Sample Auto Saving Files

Sample Calculated Filename

A company might want quote files to be named using the first 5 characters of the customer name, followed by a dash and then the first 5 characters of the site description, followed by a dash, a “V” and then the version number of the quote. In addition, the filename might be defined to have no spaces and be uppercase.

Customer name = Acme Corp

Site Description = Houston

Version number = 1

Filename would then the be calculated as ACMEC-HOUST-V1.

To calculate the filename using this scheme, the following Excel formula would be added to the FileSaveName named range to pull in the values from the quote file’s CustomerName, SiteDescription and QuoteVersionNumber named ranges

=UPPER(LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(CustomerName,” “,””),5))&”-“&UPPER(LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(SiteDescription,” “,””),5))&”-V”&QuoteVersionNumber

To calculate the filename, the above formula uses the following Excel formula functions:

• UPPER to make all of the characters’ uppercase.
• LEFT to grab the 5 left-most characters from CustomerName and SiteDescription.
• SUBSTITUTE to substitute all instances of the space character (” “) with nothing (“”).

It is highly recommended to use the SUBSTITUTE function to remove all space characters from the calculated filenames and folder paths.

Sample Calculated Folder Path

Save folders can be calculated using Excel formulas, as the following example formula, entered into any of the following named ranges.

• NetworkSaveFolder
• OutputNetworkSaveFolder
• LocalSaveFolder
• OutputLocalSaveFolder

Which shows:

=SUBSTITUTE(“X:\Quotes\”&PreparedBy&”\”&YEAR(NOW())&”\”&CustomerName&”\”,” “,””)

PreparedBy named range = “Joe Smith”

The Year = 2014

The above formula would calculate

X:\Quotes\JoeSmith\2014\AcmeCorp\ as the save path.

Sample Calculated FileSaveStatus (Workflow)

SDA will prevent the user from saving a quote file if the value in the FileSaveStatus named range (if it exists) is non-blank, and it will then pop up a message containing the text value of that named range cell. This functionality works very similarly to the OutputStatus named range files), which prevents outputs from being generated and pops up a message containing the text value in the OutputStatus named range cell.

Architect Managers Admins can prevent the file from being saved if the user does not enter a value into the CustomerName named range by entering the following formula into the FileSaveStatus named range

=IF(CustomerName<>””,””,”Error: You must enter the customer name before you can save the file”)

This formula says that if CustomerName is not equal to blank, then the value in the cell is set to blank (“”), which will allow the file to be saved.

But if CustomerName is BLANK, then SDA will prevent the file from being saved and will pop up a message that states:

“Error: You must enter the customer name before you can save the file”.

Return to Auto Saving Files Menu

Update:  Please note that with the enhancements made to the Dashboard, there’s an easier way to set up Auto-Saving rather than in the BaseInfo Tab.  See File Auto-Saving in the Admin Guide for SDA Dashboard.