We are jumping back over to the technical side of things for this weeks Root Cause Analysis Blog. How often have you been working on a SnapCharT and had it crash on you? Frustrating I know! Here are some Best Practices that will hopefully prevent these errors from occurring: - Place objects on the chart before drawing connecting lines - Avoid special characters such as @, #, & - Avoid using single or double quotes - Keep SnapcharTs to 8 pages or less - Close and Save the SnapCharT on a frequent basis In the old stand-alone SnapCharT software, many users used the safeguard buttons but we found they could cause a chart to become corrupt so they were removed in the latest version of the SnapCharT tool. In it’s most simplistic form, Safeguards are rectangles with additional graphical elements. When looking at a Safeguard symbol, the first thing you notice is its’ color. You can recreate the same effect by creating a rectangle, use the color palette to color the shape, and resize it according to your needs. Using this technique will make your SnapCharTs safer. Let’s go through an example: This chart used the old “broken” Safeguard bracket. We do not want to use these symbols. Instead, try this:
By creating a rectangle chart object and simply resizing it, I can then select that object and using the color picker (as shown) I can create a “red” (or “bad/broken”) Safeguard—all without endangering the integrity of the chart itself. Hopefully these tips will help you with future charts. If you have a questions, feel free to email me at techsupport@taproot.com
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I agree with the frustrations of the SnapChart “crushing and losing the work done. I suggest that a save button be included instead of just the auto save.
One technique I just used is to draw all the events first without connecting them and start to connect as I start working on adding the conditions including moving events as needed. This seems to work and have not lost any data from the last one I just completed.
Likewise, when you said – Close and Save the SnapCharT on a frequent basis – what is frequent?
Thank you.
We’ve been working on a whole new version of SnapCharT® and it will be out later this year (perhaps Nov/Dec). Watch for it.