[hermes] Re: just testing - export is confusing

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 10:08 -0500, Jason M. Felice wrote:
> Craig White wrote:

> >
> >'timer' function which would have start/stop buttons to insert 'start'
> >'end' times
> >  
> >
> Added to the TODO.
----
cool
----
> 
> >more generally, My entries in Turba center on a 'person' but using the
> >entries in hermes would be more likely to use 'company' field in turba
> >derived from
> >object_company in sql
> >organizationname in ldap
> >or other if administrator chooses
> >  
> >
> Hmm, I'm thinking this might be a good thing to add to turba... since we 
> have a client addressbook there, there would be a good place to 
> configure how to display clients.  Aside from the fact that this is 
> already in the TODO-- this is what I meant by "Allow selection of which 
> fields to display for clients."
---
I saw this as a display item and not an 'export' item
---
> >some other things which may very well be a blinding glimpse of the
> >obvious...
> >
> >since I presume that you are working on 'forms' from the cvs TODO
> >objectives
> >
> >a 'preferences' section for hermes that includes...
> >- default rate
> >- default form
> >
> >a 'forms' section that includes...
> >- naming forms
> >- does field picking to choose which fields to include
> >  
> >
> What is in the TODO is about one specific, hard-coded form for mileage 
> expenses once we've added expense capability; I was NOT thinking of it 
> as a general form creating mechanism, which is how I'm interpreting what 
> you wrote.  And, we are not working on expenses or mileage forms just 
> yet.  We are working on 1) tracking time to "deliverables", and 2) 
> producing batch exports we can use for invoicing, with the review/edit 
> process in the application.
> 
> But, I am curious: How are you thinking the custom forms would be useful?
----
it just seemed to me to have a single form that had expense fields,
total hour fields, start/end time fields would be confusing as to which
would be the data entry fields and which would be calculated fields. I
could even see where someone might enter both hours and expenses into
the same record which just didn't make sense to me...hence the idea of
separate forms - or at least form types...total hours - time entries -
expenses being the most initially obvious. So in answer to your question
of why I would think them useful, I am more to the point that they may
be necessary.

I could even see an extension to the horde_sidebar where you had
'stop/start' button on 'default' form...somewhat of a timeslips keeper
tool.
----
> 
> >ability to 'name' file on export instead of fixed 'export.csv export.tsv
> >export.iif' - perhaps even an 'exports' section to predefine
> >name/location/type/fields to include
> >  
> >
> Why not just rename it in the Save As dialog?
----
certainly - that is modal - it occurred to me that exports that had
'expenses' might necessarily be different than one's that included time
and people who entered start/stop times and calculated the hours might
want more than the hours total to be exported and some might want all
and this becomes more of an issue where I thought if this were saved as
various types of 'reports' or 'exports' - it would be easily repeatable
and more useful.

Craig