Status of menu editor

[dalers]

Hi @timschofield, in #352 (comment) you said:

I have a semi completed menu editor that would allow the editing of the menus for each security role.

What is the status of the menu editor?

Until the menu editor is available, what is the recommended procedure for adding modules and menu items (links) into the menu system?

Do you need help completing or testing the menu editor?

Unless I've missed it, there doesn't seem to be any mention of the menu system in either The Manual or the project wiki, although there is related discussion in #352.

[timschofield]

Hi @timschofield, in #352 (comment) you said:

I have a semi completed menu editor that would allow the editing of the menus for each security role.

What is the status of the menu editor?

That and the new report writer are on ice until v5 is out.

Until the menu editor is available, what is the recommended procedure for adding modules and menu items (links) into the menu system?

Via the database update system using the NewModule() and the NewMenuItem() functions

Tim

[dalers]

are on ice until v5 is out

Understood and agree, but how much development has been done on them? Is there code? Is it functional to a degree? Cheers.

[timschofield]

Understood and agree, but how much development has been done on them? Is there code? Is it functional to a degree? Cheers.

For the report writer I have a graphical query writer which sort of works, and is the major part of the new report writer. Sadly debuging the javascript was like playing whack-a-mole so for my sanity I left it to return to later.

The menu editor is probably only 20% complete, but actually is the easier of the 2 to finish.

[dalers]

For the report writer....

Certainly we could standardize on something like Jasper Reports but the learning curve I expect would be huge (although personally never used it).

How about using LibreOffice as a report generator? Use Writer and/or Calc (and create Writer and Calc report template files) depending on whether a PDF or CSV file is the desired output or some other reason.

Alternately, are you aware of KoolReport? (I'm not affiliated in any way, they only came up in a recent periodic search for PHP report writers).

https://www.koolreport.com/
intuitive and flexible Open-Source PHP Reporting Framework for faster and easier report delivery. It gives you full control of data process as well as data visualization. It is fast, simple and can be extended in many ways.

The project is a freemium model, the "core" version is GPL and hosted on GitHub (https://github.com/koolreport/core). Perhaps "core" would be sufficient for our requirements and if a user wanted to add paid features they could certainly do so. There's also an Affiliate program that could potentially provide revenue to the webERP project (hosting costs, feature bounties...).

The paid feature bundle includes the following. I would want to understand better "output reports to PDF". The expanded list includes Barcodes, which webERP can generate already.

• Offline charts library ChartJs, D3, Morris
• Dynamic data reports
• Pivot Table & Pivot Matrix
• Advanced Drilldown Report
• Output reports to PDF, Excel and images

The menu editor is probably only 20% complete, but actually is the easier of the 2 to finish.

I'm curious about the workflow, and how as a consultant or the company administrator, I would create a db upgrade file with my customized menu while not interfering with the db upgrade files issued by the webERP project. To explore this I created a separate discussion #758

[timschofield]

I have uploaded the menu editor as ir currently stands to the demo, so that people can see it.

https://www.weberp.org/demo/MenuEditor.php

you will obviously need to be logged in

Tim

[dalers]

Will you be contributing the code so we can experiment with our own databases?

[timschofield]

Of course I will. I can upload the code as is, if you want. That would be on the proviso that the interface still needs work.

Tim

[dalers]

I'll let you decide when the time is right, I won't have time to spend learning it in the near future anyway but when I do I'd like to run the code on my own db because I find the clutter in the demo makes it hard to use for anything other than very basic tests (and also because the demo can change arbitrarily).

My recommendation would be to contribute the script after you're sure there are no dragons lurking and no one can get themselves into trouble by e.g. messing up a working site with no recourse other than restoring the db from a backup.

If there are dragons lurking, you could put the code in a dev branch in your repo and we can pull it from there.

[dalers]

@timschofield , how's the menu editor coming?

What do we know about the "common user" and their Favorites? Do the majority of established users use their Favorites most of the time and use the module/category meny system only occassionally or almost never?

It occured to me that for most users most of the time, they access scripts via their Favorites. If this is true, it would seem Favorites should have a more dominant presence in the UI, or perhaps the current menu system only needs to be available when needed a script not typically run must be accessed (e.g. by clicking a "Full Menu" button like).

I'm mentioning this here because, if anyone else also thinks this might be something to pursue, it might affect how the menu editor presents itself to the user.

I'm also posting this thought in the "Experimental Interface" discussion @timschofield started #901