Todo List

Long-term Todo List
Listed here are the ideas that have come up in conversations with PExOD users or have occured to us as we work around PExOD. None of the ideas are so pressing that someone is prepared to commission the work or that we can't imagine using PExOD without it, but they tend to be good ideas that simply haven't been realized.

Questions to Answer: There are a few things that sometimes seem like they would be good to do, and sometimes seem like they are difficult or inappropriate. And the question keeps coming back. So get the question answered a few times, document the results and don't return to it.

• Automate the sending of media files associated associated with an export. Obviously a very handy thing. However, aggregators take their media files in a variety of shapes and sizes and aren't prepared to settle on a single specification and Booknet seems unable / uninterested in wrangling this to a conclusion. So until there is a standardized way to do this, it is not practical.
• ...

Javascript WYSIWYG Widget for allowing non-HTML-savy users to edit HTML-enabled fields. This will have to guarantee that it can generate XHTML. There are an increasing number of fine off-the-shelf examples of this widget. The main obstacle to adopting this is time and adding to the expense of PExOD - in case the good choice requires a license of some sort.

Export UI The Export UI is rather click-intensive, and it would be nice to make it less so.

• Clicking anywhere on the row that contains the title should toggle the checkbox ( on the update-menu page )
• The page selector bar should display something more indicative about which titles are contained on that page - like, the range of first letters, or the range of dates. Even if this were done as a 'title' attribute on mouse-over that would be good.
• Need to do a "Select All" button or some such. A "Send All" button isn't a good option.
• Extend searching for titles to support export tool. This is a usability issue. For example, user should be able to select a particular export, or be in a particular export and search for titles to appear within that export within the export tool.
• Macros to allow embedding some info in the export filename, like date and message number

Improve management of external files The feature of greatest interest here is to manage the 'once-off' files that are created for exports. These can become orphaned, and instead, they should be managed.
(This is mostly completed. The UI around external files is vastly improved and standardized. The thing that is missing is a tool to review the files on the server. )

Print Packing Slips For direct sales, it would be nice to be able to print packing slips from the admin tool.

Newsletter support There are several things around newsletter support that would be very handy to do:

• Maintain a list of email addresses (done)
• Manage the content of the email newsletter, whether composited from News/Event data and additional PDFs, or simply uploaded PDFs
• Send the newsletter out

Keyboard Shortcuts If you put something like:
<a href='#mainmenu' alt='skip to Main Menu' accesskey='M'></a> after </head>, then, put <a name='mainmenu'></a> ...
Use "M" for the main menu, "1" for the context menu, and "2" for the body

Easy-set default values Initially it was a good idea to make the most-likely option appear at the top of option lists in the drop-down select widgets. But then it turned out that it is impossible to tell if a form has been saved once with default values, or hasn't been saved at all. The resolution is to put "( None Selected )" at the top of each option list. This repair is mostly done, and might be complete, but it does require a comprehensive going-through to make sure.

Customizable META-TAG keywords for title pages on public side. This might be simply an instance of a customizable field for core records. In which case, it provides a good use case.

More ONIX Coverage This is ONIX 2.1 stuff that isn't currently covered in PExOD, and doesn't have much demand for implementation:

• BIC Main Subject - Support BIC codes in the same way that BISAC codes are supported
• Contributor Composite, although this is probably too complicated for most uses and the key data is already supported
• Market Representation
• Sales Outlet stuff within "PR.21 Territorial rights and other sales restrictions"
• Conference Composite
• Edition Composite ( although key data is already supported )
• EPublication Composite
• Content Items
• Rights management

Great Ideas That Were Cut
These are ideas that publishers have come up with, and which they felt would make great features, but which died on drawing board. In other words, these have made it past the 'idea' stage to the point were a design to implement them exists, but no further. Generally these involve a pretty serious bit of work to implement. And they're generally slightly peripheral to the main function of PExOD so the compulsion to add them is easy to manage.

Trade Order Support The idea is to allow trade buyers a simple way to make orders. It would involve a single form to fill to generate some bulk order. There would be support for some discount - 5 titles, 10 titles, ect. There would be support for PO numbers and confirmation emails.

Role-based access control Some roles are able to manage limited types of data. In truth, this isn't that great an idea. Controling access on a field-by-field basis is impractical. The reasonable option is to limit access based on a form-by-form basis. And the likelyhood that this will simply provide frustration is much greater than the likelihood that it will provide some security against accidents.

Full Change-log This is related to "Role-based access control". The idea is to track, for each field and the only the last time the value is changed, the person making the change, the previous value and the time changed.

Support user-defined fields associated with core tables ( title, contributor, enterprise, etc )

Far-fetched Ideas That We Dream About
These are ideas that we would love to do, and we think would make sense to operate within or in relation to PExOD, but it's not super likely that anyone will ever provide the time to do these.

Flat File Export Tool PExOD user can select a list of fields that are then exported into a format suitable for use in a spreadsheet tool. An Alpha/Proof-of-Concept version exists, but it's too sensitive to the number of titles.

Workflow support Flags, reminders, notifications, signoffs. Workflow notification/tracking support.

API development
a) Development of API hooks to external systems, e.g., accounting, inventory, warehouse, EDI, etc. so that these systems do not need to duplicate PExOD functionality.
b) API tools for system tasks (e.g. DB backup and restore)
And while this might continue to be fanciful, it would provide a nice mechanism to build unit tests.

Generation of catalogs, or at least catalog pages (as XML?) This would suggest that we could understand the XML generated by Quark and the like. This seems doable.

Generation of TI Sheets This needs a fleshed out use-case because we have explored two ways of doing this, and either of them seem suitable:

• Write raw PDF via a PHP PDF library, or
• write XML suitable for importing into Quark

Accounting and business management

• Addition of limited accounting/inventory mgmt features
• Ability to produce/receive EDI for orders directly from PExOD

Handle other major types of data There are several other data transactions and related types of data that make some sense for PExOD to handle. (Some of this is wildly fanciful, but that is the nature of this list.) Including:

• Booknet Book-Monitor: It would be interesting to see if Book Monitor has an interface that is visible, and extract data from it, and present it within PExOD
• Position Data, that is data about numbers of titles on hand, in transit, etc
• EDI data
• POS data
• Distribution and sales tracking
  • Ability to track books published/shipped/returned (internal tracking)
  • Ability to track books sold, where and when (external tracking)
  • Distribution management system
• Rights management
  • Implementation of existing data model for rights
  • Development of enhanced model for Canadian businesses

Archive old / less-used data.

ONIX Import

Single-form the "most-used" fields. The UI improvement that we all think is going to be great. The idea is to provide the most-used fields in a single form that allows the day-to-day updater of the data a very simple way to do it.

Generalized custom classification scheme support. For example, support sub-categories. Essentially, be able to support any tree-shaped scheme.