Why the notepad is such a cool feature in 2E

The notepad feature in 2E is used by most of us during our development.

More often than not its a case of loading the notepad via the NR or NA commands and then navigate to the target function and insert the logic using the NI command.   We generally use it as a Copy function across function boundaries.

This is pretty neat but there is a particular flaw with this.

The notepad in its default configuration is session bound.  i.e. log in tomorrow and it'll be empty.  In fact its slightly worse than that.  Once you have exited all open programs the notepad is cleared.  This means you may often find yourself reloading the notepads with the relevant code.

Imagine a maintenance scenarios where you are visiting 10, 20, 50 or 250 programs to apply the same maintenance......

Thankfully, our friends at Synon/CA have had a little hidden gem for years and years and it amazes me that nearly every site I go to, no one has ever heard of this little feature.

Firstly, let's understand the science.  The notepad is basically and execute internal function that isn't saved.  What the developers did was to effectively allow us to configure a function that will be saved.

Here's how to go about setting this up at your site.

• Create a structure called #Notepads or any other name that suits your site standards.  I prefer to have a structure file so all developers notepads are in one place rather than added to a business entity.
• Create a function similar to those in the screen print below.  The choice is yours how you name it of whether its an EIF or EEF.

• Now go to the services menu (The F17 one) and take option 11 Edit model profile (YEDTMDLPRF).  Towards the bottom of the screen you will see a section for configuring your notepad.

And that it pretty much it.  You will now get asked if you wish to save the notepad when you use it but it remains over many sessions.  You will also have guessed that you can have many of these 'code snippets' waiting for you.

About the only fly in the ointment is that the notepad can get locked out with multiple sessions but if using for cut and paste I believe the benefits outweigh this.

Thanks for reading.
Lee.