Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] re: 1.0 feature requests

[Brian Johnson]

Good ideas and descriptions.

I have a couple of comments to slightly change the concept of some of the
items:

We have a good irc channel for developers helping out each other so please
stop by to discuss (but all conclusions/proposals should be documented
somewhere .. I think the wiki is an easy place to do so)

Brett Shadbolt (address@hidden) wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have various requests, some of which I hope could be included in the
> upcoming 1.0. Generally I like the phpgw framework but where it fails badly is
> in the integration of the key applications - it acts too much like a
> collection of disconnected applications and not enough like a coordinated
> system. On this note I concentrate on the apps which I (and probably others)
> consider most important - e-mail, addressbook, calendar, infolog, projects,
> filemanager. These and perhaps a few others should be absolutely core to phpgw
> and should work seamlessly.

I agree but will be a lot of work.  I suggest e-mail, addressbook, calendar,
infolog, notes and todos be considered or core apps and try to concentrate on
those first.  Although projects and filemanager are used by a lot of people,
we have to start somewhere.


>
> Addressbook
>
> 3) linking a person from infolog doesn't work.
>

This depends on the version you are running, I think 0.9.16.001 had this
problem.  It works for most people (including me).  However, you cannot link
to an organization (and that should be added)

We now have a howto for infolog linking (for developers) and the addressbook
infolog linking should be moved out of the infolog code and into the
addressbook app.  This will allow easier changes and will lead to potential
moving of the linking class into the api.

> 4) importing of contacts doesn't work well - again the separation of person
> and orgs doesn't work well here. I have tried importing and failed and have
> given up using addressbook for anything serious until it matures.
>

Maybe we need a better howto.  I imported thousands of contacts successfully
(both persons and organizations.  I think that a few tweaks are needed to
import organizations (since I use custom code).  A system should be developed
to import people, orgs, and auto link them (this would further require a good
addressbook cleanup system since importing leads to duplicate persons and
orgs)

> 5) ability to allocate multiple categories for each person and have bertter
> lookup/search features. for example in the current PIM I use I have created
> categories for each of the countries I work in and all of the professions
> which which I work. Being able to allocate and then search of various
> combinations of categories allows me to bring up a list of say all accountants
> in Singapore or all lawyers and accountants in HK and Thailand, etc

You may be able to accomplish this particular task already using the existing
category system (and prudent use of sub-categories).  However, the ability so
select multiple categories as filters and perform more complex queries is
contrary to the goal of keeping the gui simple.  I'd like to do more complex
queries but haven't been able to come up with a good way to do them via the
gui (I usually make a new category and then run code to do a SELECT query and
add those contacts to the new category .. actually the way it really works is
to add the new category to those selected contacts)

> Infolog
>
> 1) don't seem to be able to properly link people to entries. The ability to
> log activities against people in addressbook would be nice.

See above.  I'm surprised it doesn't work for you.

> 3) Unless a really good reason exists, drop notes and todos as separate apps
> and get infolog fixed. I like the infolog concept but find it a bit buggy.

It has been suggested (and I think it is a good one), that the linking system
be removed from infolog and put in the api (it is already a separate class).
Then the notes and todos apps would have infolog support added to them (and a
few other features that are available for those types of infolog items .. like
assignment to another user).

In that scenario, infolog would disappear as an app unless a gui was needed to
manage the links.

However, I have also heard suggested, that infolog should be modified to make
it easy for a site admin to add different types of infolog entries with custom
forms .. perhaps infolog could evolve into that type of system.  The current
etemplate version would conceptually be fairly easy to modify to this task.




Geez.  There's a lot of work needed to accommodate all the requests for 1.0
I've seen.  I encourage everyone to participate and coordinate with each
other.