and how to make reports look great without writing lots of line drawing code. Being a sports fan I have always thought sports sites do a good job making great looking reports. Personally, I couldn’t be happier about the Utah Jazz and their 12-1 start especially with a nice win at home against the Lakers. ESPN has a good looking format for the box score that can easily be created inside Access 2007 without writing code.

There are a few things I like about this report that makes it graphical and readable.

· Conditional formatting to match the team colors in the team header

· UPPERCASE the team name and inverse the color

· Alternate row color breaks up the rows

· Horizontal and vertical gridlines makes it easy to follow row headings downward

· Totals solid color and bold face make them stand out a bit without being overbearing

· The tabs across the top are a subtle effect that make it easy to navigate between reports

· I like how they use font size to draw out the final score (this is particularly helpful when I’m watching from across the room)

· The drop shadow along the page edge gives it a nice touch

· You have to love how the AJAX updating of data without a page refresh

I spent a few minutes this morning bit twiddling with a report in our Projects template to see how hard it was to replicate it in Access. It took about ½ hour but here is what I came up with:

I wanted to see how close I could get without writing code. I started with the Open Projects report in the Projects template that already had controls in stacks. If you are starting with a legacy report you will want to select the controls and convert to tabular stack layout. The create new report option does put new controls in stacks. The Category grouping was in the stack so I took it out and deleted it's label. I lowered the font size on the category from 14 to 11 point and used UCASE([category]) as the expression for the control source to give it the updercase look. I selected the background color and picked one of the darker theme colors to give the category a heavy grouping. My preference is to use colors from the Access theme group so that the report will visuall change colors if you open it in the other themes. I changed the fore color for the category text to white.

Creating the gridlines theme was pretty easy. I selected all the controls in the detail section and set their top to 0 and sized the detail section up so there isn't any extra room. This makes the gridlines line up nice and tight. I used the Access Theme color 3 to give the gridlines a subtle outline.

I used the Text Description color in the totals section to give it the heavy look and bolded the controls. I used left and right margin settings (.02 seemed to do the trick) on the controls to give the text a little breathing room around the gridlines.

I changed the fore color to the Project Name and Assigned To to black because the blue hyperlink was standing out a bit to much for me. The controls use the new Display as Hyperlink property for the underline and hand on hover, when it is printed the underline will go away.

I did add the report icon from the projects list form.

Any ways--I thought it turned out to be a nice report with a few tweaks to the original report.

Expense Reports database template

Clint Covington — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:16:00 GMT

The past few days I have been working on an update to our Access 2000 Expense Report database. I'm interested if anyone has any feedback on how I can improve the design of the template.

Let me give you a quick run through of the tables, forms, and reports. The schema includes four tables (Employees, Expense Reports, and Expense Details, and My Company Information). The [My Company Information] table isn’t really used except to store the [Mileage Reimbursement Amount] value. Here is what the relationships looks like:

The Expense Report’s Status column is a value list of New, Pending, Deferred, and Completed. This setting drives much of the report and workflow aspects of the database. The user first boots to the Expense Reports List which only shows New and Pending reports.

(Click image to enlarge)

Drilling through to the Expense Details form is the heart of the application.

(Click image to enlarge)

Few interesting things about the form:

1. The fields that are required include Report Date, Employee, Approver, and Business Purpose.

2. Category list is pre-populated with expense categories. I thought about making this a lookup table but elected to keep it simple.

3. When changing the Category to Mileage Reimbursement it prompts via a macro for the number of miles. A formula then multiplies it with the [My Company Information].[ Mileage Reimbursement Amount] field and updates the cost field. This only works for trusted databases. If the database is not trusted a message box will tell the user about the formula.

4. The email icon next to the Approver field will send the expense report in a PDF to the Approver copying the Employee.

5. Clicking on the Approve All Details icon will run and update query that marks all of the expense reports line items as approved. The totals will update date automatically.

There are three reports in the database:

· Closed Expense Reports – Shows the expense reports where Status = Paid or Deferred.

· Expense Report – This report shows the Expense Report with the line items.

· Expenses Grouped by Category – Shows the line items for all expense reports where Status = Paid.

Here is the latest draft of the Expense Report:

As with all of the contacts in our templates I have included an Employee List and Employee Details forms. The Employee Details form allows you to see submitted expense reports for the selected person.

Access 12 and Developers

Clint Covington — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 03:20:00 GMT

Let me start by writing about two customer visits I made early in the development of Access 12 that proved to be a good representation of some of our developer customers.

