Guys here is the problem, in Panorama 6 when we did lookup it was very, very easy. You went to Formulafil in the functions window you were able to get for lookup a Lookup functions wizard that would seriously help you pick out what you wanted to do.
Now in Pan X, you have to go to morph, go to fill with formula and really think it out and put in a formula that is very tough if your not a programmer to do.
So Jim, this is what I would like, can you give us a lookup wizard so that we don’t have to get brain farts in figuring out what you want to lookup from another database???
Many advance Panorama users will laugh at me, but I am not a programmer and it’s hard in the new Pan X to do lookups, compared to the ease of Pan 6
I would like to second that. I see lots of the older crowd of Pan programmers who know the ins and outs of Pan moving forward with Pan X. Most of the threads on here are about technical issues that are very advanced in nature. I wonder, however, how new, young people will respond to having an application that has quite a high learning curve at this time. I have suggested that some modern Pan X demo files be posted either by Jim or others so that newcomers can 1) see what can be done and 2) learn how a particular file is created. I think if you understand that most newcomers who might be interested in Pan X either come over from Excel or from Numbers, it is a huge jump to creating interesting projects in Pan X. Trying to go through the help files is a major chore and I think will turn off those who are used to just “hitting the road” and running with an app. I saw a similar problem on the PC side with a database app that went “high tech” and lost many old timers and are now relying mainly on heavy hitters who program for companies that can afford the much higher costs of that database. (It used to cost $99 for the app and now it is well over $2500). I certainly hope Pan X isn’t going in that direction, as I think there is a great need and market for a quality database for the “every person” type.
I’m not laughing Sal - I’ve been a constant Panorama user for 30 years and I still can’t write a lookup( function intuitively - I too found the Panorama 6 wizard very helpful and look forward to having one in Panorama X.
Have you looked at the tutorials in the Help wizard Pete? They should work well for total beginners and there will be many more of them as time goes on.
Looks like Jim has added a bunch of new example databases to the Panorama Database Exchange. You can check them out by selecting Panorama Database Exchange from the Help menu.
I missed the announcement that the Database Exchange was up and running - that’s excellent news. Is the upload aspect operational? If so, are there guidelines?
I think it’s the general nature of most forums to be concentrated on more technical issues. I’ve seen this on other forums as well. It makes sense, because many users are able to use the documentation to figure out the less technical issues on their own, and don’t ask a question on the forum until they encounter a difficult problem they can’t figure out on their own. And if someone does submit a problem on the simple side, the discussion will be short because a simple answer is posted and that’s the end of the thread – perhaps just a link to the relevant documentation. So it’s natural that more complex issues that will tend to take up more of the discussion.
On the other hand, the issue of facilitating “onboarding”, i.e. getting new users up and running in Panorama without getting discouraged, has been my primary focus for several months now. Some of what I’ve done in that area is already apparent, and some of it is still under wraps. It’s a hard problem, but very, very important.
There’s no getting around the fact that mastering a powerful program is a major chore. Lynda.com has grown a gigantic company out of that fact. There’s no getting around the fact that building a complicated application is … complicated. There are things that can be done to mitigate that to some extent, but the “chore” aspect of learning can’t be completely eliminated.
On the other hand, I think that Panorama X is much better than Panorama 6 in the “hit the ground running” scenario. If you just want to do some data entry, sorting and searching, I don’t see why it would take more than 10-20 minutes to become proficient at Panorama X.
Simply checked it out after noticing your last entry in Bitbucket where you had an error when uploading a file to the Panorama Database Exchange. I’m just nosy I guess.
Is there now a lookup wizard for 10? That is the key function for me since I started using Panorama in the mid-90s. I bought X when it came out, but I have not switched to my downloaded X (and created more profit for Provue) because, even after reading the documentation, I, a non-programmer, cannot figure it out.