Tweaking the Interface to Fit the Work
Collectors spend hours a day inside CCMDB.accdb. Small interface friction adds up fast. The interface is not sacred. It is allowed to be shaped to fit the work.
This page describes how to safely tweak the interface, how to tell whether a tweak is “just for you” or might help others, and how to coordinate rolling a good change back into the shared version so it doesn’t get wiped.
Why you might want to tweak the interface
Typical reasons:
- Reducing scrolling on smaller screens or newer laptops
- Moving a frequently used button so it is always visible
- Making related things sit closer together so your eyes don’t bounce
- Making something harder to click by accident, or easier on purpose
A recent example: moving the delete / recycle button so collectors don’t have to scroll and pan the screen dozens of times a day just to clean up unwanted profiles.
If a change saves you seconds but you do it 50 times a shift, it matters.
The important rule
You are not breaking anything.
You can always download a clean copy if you don’t like the result.
Changes you make to the interface will be overwritten daily when you do News and Backup and the new Cognos data is rolled out.
That is why good changes need to be coordinated back into the master version.
Think of this as trying a fix on your own workbench, and letting others benefit if it turns out useful when you try it.
How to move things around
To reposition buttons, labels, or other interface elements in the interface:
- Open the form you want to adjust in CCMDB.accdb.
- Click the Layout View button: [[File:Access 2019 Layout View Button.png
- Layout View tells Access to stop treating things as “live” controls and lets you move them around.
What you can do here:
- Drag buttons, labels, and fields to a new position
- Resize elements to reduce wasted space
- Right-click an element and check through "properties" to adjust properties like font size or colour
Practical notes:
- If a control has a little wiki globe link, move that along with the control it belongs to.
- Be careful moving controls across tabs. Things that weren’t designed to live on a tab may not behave the way you expect.
When you close the form Access will ask "Do you want to save changes..."; this is the only scenario in which you should say "yes", since you do want it to retain the change you made to the tool.
How to tell if a change might work for others
Before proposing a change beyond your own setup, sanity-check it. Ask yourself:
- Does this still work on a smaller laptop screen?
- Does it rely on a specific display scaling setting?
- Is the left side of the screen more reliably visible than the right?
- Would this still make sense on a different monitor or site setup?
- If you’re unsure, that’s good, loop someone else in.
Local changes to CCMDB.accdb are overwritten every day when a new copy is rolled out to distribute the Cognos, so changes need to be integrated into the master CCMDB.accdb to make them stick. If you land on a change that feels broadly useful:
- Tell Tina and Lisa what you changed and why; include a summary that we can use for the Log
- you know why you did it, so your explanation will be more informed than someone else writing it
- After your next News and Backup, when you have a fresh copy of CCMDB.accdb replicate the final setup you liked
- this reduces the chance that something broke throughout iterative tweaks you may have made to get a setup that works
- Copy this file to the base directory on the Regional Server\\\ad.wrha.mb.ca\WRHA\REGION\SHARED\ICU_DATA_COLLECTION\ (we will use it as a hand-over location)
- if you are not sure how, set a time with Tina or Lisa to do it over a Teams screen share
- Tina or Lisa will roll out this version as the new master
If you’re not sure, ask
If you:
- want to experiment but aren’t sure where to start
- aren’t confident a change will behave well at other sites
- want a second set of eyes before it goes wider
Talk to Lisa or Tina.