Research Subscriptions suggestion box

Here we can collect notes on features that we would like to see fixed, changed or added. Please provide some notes on the feature and include your name at the end to develop a list of requesters.

Immediate to do

This section identifies tasks/actions to be done ASAP.

• All references to ST in: www.math/mfcf/help should be changed to: www.cs/cscf/internal

Features to fix

This section is for features that are arguably "broken" and need some work to fix.

1. In the "head" portion of index.php, there is a reference to scripts.js that doesn't exist and causes problems in older browsers
2. If there is no subscription code (see "Voice over IP project"), need way to access the item
3. Anomaly: in the Point of Contact report for 2006-01-01 to 2006-01-11 - what is the UNKNOWN item under Mike Gore?

Features to change

This section is for features that are currently working, but you feel they need to be improved or changed in the way they work

1. In the Usage Report tab, do not automatically do the default report right away
2. Keep the "Viewing" tabs open when switching to other tabs, unless it is "closed", "cancelled" or a new subscription picked.
   • This is probably not worth the effort as you would need to fully implement tabs.
3. On the Usage Report, it would be nice if "By Term" was selected, if the Term or Year was changed (low priority)

Features to add

This section is for features that you would like to see added to Research Subscriptions

1. Display of Inactive items - "grey out" in the list of subscriptions, don't display in the generated Research Points of Contact page
   • See ST#
2. Would like to allow authorized faculty/lab managers to view (and, possibly, edit) their subscriptions
   • I think this is done now - see ST#54126
3. Need way to delete a record (or hide - inactive/inactive may be better)
   • consider history issues
   • Subscription Type Usage Report - show active items with 0 time, but not inactive items with 0 time
     • show all items with > 0 time
   • Same for Point of Contact report
     • 2006/06/28 (lfolland) I believe this is done
4. Need dynamic table created for CSCF Research Points of Contact page:
   • http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/cscf/research/contact.shtml
   • There is a sample call from a former version in comments in that page
   • ST#52960
     • 2006/06/28 (lfolland) I believe this is done
5. develop a test suite of things to try for each version
6. Some sort of change history?

V3 Change log

2008-11-28 v3.5

1. Same as v3.5-RC1

2009-03-12 v3.5-RC1

1. Use the new UWDir service
2. Only use a person's ID, rather than full login, when querying UWDir
3. Fixed several warnings showing up in Apache's error log

2008-11-28 v3.4

1. Same as v3.4-RC2

2008-03-12 v3.4-RC2

1. Bug fix: Resolve PoC name values as user IDs, not e-mails

2008-02-04 v3.4-RC1

1. Determine names of PoCs from database (rather than using hard-coded values)

2008-02-04 v3.3

• Same as v3.3-RC1

2007-08-17 v3.3-RC1

1. Do not display inactive subscriptions in external pages (e.g., contacts.shtml)
2. Display inactive subscriptions in the category view using a distinct background colour
3. Allow quotes in name lists
4. Explicitly close the mysql link (avoids warning messages)
5. Show units with a single digit after the decimal point

2007-05-31 v3.2

• Same as v3.2-RC2

2006-11-28 v3.2-RC2

1. Use userid instead of uwuserid (fixes a bug with truncated IDs)
2. Fixed broken report generation mechanism

2006-11-10 v3.2-RC1

1. Role-based permissions (administrators may view and edit, anyone in the database is allowed to view, others may not access the website).

2006-11-10 v3.1

• Same as v3.1-RC3

2006-10-04 v3.1-RC3

1. Allow only administrators to create new subscriptions.
2. Do not display the SQL statement when creating a new subscription.
3. Allow anyone with valid UWDir credentials to view the site (but not to edit information).
4. Show the user name at the bottom of the screen.

2006-06-14 v3.1-RC2

1. Use a file to cache UWDir queries.
2. Allow hyphens in UWDir user IDs.
3. Allow tables to be embedded in external pages (such as contacts.shtml).

2006-05-04 v3.1-RC1

1. Do not generate a report unless specifically asked for.
2. Differentiate between NULL values and empty strings in subscription codes.
3. ST links now points to the CSCF website, rather than to MFCF.
4. Mark subscription codes as active/inactive.
5. Validate user IDs.

2006-01-24 v3.0

• Same as v3.0-RC4

2006-01-12 v3.0-RC4

1. Fixed a problem when editing fields containing single quotes.
2. More version readable modification time.

2006-01-03 v3.0-RC3

1. Fixed the broken "Search" page.
2. Fixed subscription code editing.

2005-12-23 v3.0-RC2:

1. change the point of contact report to not eliminate subscriptions with 0 hours
2. create a clickable label for null subscriptions in the staff-member report
3. investigate the "unknown" subscription codes in the subscription report. At present, clicking the subscription name goes to a report that has no details, presumably because the subscription detail report expects the subscription code to exist. However the subscription summary report bases its details on the unique set of codes that are found in the data. We need to made an exceptional case for codes which exist in the ST data but which do not exist in the subscription table. It may be better to create a clone of the subscription detail report rather that to bend it to handle both cases.

