I think that they are showing search results as the user types and the
ERP does not care what field you are entering.
If you start typing in the postal code field it will display everyone
whose postal code matches what you have typed so far.
When you stop typing, you can select the party that you are interested
in from the search results on the screen.
If you start with a phone number or last name or whatever, the effect is
the same.
It clearly places a load on some computer(server or browser) and the
balance between bandwidth, server processing and user convenience is
constantly changing.
The dropdown filtering is a good start but they are carrying the process
one step further.
Ron
On 05/02/2015 12:30 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote:
BTW, when a lookup is not appropriate there is also the simpler
autocomplete dropdown field that we have recently fixed
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-6036
By and large there are more possibilities in this area, cf
http://demo-trunk-ofbiz.apache.org/example/control/FormWidgetExamples
Jacques
Le 04/02/2015 23:43, Jacques Le Roux a écrit :
Le 04/02/2015 16:02, Ron Wheeler a écrit :
http://post.technologyevaluation.com/t/180998/19677306/17511/2/?560a3889=VEVDIDIwMTUgRVJQIGZvciBEaXNjcmV0ZSBNYW51ZmFjdHVyaW5nIEJ1eWVyJ3MgR3VpZGU%3d&3b64e84d=X19uZXdzbGV0dGVyX2RhaWx5X2Vu&3b64e84d=X19uZXdzbGV0dGVyX2RhaWx5X2Vu&b0c7069d=MjM4NDEzOA%3d%3d&fb8dc108=cndoZWVsZXJAYXJ0aWZhY3Qtc29mdHdhcmUuY29t&x=3c8d597c
is a link to an interesting whitepaper from TEC (Gartner competitor)
discussing the main ERP solutions that they follow.
The big trend that they identify is a move to more functional user
interfaces that actually help users make sense of the data and find
what they want quickly and do that in a way that is familiar to ERP
users (Spreadsheets model).
They talk about automatic search where the user can type information
into any field (phone number, first name, company name and have the
system show up potential matches without having to go to a search
screen. This is what people who use email or web browsers expect
computers to be able to do.
I did not read yet.
When we standardized javascript in OFBiz, by replacing all other
javascript frameworks and APIs by jQuery, there have been a specific
effort around lookups and we implemented the auto-complete feature
inside them (actually the js standardization came from this effort,
which was initially done on the calendar where we began to replace
pop-ups by js-layers). Auto-complete is just the feature you explain
above. Of course limited, it's not a search engine, the set is
constrained. In theory, we could have something much more powerful
based on Solr for instance. But I'm not sure we will ever see that in
OFBiz...
BTW, during the jQuery effort, I improved the Price Rules and Promo
Rules screens, using dependent dropdowns I then introduced (you would
have to use R09.04 to see how it was before). I even made recently an
effort in the Product Promo Rules screen to use auto-complete lookups
instead of simple inputs
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/ofbiz/trunk/applications/product/webapp/catalog/promo/EditProductPromoRules.ftl?r1=1653938&r2=1653937&pathrev=1653938
I believe there are still inputs we could replace by auto-complete
lookups. An effort which would be worth to do would be to take an
inventory of those. We could then replace them...
Jacques
--
Ron Wheeler
President
Artifact Software Inc
email: [email protected]
skype: ronaldmwheeler
phone: 866-970-2435, ext 102
