aware_support wroteCould you please be more specific as to which features you need polished?
Sure. Aware is miles ahead of similar platforms but being a product manager my mind is always looking for ways to improve core strengths and eliminate weaknesses. Over the last few years I built up a big list, I tried to categorize them but do not make any attempt to prioritize. For what it's worth, this is VERY short when compared to my own products so please don't take it offense 🙂
These are not all strictly speaking reworking of existing features, but they are all focused on improving the existing core experience rather than creating entirely new functions.
Functional Inconsistencies
• Html Cells Do no support Locale
• Documents:
- Locale date strings not supported
- Read Protect is not supported, i.e. it is ignored by documents
• AwareApp link operations do not support all the same options as their menu driven counterparts. For example, ‘ newObject’, cannot show said object after creation.
• Icon/Formatting rules work in girds, not in presentations, forms, or custom data templates
• Custom Templates allow one set of operation behaviors, custom presentations an alternate method.
• Custom data templates work on double click, everything else is single click
• Different behaviors in pop-up vs. new tab vs. full screen: I tried to standardize on one, but each has drawbacks.
- New Tab: clutters the screen, but is consistent
- Main: leads to situations where the user closes the form and is left with an empty panel.
- Pop-up: gives no toolbar, and often runs off the screen without scrollbars!!
• Right click menu seems to be supported in custom forms, but nowhere else
Ideas to speed up Dev User workflows
• List_Table type function for non-reference attributes – just a list of the items which match a where (Another way to think of this is merge the query result)
• Allow Merge <<fields> > in an email when the html body is stored in an attribute instance. This allows much more efficient management of templates.
• Plug and Play SSL integration
• Modernize the Report designer
• Add a feature to BO to allow definition and naming of Query Display Results layouts. When a query is created or a table of items reference is made the dev would select which Grid Layout to use. This would have massive time when a commonly used BO needs to be retooled.
• Queries should have the number of rows displayed defined by a bo attribute (i.e. a user or system preference) instead of always being hard wired.
• Add a Layout template system, just a few changes would help a lot
- Global Default setting for outside margins on VP content panels and forms
- Global Defaults for frames (banner, left, right, etc = ‘This content’ unless specifically overwritten ina certain VP)
- Global Menu
- Global default for Toolbar Icon/Text settings (with restore to default option)
- Native means to set up a fixed width app
• Copy and paste VP tab contents (for consistency I recycle where possible)
• The configuration tool would benefit from more ‘leg room’ on several forms. The two big ones are
- Editing long rules
- Editing query grid options
• Allow users to enter a hex color value on the color picker
• Editing Access Levels can be very time consuming – perhaps radio buttons for field level access would be better than drop down list for the UI?
• Testing
- Live Test. It would really speed things up if I could edit while in test mode, then simply refresh the page rather then constantly moving in and out of test mode.
- Allow copy live data to test db
- Hot key to accept default and directly go to test without the prompt (to save, reuse data, and check integrity)
- A Query results and layout preview - so time consuming going into test every time.
Enhancements to the Aware End User experience
• Expand 3rd party login options to include LinkedIn
• Make default operations based on entire grid row, not just a link of the text value. Having to click a link in a grid row is confusing to users.
• It would be nice if we could use the HTML tag <form> with an aware link operation (allows users to hit enter to submit, rather than requiring a click)
• Add a "Close Tab" feature for the rules engine using so we can close tabs using This or by TabID. For example if TabID is = XYZ, I could write a rule like ‘Close Tab where TabID = XYZ’ or alternately ‘Close ThisTab’ if the process was started from a button in the form toolbar.
• Allow for a split a menu panel, so the frame can have other content like Message of the Day, or recent items query.
The only entirely net new item I would really like to see is Nested data views to support Hierarchical Data in a single view which supports child level data bands. This would allow for social media like applications and other very powerful data views. I would think this would have benefits to many users. Similar to this topic Ideas for reference instance in a query result>