Enabling Vista Paging for Performance and Joy

Author: Eric Vasbinder

Overview

The Vista ERP solution can often have data areas, or forms, with thousands or even hundreds of thousands of records in each form. Many a customer has opened their AP Payment History, HR Resource Master, or SM Work Order form and marveled at the sheer number of records in these and other similar forms. Opening these forms when in a LAN environment can sometimes be sluggish, even when latency from the client to the server is only 5ms or less. However, when the Vista database has been moved to the cloud, separating the client from the server by a thousand miles and 50ms of additional network latency, the time delay to load forms can sometimes become unacceptable. In addition to this, when loading thousands of records into a form, the Vista client itself can often perform more slowly once all records are loaded due to the extra strain on the client's memory available.

To address this, our team put together a solution that only loads in a single "page" of records into the Vista form at any one time; a page being a much smaller subset of the entire set of records in a form. This technology, known as Vista Paging, is a powerful tool, designed to provide customers with the ability to not only increase the speed with which Vista's forms open, but increases the stability of those forms under heavy data loads. Paging has been extremely effective in lowering the times that it takes to open forms, sometimes increasing form load speed by 3-4x the speed without paging turned on. In addition, we have found that by lessening the strain put on the client, we can often increase overall client performance in other areas and improve stability. In many cases, this technology is so impactful that our cloud-based customers have communicated that they would not be satisfied in the cloud without it being turned on.

As such, we HIGHLY recommend that paging be turned on for every user, on every form, with a page size of no more than 40-50 records

Paging Important Nuances

Paging technology has a few important pieces of background with which you must be familiar prior to using it:

Paging is NOT Available on All Forms

Most heavily used forms such as AP Payment History and SM Work Orders do have paging available; this will be seen in the form's toolbar. However, some forms, such as PR Batch Process, do not have paging available. This is either because it would not make sense for that form to support paging, or because that form has not yet been made compatible with paging.

If you see the paging icon set in the toolbar for that form, you'll know paging can be turned on for that form.

Paging is NOT on by Default and is Activated on a Per User / Per Form Basis

Paging is not turned on by default. Paging activation is controlled on a per user per form basis, necessitating that each end user turn on paging on each form that they use where paging is available

Initial Page Sizes CAN be Configured Server Wide

The Admin who has access to VA Site Settings can configure the overall, default page size used by each form initially. However, please note that end users can adjust a page size on a specific form to be larger or smaller than your initially specified amount. So, for example, let's say you set the default page size to be 50 records in the VA Site Settings. Then, after a few weeks, you have a few users complaining about how long it takes

40-50 Records is the Maximum Number of Records that the Human Eyeball Can Manage at One Time

Our recommendation of 40-50 records per page as a maximum comes not only from an understanding that we wish to keep Vista client performance high, but also from usability research. This research shows an interesting fact: the human eyeball can only take in around 40-50 records at any one time. This has the effect of rendering additional display records superfluous. Obviously, scrolling through long lists of records to spot visual differences can be somewhat satisfying for a few users, however, there are more efficient ways involving Searching, Filtering, and Reporting to get at relationships between larger volumes of data.

The Filter Bar is Fully Functional

One of the key criteria of Vista's Paging technology was to ensure that the in-grid filter bar is fully functional. As such, rather than searching just the records shown in the page loaded in the form at any one time, the filter bar will instead search through all pages. To put it another way, the Filter Bar in the grid of a form will search through the totality of the records in that form and then display them in search results, regardless of whether they are in the initially loaded page.

Thus, you loose no filter functionality by turning on paging; you merely gain speed.

Enabling Paging

There are two steps to enabling paging: first, configuring the system-wide default page size in VA Site Settings and second, having each user turn on paging on each form where they would like to see increased performance.

Configuring System Wide Default Page Size

1. Open and log in to the Vista client and then open the Viewpoint Administration -> Programs menu.

2. Open the VA Site Settings form.

3. Once open, click into the field, "Page Size".

4. Update the value shown to be the value you've chosen to be the default page size for your entire Vista-using organization, then click OK.

a. Again, we highly recommend 40 or 50, as any higher than that amount will be unnecessary complexity that increases load times, and lower than that amount can result in unnecessary flipping from page to page to find data.

Turning on Paging on a Form

Once your default page size has been configured for your Vista server, you can now have your end users turn on Paging on each form where they would like to experience the speed of form loads with grid paging on. The following steps are what is necessary to activate paging on a specific form.

1. Open the form in which you would like to turn on paging. For example, AP Payment History.

2. Once the form is open, look for the paging toolbar icon set in the toolbar of the form. They will be shown after the next record / previous record icons .

These icons should include the following:

• Form-Level Page Settings - This icon allows you to immediately activate paging on the form by clicking on it, or if you click the down arrow next to the icon you can choose the page size that will be unique to that form

• Previous Page - moves to the previous page of records in the form (or search result)

• Next Page - Moves to the next page of records in the form (or search result)

NOTE: There are NO first and last page buttons, however, those are under consideration. Please submit your vote into our suggestion box if you would like to have this feature added:

3. Either click on the paging icon itself (looks like a small grid), or on the down arrow next to it if you wish to configure your page size.

4. If you have clicked on the down arrow, please click the "on" button for pagination after you've chosen your page size. Again, we only recommend 40-50 max records per page.

NOTE: Configuring page size at the form level will normally be unnecessary if you've already configured it at the site level in the previous section.

Once paging has been turned on, you will see the paging icon set changed from being all grey to being enabled, and the status bar at the bottom of the window will show the following:

• the number of records in total stored in the form

• the page number being shown

• the total number of pages available.

REMINDER!

ACTIVATING PAGING MUST BE DONE ON EVERY FORM, FOR EVERY USER WHO WISHES TO USE PAGING.