The first, a large enterprise organization in the health industry arranged a full day where 10 business users (part-time developers) presented to Microsoft on their applications and talked about how they use Access. All the applications had similar code libraries for common operations. These code libraries included export to PDF, date picker, rich text control, filtering, alternate row color, handling the not in list event, left hand navigation for opening and closing objects, and single document interfaces. Many folks dynamically resized sub forms to fill the available space in the window. I saw multiple instances of split views where users wanted to have a list of data, when a record is selected in datasheet a form showed the details. Nearly all of the applications involved a custom version of the switchboard manager.

This organization also had a SharePoint pilot team present. The organization had 75+ external partner sites focused SharePoint sites in less than 3 months. The people using the sites were thrilled with the way they were able to collaborate with external partners. However, not everyone could create new sites because of limited IT support resources, and the Access developers expressed frustration with the IT department about the restrictions placed on creating new sites. They key point was the Access developer community in the organization was clamoring for more ways to build rich and reach Access applications with SharePoint as the center point. The idea of Access working offline with SharePoint data was salient…

I made another visit to a large insurance company. They had a group of 6 developers that did nothing but write Access applications. They had developed nearly the same code library of functions as the health organization. Access was the perfect tool for their group to build small workgroup applications that could be delivered in 2 weeks for under $30,000. The people in the group were heros in their organization because of how quickly they could deliver highly functional business applications.

The reason I highlight these scenarios is to illustrate how developers have been forced to write a significant amount of code to work around the things that customers require with fairly common data activities. One of the key parts of the Access vision is making it possible to build more sophisticated and powerful applications faster with far less code.

As Erik has stated in his blog, there are three things we are trying to do in this release:

Dramatically expand the number of people who are successful using Access by making it much easier to build databases from scratch and by including a range ready to go solutions in the box that can be used as they are or modified as required.
Make existing Access developers more efficient by improving the design tools without losing any of the power that Access provides today.
Enable a whole new class of collaborative database applications around Windows SharePoint Services.

The work to expose WSS lists as web services and then consume those web services in Access 2003 was the first step in a long term plan to make Access a great rich client for WSS data. In this version we have devoted a significant amount of development resources to fill gaps in the scenarios. Access 12 builds on the SharePoint story with improved support for offline data, data types (multi-choice lookups and value lists, attachments), SharePoint site manager, upsize to SharePoint, templates for SharePoint list types, exposing links to forms and reports inside SharePoint, and exposing workflow verbs inside Access. SharePoint is a strategic investment for Microsoft, and Access is vital part of the story for working with SharePoint data. We think SharePoint provides developers a great opportunity to build new types of applications that expose rich and thin views on the data where the data is available offline for disconnected users.

Office Online becomes a very interesting option for the small business developer as they will have the ability to build applications hosted on Office Online for free. The service is supported by advertising revenue. The SharePoint strategy will continue to expand over time.

The ribbon provides a great developer opportunity to build an application that looks modern and fresh. Overall, the response about the ribbon has been really positive. It is only a matter of time before people will be asking for ribbon applications. Already there are third parties building ribbon-like code libraries so that VS developers can make their apps look like Office 12. Our team wants to work with people in this forum to flush out requirements and make tweaks to give you the functionality you need to build fresh, new types of applications.

Templates are also a huge part of the Access strategy. Last year we had well over a million downloads of Access templates! The team is working very hard to build 25-30 great templates that make it easy for business users to start tracking information. The product was designed with the idea that users would easily add a couple fields and create reports that enabling them to capture the information they need to make clearer business decisions. The pipe to Office online will allow Microsoft to continue to build new templates that invigorate the franchise and help users track the information they need.

It has been a while since Access has made significant investments in end user features. The end user features will broaden the base of Access development by allow many, more users to start building new applications. Some of those end users will grow into power users and then developers--others will find Access developers to help them accomplish what they have in mind. Our expectation is that there will be many more Access developers in 5 years simply by the fact that more and more people are using the product to track their business information.

Microsoft will spend more energy and money marketing Access 12 than previous releases. The end user work resonates with the Office marketing message around Office 12. The new user experience makes communicating the business value a much easier. This release of Access makes great strides in bring Access into the Office marketing message.

I hesitate to talk too much about Access 14 as we haven't even shipped a public beta of Access 12. Erik’s post on Access Commitment to Developers outlines three important things for developers moving forward:

Better experience and more power in Access—we love RAD!
Better experience working with servers.
Easier to extend Access apps with Visual Studio.

In summary, there loads of codeless features will allow developers to spend more time modeling business process while writing less code on their path to building modern looking applications. SharePoint will open up a new wave of applicaitons that can be built using Access and the SharePoint Designer.

In the mean time--happy developing!