Filters & Filing
Maintaining Your Module Sets
[If you’re unfamiliar with Module Sets, you’ll want to read my blog on Building Module Sets prior to reading this blog. It will make a lot more sense once you’ve mastered the basics of TW’s very helpful module sets.]
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Adding new modules to your existing module sets is so simple in TW4! Costas has included a filter and several additional search parameters to make finding & filing your modules simple.
Simply install a new module and open TW4. It recognizes that you’ve installed a new
module, and asks if you want to add it to one of the current views. Believe it or
not -
Adding a module to one of the current views means replacing a permanent module set with a temporary one. Once TW departs from the modules on your window, that temporary set is gone, never to be retrieved again. It is best to immediately add new modules to your permanent sets of modules. After installing a new module, then, you should add it to at least one module set (and perhaps several of them, depending on the number of sets you work with).
When you open the “Define Module Sets” window, you’ll notice at the very bottom of
that window a filter box. This is where the magic starts.
The top of the box includes some of the parameters that will be searched with the filter, including:
- Module title
- Module abbreviation
- “In #sets”
- And several others
These parameters at the top of the window can be moved by “drag and drop.” I’ve found
that the three most useful filtering parameters are the ones you see at the top of
my picture (and in the bullet list just above) -
- “Title” is equivalent to the title of the book. It is often identical to the file name
- “Abbreviation” is the shortcut title given to the module. Even locked premium modules allow for this field to be modified by the user. This allows you to name your modules whatever you want as a shortcut.
- “In #sets” is a very powerful search parameter. (Costas added this feature at my request, so of course I think it is powerful! But I think that after you read this blog and try it on your module sets, you’ll think it is powerful too!) It actually tells you how many times you have used that module in all of your module sets. So you can tell by looking at the picture that many of my modules are in more than one set. Yep. Unlike a real world library, all of your digital modules can “sit” on as many shelves as you like!
When you add a new module, as long as you can remember one key word (from the title
or author’s last name), you’ll be able to filter results. So, I’ve just installed
Harry Ironside’s “The Continual Burnt Offering.” I want to add it to one of my Module
Sets. Here’s what happens when I type “iro” into the filter (see the pic off to the
right?)
As soon as the filter has letters in it, TW immediately begins filtering. Nicely done, Costas!
In order to find Ironside’s “Continual Burnt Offering,” I could have filtered with “con” (in the title) or even “cbo” (in the abbreviation).
Now that I’ve found the title, it’s a simple “drag and drop” to add it to the correct part of my module set (which would be off to the right, but is not in this picture).
Now there’s one more filter setting I could have used: “0” (as in zero). Because I hadn’t added it to any of my sets yet, it has a 0 (zero) in the “in #sets” field.
Filtering on “0” is not only useful when adding a newly installed module; it is also very useful to make sure you haven’t lost any modules out of your sets. Let me explain.
During the Spring of 2012, I noticed I was losing some books out of my sets. I would add a book on one day, go looking for it the next day in a module set, and couldn’t find it. So I would add it back a second time.
It was a little frustrating losing those books. So, I asked Costas if there was any way to discover whether or not a specific module had been catalogued into a set. (If you’re interested in reading the actual forum posts and responses, you can read them here.) He quickly came up with the “0” (zero) in a field called “in #sets”.
When I installed the beta version with the new “in #sets” field, I immediately found 30 books that were not filed in any of my module sets. Now I had attempted to do so at one point (sometimes months earlier); but due to, ahem, user error, those sets had not been properly saved. Or, I had modified a module ID (users should never do that), or something like that. Basically I had been making booboos and didn’t know it, and TW didn’t like it. Well, with the ability to filter for “0” in “in #sets” field, I quickly discovered all of the modules that were not into any module sets, and quickly replaced them into their proper places.
So you see, using TW4’s filtering & filing tools for module sets, maintaining your
library is easy as pie (pecan, please). “Filters & Filing” help to make TW4 outstanding
Bible software at any price -