[imp] Re: [turba] Users having difficulty with address book

[Edward Glowacki]

On Thu, 2002-05-09 at 16:53, Eric Rostetter wrote:
> Quoting Edward Glowacki <glowack2@msu.edu>:
> 
> > I recently upgraded a major site from imp-2.x to imp-3.0+turba-1.0, and
> > I have had several reports from users that they "can't find their
> > addresses" or that their "address book is blank".  All of their
> > information is still there after the upgrade, and once I explain how to
> > do a blank search, they are able to find everything OK.
> 
> Had the exact same problem.  I don't recommend IMP 3.0 for this reason.
> Always recommend IMP RELENG_3 CVS (or later) instead.

Unfortunately I went with 3.0, so I'm anxious to upgrade everything to
.1 to fix all these problems.  I'm hesitant to run a Release Cantidate
on a production system though, so I've been waiting for the release to
come out.  May have to run on RC2 for a while though to make the users
happy, and hope in the meantime that everything works. =)

> > I did an
> > upgrade to imp-3.1RC2+turba-1.1RC2 on a test machine and found that the
> > problems still exist, both in the contact list itself and the new popup
> > contact list (which the users are anxiously waiting for).
> 
> I've not had any user complaints with IMP 3.1.  They seem to be able
> to figure it out.

That's good to hear.  We have a lot of non-technical users, so hopefully
they'll catch on quick.

> > By default, I think both the contact list and the popup contact list
> > should show a list of *all* the user's contacts, with the search fields
> > available to locate a specific address if needed.  
> 
> The problem with this has been discussed before on the lists.

Sorry for bringing it up again then, I just recently added myself to the
horde/imp/turba lists.


> This won't work for the (provided) bigfoot, netcenter, etc  directories.
> You can't just print all the thousands of entries.  The directories 
> services probably won't let you, and certainly wouldn't want you to.
> And if you could/would, it would be very slow, and not at all useful.
> Might drain the network/machine resources, or timeout, etc.
> 
> You might suggest something like "return the first X entries" but
> even then not all directories are going to allow it, and it would
> probably confuse the users more.
> 
> You might suggest only doing this for "My Addressbook" but then that
> has problems too, and who says one of your users won't build a very
> large addressbook?
> 
> So, the only real solution I can come up with is to include something
> on the screen near that says how to return all the entries.

This all makes very good sense... *ponder*  Hrm, guess this one may take
some pondering to figure out...

Thanks for the help!
-ED

-- 
Edward Glowacki			glowack2@msu.edu
Michigan State University	
"...a partial solution to the right problem is better than a complete
solution to the wrong one." (http://uiweb.com/issues/issue14.htm)