2005-12-1 RC v3.0; pending move to production:

1. Add a "term variance" column in the subscription and Point of Contact reports. This is a simple subtraction (Hours - Expected for Term). This will be helpful to staff to plan time allocation.
2. In the usage reports, wherever a subscription code appears, make it a link to a page that displays the details lines that produced that summary. At present, in the subscription report, this link is present but it just goes to the subscription page. What it should do is product the transaction sumary for exactly the same period as the period on the usage report.
3. right-align all numbers
4. reverse positive/negative display for variance numbers in usage reports
5. There is a discrepancy between the numbers produced in the subscription usage report and the subscription transaction summary. Eg at the time of writing (2005-12-1) dd-networks-1 shows 67.5 hours in the usage report but 67.78 hours in the transaction summary total. This may be related to job-type classifications (research or not) or something else. This needs to be investigate and reconciled.
6. Translation of userids to names -- this has some dependency on the 8-character truncation and the difference between userids and uwuserids.
7. Version & revision numbering -- Current production is v2, when the first "subdev" is noved to production it will be v3.0. Devise a major-minor "dotting" scheme. Display in the footer area of all pages.
8. Change the list of host-names to be horizontal instead of vertical.
9. Current-usage reports used to show "expected to date" and "variance" columns. (the "to date" being the end of the date range). Somehow these columns have gone away. This bug may be related to logic that attempts to drop the columns when the today's date is not in the range. Or something like that.
10. New "Usage Report": this will become a new item the "sort by" drop-box. Let's call it "Staff Member". It will be the distinct set of ids that appear in the ACTOR field in the ST transactions table. For each such ACTOR, produce a table showing subscription-code and total hours for the date range that has been specified. The last row of each table shows the total for that ACTOR. Finally, a grand total of the number of hours is generated following the last ACTOR table.

Pre-V3 changes

Fixed

I re-coded the whole alter.pl script in php. It is now much cleaner and easier to debug. As a result I was able to fix all the bugs (I think) that were related to editing subscriptions. -- AlexRoman - 06 Jul 2005 Done

1. Editting - should return to the view page, rather than displaying lines (LF: 2005/07/25)
   • I think I fixed this, needs testing. -- AlexRoman - 27 Jul 2005
2. Current (or past) work list should also display items with no time alotted (LF: 2005/07/25)
3. Need it to work in its new "official" home: https://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/cscf/research/sub/index.php
   • File path: /.software/regional/wwwdata_cs.uwaterloo.ca/data/www/cscf/research/sub
   • Can't be transferred at the moment, as the CS web server doesn't allow perl scripts to run, this is waiting to be fixed and then the "official" one will be up and running.
4. Search function: - I think I have fixed all of this, again, needs testing -- AlexRoman - 27 Jul 2005
   • strip extra spaces, etc
   • handling of regexp quotes, etc.
5. Could not change "Subscription Name" for dk-alubiw-1 Done
6. Cannot add machine "csgradpc54" to support machines in dd-ai-1Done
7. In general - "odd" inability to update fields sometimes ...Done
8. Editting dk-jwwong-1 (Johnny Wong desktop) cannot change Point of Contact from magore to trg Done
9. Cannot update units on Desktop Subscription for Doug Stinson to change from 0 to 1 -- Seems to be working now.
10. Cannot update Lab manager on AI Dedicated subscription to remove Paul Kates Done
    • Ryan says that this is because it has problems setting a field to Null
11. Subscription system does not display in Internet Explorer -- Fixed! Yeah!
    • Trevor says that this seems to be due to the scripts.js file
      • This is not the case as none of the functions in that file are called in the main page, and the exerpt HTML that I tried to get to work in IE didn't have the JS file with it.
      • It was not displaying because the <script> tag had no closing tag </script>
12. Cannot add a note with an embedded apostrophe, eg: "... I've ..." -- Fixed!
13. When Searching, if a machine name is found in the Notes field, it does not provide a link (eg: Search for "vickrey" ) -- Fixed!
14. Bill would like all references to .../bin/perl to include the -w option to avoid using undefined variables (ideally all scripts should have "use strict;" as well -- MikePatterson - 12 Apr 2005) -- Done!

Changed

1. Editing grad machines - change from list boxes to simple text box as with other fields -- Done!
   • make the boxes bigger Done -- AlexRoman - 06 Jul 2005
   • automatically sort when saving (Which fields exactly?)Partly Done -- AlexRoman - 06 Jul 2005
2. Searching - I would like to see the following
   • Substring search (eg: "mira" should find "mira.cs") -- Done!
   • substring search on user ids (eg: "clark" should find "claclarke") -- Done!
   • Drop down list for: Names / Machines / Notes -- Done!
   • Default is "Search all (Machines, names, notes) -- Done!
   • Search Machines Alone -- Done!
   • Search People Alone -- Done!
   • Search Notes Alone -- Done!
   • we need a "really search all fields" option Done -- AlexRoman - 11 Jul 2005

1. It would be nice if the AdminCP page was either linked in with the rest of the tabbed screen, or have a link back to the main page -- Done!
2. When displaying a host info page, put it in its own tab. -- Done!

Added

1. A page that provides a complete list of all subscriptions and in detail. See MikeG's listing:
   • http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~magore/cgi-bin/sub?__form_list=all
   • Done - the "All Subscriptions" tab
2. A page to display the current list of work items for this term (or, possibly other time frames)
   • eg, see: AI Group Work History -- Done! AlexRoman - 18 Jul 2005
3. A page to display all of the subscriptions, their expected time and current totals for this term and the difference - done -- AlexRoman - 27 Jul 2005
   • include fields on the Admin page for Desktop and Dedicated Hours/Month/Unit - done -- AlexRoman - 27 Jul 2005
4. Similar to above, but by Point of Contact (ie: a page for Mike Gore, Mike Patterson, Trevor Grove or Lawrence Folland) (LF: 2005/07/25) - done (request_beta.pl for now) -- AlexRoman - 27 Jul 2005
   • should give total of current monthly subscriptions (for load balancing purposes)
5. Help button on the Search screen to describe possible syntax and fields that can be searched (LF: 2005/07/19)

-- LawrenceFolland - 2005/03/18