When hitting Back or closing a browser window, Appcoll will keep a page locked for editing. Currently there is an option for an administrator to go into a user's contact page and "clear all locks and filters." I'd like to request an easier and quicker solution: a "clear own locks" button that any user can press in the event that they accidentally navigate away from a page. This would also decouple "locks" and "filters," since this issue doesn't actually have anything to do with filters, and clearing filters is undesirable in these situations.

I'd like to request a new field in Appcoll, that returns a comma separated list of inventor first names.

Currently, the way we have to do it is like this:

Step 1 - template definition:
Hello {Matter.Inventor1.First}, {Matter.Inventor2.First}, {Matter.Inventor3.First}, {Matter.Inventor4.First}, {Matter.Inventor5.First},

Step 2 - form generation based on template (assume this matter has 3 inventors)
Hello John, Tim, Mike, , ,

Step 3 - manual editing
Hello John, Tim, and Mike,
[["and" inserted and extra commas removed]]

My proposal would eliminate step 3.

Proposed step 1 - template definition:
Hello {Matter.InventorFirstNames},

Proposed Step 2 - form generation based on template:
Hello John, Tim, and Mike,
[["and" inserted and extra fields removed by AppColl backend logic]]

A similar proposal is possible for other lists of variable length, such as inventor full names and email addresses. This would eliminate a lot of manual editing on our end and further reduce likelihood of errors.

This will help greatly with form letters such as interview agendas, in which we address the examiner by their name. For example, assume that we have an Examiner named Joe Smith. The Examiner's information is imported from PAIR as "Joe SMITH." If I write a form letter in which I address the examiner, I would write it as:

Hello Examiner {Matter.Examiner},

which would populate as:

Hello Examiner Joe SMITH,

I would then need to manually remove the Examiner's first name, and re-type or otherwise reformat the last name to get what I really want, which is:

Hello Examiner Smith,

Appcoll already has some level of intelligence when importing contacts, such as when importing an Excel file with plain names. Appcoll does create/identify contact records, and populates first/middle/last names accordingly. Appcoll should do this with Examiner names as well.

The ideal user experience would be:

Hello Examiner {Matter.Examiner.Last},

which would give the desired result.

This also provides the benefit of allowing us to maintain examiner contact information, such as emails and phone numbers, which makes our lives easier and reduces time spent finding this information from other sources.

@jonah-soundhound-com bump, +1 for this request please

It would be nice if we could more quickly/readily access the form letters we most commonly use, while removing or de-emphasizing form letters we use less or not at all.

Columns in the UI are formatted such that there is a maximum quantity of characters in a column and, regardless of window size or column width, no additional characters are displayed. The following shows the same columns, with different window sizes:

^ Here, no ellipses are shown even though the column is cut off by the window.

^ Here, the column width happens to line up correctly with the ellipses, and it looks as it should.

^ Here, the window size is larger and the column is therefore wider. However, the ellipses don't change, and column now simply has blank whitespace where there could be letters.

^ There is no good reason for this to happen - dynamic columns are a problem that has been completely solved for many years in web page design.

bump, +1 for this request

I made this same suggestion in September: https://forum.appcoll.com/topic/128/new-field-request-contact-firstornickname/5?_=1675177027325

I'd like to request a new field for the Contact object:

Contact.FirstOrNickname

• Returns Nickname if Nickname field has one character or more
• Returns First Name if Nickname field is empty

Example 1:
Contact First Name: Jonathan
Contact Last Name: Smith
Contact Nickname: [blank]
Contact.FirstOrNickname = Jonathan

Example 2:
Contact First Name: Jonathan
Contact Last Name: Smith
Contact Nickname: Johnny
Contact.FirstOrNickname = Johnny

Without something like this, I'm not sure what the utility of the "Nickname" field is.

@mike_appcoll Any idea of when the next feature set/QoL rollout will be?

Bump for my request to add a {Matter.InventorNicknamesOrFirstNames}. We are so close, let's please bring this home and get this feature implemented.

@support_appcoll Thank you. Hopefully the nickname option can be incorporated as well, otherwise we're kind of back where we started in situations where inventors go by a nickname.

@mike_appcoll nice

@support_appcoll This helps for now. Hopefully in the near future it gets augmented into a full Contact object.

@ChristianS2558 Would using different browsers or browser profiles accomplish this?

@gregg_appcoll Any update on this one? It's been requested a few times by a few members. One additional request, allow for nicknames as well (similar to the newly added Contact.NicknameOrFirstName field). So the request is the following two fields, both which return a formatted list with commas for 3 or more inventors and an "and" preceding the last inventor:

{Matter.InventorFirstNames}
{Matter.InventorNicknamesOrFirstNames}

@support_appcoll Looks like it works, thank you.

@support_appcoll Yes you are correct about nickname being preferred. Thanks for doing this.

Bump for this request. Although this thread got derailed with an irrelevant discussion about augmenting AppColl's syntax, I believe that a "FirstOrNickname" field would save a lot of time and improve the user experience, as many inventors prefer to be called differently than their formal names.

This will help greatly with form letters such as interview agendas, in which we address the examiner by their name. For example, assume that we have an Examiner named Joe Smith. The Examiner's information is imported from PAIR as "Joe SMITH." If I write a form letter in which I address the examiner, I would write it as:

Hello Examiner {Matter.Examiner},

which would populate as:

Hello Examiner Joe SMITH,

I would then need to manually remove the Examiner's first name, and re-type or otherwise reformat the last name to get what I really want, which is:

Hello Examiner Smith,

Appcoll already has some level of intelligence when importing contacts, such as when importing an Excel file with plain names. Appcoll does create/identify contact records, and populates first/middle/last names accordingly. Appcoll should do this with Examiner names as well.

The ideal user experience would be:

Hello Examiner {Matter.Examiner.Last},

which would give the desired result.

This also provides the benefit of allowing us to maintain examiner contact information, such as emails and phone numbers, which makes our lives easier and reduces time spent finding this information from other sources.