[sims] AM7 - Changing Aspect Names

[Ecclesbury]

Evening all,

 

I was told recently by a member of the LA support team that I "can't" change the name of an aspect in AM7.

 

Can anyone comment on this? My instinct tells me that this is similar to the warning against changing the name of a registration group in pastoral structure (i.e it is dangerous in that it changes the name of the group for all historic members)

 

Basically, for various reasons I am wanting to do a major tidy up of all my aspects and want to be able to re-name some of them. Are there any unexpected consequences of doing this other than changing the name of the aspect for all historic results?

 

I'm worried about being told that I can't (i.e. physically can't) when I know that I can...

 

EDIT: For clarity I'm talking about the aspect name as well as the column heading. I'm also aware that the column heading name will not change in any existing templates.

[NorthernSands]

I've been re-naming Aspects for years. You've mentioned one caveat: the column headers won't rename in existing templates. Another caveat is that you'll have to re-tag any Individual Reports. You're only going to run into problems if you're changing the Aspects use; i.e. English to English Language. It's not a problem for the data, but you have to remember what you've done when referencing old data.

 

So, go ahead!

 

Regarding the Reg Group names; changing the name to correct a spelling is fine, but changing the name completely is a no-no (because of historic data). You have to remove the group and add a new one.

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks NorthernSands, that confirms what I thought, i.e. that there are no technical reasons for not changing aspect names, just operational ones.

 

I find it slightly frustrating (although understandable) when I'm told that I can't do something when actually I should be told that I can, but be careful. Even, "you can, but we advise you not to" is better than "no you can't do it."

[GREED]

I can confirm NorthernSands is correct in everything mentioned. The name is a place holder only. I think individual reports should be given a higher mention though as this can be a massive undertaking depending on the size of the report, and the number of changes needed to be made.

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks GREED. Point taken about the individual reports, although part of the reasoning behind my tidy up is a complete over haul to our reporting processes so new individual reports all round! Massive Undertaking sounds about right!

[vikpaw]

I've changed names too.

 

I don't recall a problem with individual reports. Technically the key part which is the id code still is the same so shouldn't affect the working of the report. I can't remember if i had to change them anyway, so it didn't become an issue.

 

It's not such a huge deal to change the reports, because you wouldn't have to bother with the wizard, there are a few tricks you can use to do a find and replace, combined with tactical use of the pilcrow button to display the full tag details. Worst case, one aspect might appear in up to 8 reports...? 1 per term plus a couple of random summaries. If you keep track of all changes methodically, it should be fairly straight forward to do, just time consuming. Unfortunately, i my skills don't extend very far into VBA / macros else it's begging for a nice script to handle it.

 

[h_barnwell]

I don't think the individual report templates are affected. I've just tested it to double check and the results still pull through into the individual report after I have changed the names of the aspects (without adding the result tags again).

[NorthernSands]

Thanks, guys. I've always wanted to test this out, but never had the time when I needed to work and I've erred on the side of caution! Always the way...

[vikpaw]

I don't think the individual report templates are affected. I've just tested it to double check and the results still pull through into the individual report after I have changed the names of the aspects (without adding the result tags again).

 

That's what i thought. The only reason for doing it would be for completeness and so that anyone else using them in the future doesn't get confused, but at least you can do it at your leisure.