ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Testing > Procedures > Sharing and re-using procedures > Making sure the protocol items in a procedure match your protocol

Making sure the protocol items in a procedure match your protocol

Introduction

When you're importing a procedure from an XML file - perhaps an example file that you've been sent by ANY-maze Support, or a procedure that one of your colleagues has created - the procedure might have been exported from an experiment file where the names of the protocol items are different to yours. For example, an exported procedure might contain an I/O input called 'Lever', whereas your protocol has called it 'Switch'.

When this happens, ANY-maze can't import the procedure as it is, so it will ask you how to deal with these items that it doesn't know about. This topic describes how this works.

Details

When you're importing a procedure, and the protocol items in the procedure don't match those in your protocol, ANY-maze will display a window asking you to choose the equivalent items in your protocol.

Figure 1. The window used to specify protocol items for an imported procedure.

If the names of the items in the imported procedure already match items of the same type in your protocol, you won't see this window.

The top of the window will show the procedure name, and any notes that were saved with the procedure. Hopefully, these should explain what the procedure does in enough detail to allow you to make choices in the list below it.

The window also shows a list of all the items in the procedure that ANY-maze doesn't know about. This applies to all elements of the protocol that can be referred to by a procedure - zones, sequences, I/O inputs and outputs, etc. For each item, it will list the type of item, and the name of this item in the procedure. The last column allows you to choose the equivalent item in your protocol, from a list of all those available.

If there's only one item of this type in your protocol, then ANY-maze will choose this as the default. Make sure you check these though, as it may simply be that your protocol doesn't yet contain the equivalent item. You don't have to select an item in this third column; however, if you don't, the resulting procedure will contain an empty space where that item ought to be. This will be flagged as an error, and will need to be resolved before you can use the procedure.

At any time, you can click the Cancel button to cancel the procedure import, or OK to import the procedure with as many replacements as you have specified.

ANY-maze help topic T0473