Find yourself rearranging your panes and screen items in report writer for various tasks?  Create custom actions to memorize and recall your favorite layouts.

The purpose of adding actions that memorize your screens view is to make it easy to transition between doing two different tasks such as editing or filling out a report and doing something else where you would normally move different areas of your screen around, such as when importing images into a report.

To create such an action, first move items around on your report writer screen with an existing report open, so the screen is set up to look how you want it to for that particular task. As an example here’s how one might create an action for writing reports. 

First adjust screen items and panes as desired for a particular task.  For instance during report writing or reviewing, one might prefer to resize the lower pane to take up minimal space and increase the size of the main report comments field box for editing and viewing comments and selected narratives. One might prefer having the List View option in the toolbar turned on or off to more easily navigate headings and subheadings.  Likely one would want the Narratives pane enabled (Narratives > Display narratives On/Off) for writing reports but perhaps turned off when importing photos to make more room on screen.

Once the report writer screen looks as you want, create your handy recall Action:

1)      Click on the “Customize My Actions” button on the bottom of the side actions pane.

2)      Click the add action button at the top of the “Customize Actions” window.

3)      Now type a name of this action. For instance “Inspection Review” or similar, then click next.

4)      On the next “Select Category” screen one may leave no Category selected, select an existing one, or create a new category for your “Views”, or “Modes” depending on what you prefer for organizing your action. Then click next.

5)      For “Type of Action” expand the plus symbol next to “Report Writer actions” and choose “Memorize Screen Configuration”.  Click next and then Finish.

6)      Now that you are back at the Customize Actions window, choose the save button at the top left to keep your new item to complete this process.  Or exit without saving.

When you add a new memorize Action item, you’ll see a monitor icon next to its name on your Actions pane, either at the bottom of the actions pane if you selected no category, or under the category name you selected or created for it.

One may also create other action items for different views/tasks depending on what you need and then easily switch back and forth between the preset views to save time. Some might use a screen memorize action for importing extra drone or sewer scope photos into a report, perhaps with a larger lower pane to see more photos and a decreased comment field and “Narratives” > “Display narratives on/off” disabled for maximum room. While using another action to return to normal report viewing pane setup.

Simply adjust your screen for each task, and repeat the above steps for each action, with it’s appropriate name, such as Photo View. Now you can easily switch between the views for different tasks without having to manually change all of the items around on the screen.