Wish list

[tkilshaw]

Aware IM is, in my opinion, a remarkable piece of work that already shows great promise. Its up to users like us to give Aware the kind of feedback that they can use to help inform their development efforts.

I want encourage Aware to keep us informed about what they intend to add to the product, to be open about their schedule for releasing new versions, and to ask other Aware users to comment on my ideas and add their own.

Here is my list of things in the Configurator I'd like to see improved. All of these are important, I think, to make the development experience less painful and more productive.

1) In menu creation if you have a bunch of menus already made and then decide to create a folder menu item that you want to move the existing menu item to, you are hooped. You need to recreate the items!

2) In the configurator there are many places where there are two lists, one on the left and one on the right with a couple of arrow buttons to move items from one list to the other.

A double click on an item should move it to the other list, instead of click to select and click to move.

An item moved from list A to list B should be selected already in list B. Just now you often need to scroll down to the bottom, select, and only then can you use the up arrow to move it within list B.

3) When you create a new form, its Main section is also created. That section has all of the object's attributes on it. There is no way to delete all attributes. Instead each must be separately selected and deleted and the confim deletion dialog OK button clicked.

I'd prefer it to start empty anyway.

4) Need a Duplicate button, or Copy/Paste for:

* Attributes in business objects.
* Rules in business objects.
* Forms.
* Form sections.
* Presentations.

5) ctrl-a, ctrl-c, ctrl-x, ctrl-v should work in all editable text areas.

6) Should be possible to change the type of a reference attribute after it has been created.

I know this will be hard to do, and could involve data-loss, but if users need to be warned its so much better than having to delete the attribute and start again.

Also its not clear what the consequences of deleting an attribute are. Is it removed from all places that reference it? Or does its name stick around?

There are problems with both, but it would be useful to know either way.

7) I want class attributes in Business Objects. Currently we are forced to use SystemSettings which leads to poor code factoring, and since SystemSettings is persisted there is no way to have in-memory values of this type.

8) Want a way to put more than one attribute in a form section column, without make a custom form.

Example I have a Salutation (Mr, Mrs etc) attribute, a first name attribute and a last name attribute. I'd like to have them all in one cell of a form section column.

9) if I open up the rules section of the Business Space tree, and open a rule, it does not tell me where that rule is called from.

If I search for rules, when the list of found rules is displayed, if I click on a rule it does show where it was called from, but its not visually obvious, and when I click to open the rule, it does not tell me where that rule is called from.

From the rule's window it would be nice to have a button that takes me to its owner.

thanks,

Terry

[tkilshaw]

And I also want:

10) programatically settable Attribute Labels

11) internationalization/localization facilities

12) a partridge in a pear tree!

Terry

[tkilshaw]

13) programatically show/hide Attributes on a form

14) programatically settable Attribute Choice lists.

Terry

[tkilshaw]

15) Generated documentation needs to include a Visual Perspectives section.

This is a main place from which processes, queries and all sorts of other stuff are invoked. Its useful in answering questions like "where is this process used, or is it used at all?".

Documentation should also include processes, queries etc on forms in objects, fo the same reason as above.

Terry

[aware_support]

Terry,

thank you very much for your suggestions. We will be setting a special forum for "Wish List" and we will also have a special page on the web site dedicated to our future releases.

Some comments to your suggestions:
1) It is possible to copy/paste attributes, objects and rules. It may not be very obvious, but you can select any of these elements in a tree on the left and then copy and paste. This is not available for forms and presentations yet (however, it is possible to copy/paste them by exporting/importing in files).
2) Do you know where in the system Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V do not work? They should work everywhere in theory.
3) You may already know this but it is possible to find out where each configuration element is used (including rules)? To do this right click on the element to open a pop-up menu and select "Find references to".

Best Regards

[jclark58]

Terry,

thank you very much for your suggestions. We will be setting a special forum for "Wish List" and we will also have a special page on the web site dedicated to our future releases.

The recognised input of users would go a very long way to ensuring a committed and voluntarily locked in user base. One of the hardest things about product development is acurately determining user needs and buying motives. This way you would have them on tap.

So as a further suggestion - allowing registered users participate in the decuion process and even to vote on featuresets would make the product irresistable.

I would almost buy just to get this "feature"!!

[aware_support]

We fully agree. We will try to set up the "Wish List" forum to be exactly that - so that users can vote for the features.

[greg]

Cannot agree more, a reliable feedback channel was an important factor for me when I considered aware. From my experience so far and from what I see on the forum, the aware team has been responsive to user requests. Just to mention a recent request by a user to add database tags to Word document header and footer.

I can add another suggestion to Terry’s list

16). An option to have Please Select displayed in a drop down menu field when the field is undefined. This is especially important if it is a relational field because now aware assigns a value by default if the relational field is defined.

and to comment on item 8 )

Want a way to put more than one attribute in a form section column, without make a custom form.

Example I have a Salutation (Mr, Mrs etc) attribute, a first name attribute and a last name attribute. I'd like to have them all in one cell of a form section column.

A do this by creating a calculated attribute Name and a rule

Name = Salutation+’ ‘+FirstName+’ ‘+LastName

[aware_admin]

We have set up a forum called "Wish List" where you can vote for new features. Not all of requests mentioned in this thread were moved to this forum, because some of them are straightforward and relatively minor improvements that need to be implemented without any voting.

[tkilshaw]

Item was meant to refer to forms that accept input. I know that you can concatenate strings for output display.

Terry

[tkilshaw]

17) Need end-users to be able to create and save their own reports without access to the configurator.

Terry

[tkilshaw]

I think you need a Wish List forum for users to add their wishes too as well as a forum where we can vote.

In terms of the voting it should include time scale and comments.

For example Internationalization (AKA I18N). This is a must have feature, but I'm happy to wait another 6 to 12 months for it, whereas the ability for end users to create and save a list of their own reports is a must have for the first release.

Terry

[tkilshaw]

I think you need a Wish List forum for users to add their wishes too as well as a forum where we can vote.

In terms of the voting it should include time scale and comments.

For example Internationalization (AKA I18N). This is a must have feature, but I'm happy to wait another 6 to 12 months for it, whereas the ability for end users to create and save a list of their own reports is a must have for the first release.

Terry

[tkilshaw]

Users need to be able to post replies on the new new Wish List forum. This is for clarification and better feedback.

For example, what is the meaning of being able to switch languages at run time? I presume this does not mean programming languages.

Can you give a use case?

thanks,

Terry

[aware_support]

Switching languages means switching between English and French, for example. This is different capability from, say, getting Aware IM to run in French.

We'll provide a better explanation on the forum.