I have been having a look at open for business and think that the system has a great deal of potential. The only problem that I have is quit minor and I think worthy of serious consideration. I think that the main impression that an end user will have of open for business is one of slight inconsistencies.
These inconsistencies manifest themselves in the form that warning and error messages are displayed and the way that the interaction with the application is enforced. I have been looking at the code and it is clear that most of the problems are caused by the way that some of the code has been written. The manifestation of the problems are: * Inconsistencies in the way that messages are dealt with. Some of the messages are hard coded and others are taken from the resource files. * Exception messages are displayed to the user in a pretty 'raw' form. If I were an end user and were to see some of these exception messages I would run away in absolute horror. * Look and feel differs between modules. As one example, the Accounting module main screen is totally different to the rest of the modules. The problem does not just stop there. The look and feel between some of the basic screens also differs inside one given module. * No online help is available in any form whatever. Any end user that is not an expert in the field would have no idea what is going on with some of the forms. * Data validation has some problems. The validation seems to be done on the server side. At one point I could enter negative values in an integer field that should only be able to accept positive values. I know that the maxim of "however get the vision get the job" holds in the case of collaborative systems. But I cannot do anything unless there is some or other consensus that the issues that I am raising need addressing. If we can start a discussion on these questions then we might consider a code freeze on some modules, clean up the modules then carry on like this until these issues are resolved. If this is to be done then it also implies that there might have to be a rethink of the standards and the way that the standards are enforced. It serves no purpose to clear away existing issues just the confronted by the same issues at some later date. NOTE: This e-mail message is subject to the MTN Group disclaimer see http://www.mtn.co.za/disclaimer
