Simple Invoices - Forum

Hi Justin!

Wish you a very prosperous & happy New Year!

Thank you for your continuing work on SI.

Does new Beta-2 addresses some of the problems of running SI with Postgres?



Sincerely,
Gour

Hey Gour,

no new work has been done on postgres at the moment :(

the only real thing to do is go through all the sql and new sql_patches to ensure postgres will be happy with it

if your a postgres person and are handy with sql you can lend a hand to make Simple Invoice for Postgres a reality - let me know if you interested and i;ll show you what to do

Cheers

Justin

Hi Justin,

if your a postgres person and are handy with sql you can lend a hand to make Simple Invoice for Postgres a reality -
let me know if you interested and i;ll show you what to do

Well, I'm neither Postgres person nor handy with sql (yet), but I'm enthusiastic to learn...so, please give me some more instructions what to do...I'd really like to be able running SI with Postgres.


Sincerely,
Gour

Hi Gour,

great to hear you want to help with the postgres version

what you need to do is

1 - send me your gmail username - so i can add you to our svn commit list
2 - follow the details in http://simpleinvoices.org/wiki/simple_invoices_subversion_how-to to svn checkout trunk
-- thats our development area
3 - create a new postgres database using the postgres .sql in the /database/PgSQL folder

.. i'll post more details abit later today - got to go now ..

Cheers

Justin

Hey Gour

once you got the db setup - the next step is to update all the sql patches in ./include/sql_patches.php to work with postgres - just need to edit any queries into the postgres format - hopefully most of the queries will just work and you'll only need to adjust the ones that don't

below is a sample on how to format the queries using switch


$patch['137']['name'] = "Insert default domain";
switch ($config->database->adapter)
{
case "pdo_pgsql" :
$patch['137']['patch'] = "INSERT INTO ".TB_PREFIX."user_domain (name) VALUES ('default');";
break;
case "pdo_mysql" :
default:
$patch['137']['patch'] = "INSERT INTO ".TB_PREFIX."user_domain (name) VALUES ('default');";
}
$patch['137']['date'] = "200712";
//TODO postgres patch


note: the mysql query will always be the default one

once sql_patcehs.php is done then we just need to use Simple Invoices with Postgres and edit any queries that don't work

cheers

Justin

Hi Justin,
I looked at the new demo and here is my two cents opinion about the new navigation menu

Navigation is the more crucial part of the application : think about an accountant person working with your program all day long. He will have to deal nearly most of the time with
- payments (there is often more than one payment for one emitted invoice)
- new invoices
- new proposal
- new customers
So goal is to avoid clicking as much as possible.
In that sens, creating a payment has to be straight and easy : the less click to be done, the better it will be .
From what I see in the demo, there is no easy button to payments. Starting for main panel, we have to choose Money -> Payments -> Process Payments : 3 clicks with 3 hand displacements - in "old" 20080629 version , thanks to automatic dropdown menu, it is easier : 2 hand displacements and only 1 click is enough to get to the same panel

Take the same principle for new invoices : 2 clicks in the new system compared to one click in the "old" one. The mouse over automatic drop down manu, even not beatiful, is a advantage.

Not that I don't like the new one but, the "new payment" entry is missing (easy to solve) and once one have to switch between "people" and "money" entry this becomes more tiresome. That's where the thin limit between an good and a great application from an end-user point of view relies.

My personal conclusion is that : Yes the new system is more sexy, but the "old" one is more straighforward and thus more productive for a heavy user.

Nevertheless this doesn't change anything about the great work you've done
Pierre

Hey Pierre

i've been thinking about that amount of clicks it'll take to do stuff to - was thinking of having some kind of quick launch buttons

refer this image of the new wordpress admin page to see what im on about

img src="http://simpleinvoices.googlegroups.com/web/wordpress.gif?gda=k9Shoz8AAAC_3sPLZancAiVK0Lh6glgAbXzO11wJFmCWFlqKxvv4gTQvVqiwCAa3OU8xjZN0726ccyFKn-rNKC-d1pM_IdV0' />

just got to decide where to put this quick lanuch buttons - ie. along top left or in a hover drop down

let me know your thoughts re quick launch buttons

note: the user woul dbe able to define what actions they wanted to be as quick lanuch buttons

Cheers

Justin

Quick launch is definitely a great idea , espacialy is they are user customizable !
The three main screen of the application are :
Create incoice, make payment and most of all the invoice dashbord : from there we can see how long an invoice has been sent, make a payment, print, ....

So if the quick launch buttons were default customized with those three it would fit most of the need I think.

I come back on the invoice dashboard : as the main screen it would be perfect if we were able to hide paid invoices (owing = 0) . In fact when having a huge amount of invoices, as we can only sort by one column, we must navigate to find the one searched.
Being able to hide paid invoices (thus irrelevant for day to day followup) would be a gem: I saw beta is using ajax, thus a simple checkbox "hide paid invoices" triggering/updating the query ;-)
Thanks

Thanks Pierre,

i'll add a editable quick launch into beta 3 of Simple Invoices - note beta 2 is due out very soon so this feature wont make it for then

re dashboard
- a cut down version of the Manage Invoices page would probably be a good idea on the 'home' page - and only showing unpaid invoices
- it you get time if you can create a visual mockup in gimp/photoshop of what you would like the dashboard page to be it would be a great help
- also i'll be adding more search options in to the Manage Pages - just click the magnifying glass at the bottom of the manage pages in the beta

Cheers

Justin

Justin
Don't let you down but out of office : will answer by tomorrow for sure .
Sorry

no worries pierre, theres no rush

cheers

justin