Comments
posted Jun 15 in All things TrackVia!Hi Dean,
It sounds like you're describing a feature that's on our roadmap. I call it a calendar dashboard. It's a single calendar page, and for any view in any app/table you can select it to be available for display on the calendar dashboard. On the calendar dashboard, you'll see a list in the left pane of your available views and can select/deselect 1 view, or a combination of views, for display on the calendar at a time.I can tell you it's a very popular request, and we'll build it as soon as we're able, but unfortunately I don't see it becoming available in the next 3 months.
Chris- posted Apr 29 in All things TrackVia!
We'll always be a relational database, or at least for the foreseeable future. But at the same time we are able to take a laid back approach to the relationships that allows business users to be in control. One of the main reasons we can do this is that our customer applications are almost all based on tracking a relatively small number of records that receive quite a bit of processing each. For example: a customer order that's received, processed, fulfilled, and even maintained (trouble tickets) after it's delivered - all through TrackVia. I'll contrast this example to a database application that tracks millions of records that are really only processed in groups at a time.
The fact that our customers tend to work with thousands of records instead of millions, and that they want to accomplish workflow rather than batch processes on a large number of records at once, means it's ok to have a relatively flat data structure and a relatively un-normalized data model. To a large extent, customers can choose to discard conventional wisdom about data modeling, such as normalizing tables to avoid wasting storage space.
At the same time, there's no denying that conventional wisdom is just, and it's how many developers choose to build apps, for good reasons.
We will be able to keep the balance between ease-of-use and intuitiveness for business users, even as we add powerful relational features for professional developers.
- posted Apr 27 in All things TrackVia!
Hi Eugen,
It's great to hear that you're interested in this kind of partnership! We're going to follow-up with you via email to get more specifics. In short, we love any opportunity to work with people who'll help spread the word about TrackVia!
Chris
- posted Apr 27 in All things TrackVia!
I'm enjoying the discussion as well, and appreciate you guys keeping it so positive, not to mention sophisticated.
Across all perspectives (business users, professional developers, etc.) it's clear that TrackVia needs to make it easier to perform relational tasks between linked tables. Currently we ask users to manually type-in formulas, which just isn't that easy. In our upcoming redesign TrackVia will provide a quick and simple wizard that provides appropriate choices in each step, based on the answer to the previous step. This method will retain the power that's currently available to developers, while making TrackVia even easier to use for non-developers.
And as to David's original post about the need for further power in TrackVia's relational abilities, this is the direction we're heading. And I can just assure all of the non-developers that we'll do it in a way that doesn't make it harder for you to use TrackVia the way you want to!
Chris
- posted Apr 27 in All things TrackVia!
Hi John,
Unfortunately, it's not currently possible to make a copy of an existing table permission. You're right, there should be a way, and in fact I had to go try it myself to see if it was possible or not.
It's possible to assign an existing table permission to a new, or different, role. But it's not possible to make a copy.
We've added it to our list of future enhancements, but unfortunately it's not going to be available in time to help you do it right now. We (TrackVia Support) could build out the new role and table permissions for you. If you'd like us to take care of this, just let us know via email at support@trackvia.com, along with the specifics about the table permissions that should be created under the Maintenance Tech role.
Chris
- posted Apr 1 in All things TrackVia!
Hi Perls,
We're always interested in user feedback, and I can tell you that we've discussed and been interested in your previous suggestions. I'm a big keyboard shortcut lover myself (I probably use CTRL+F 100 times per day in a browser). So, I'm going to have us plead guilty to a couple of your items, and probably "no contest" on the others. I'll reply to them in order below.
We have an improvement coming to the design of our interactive table. This improvement will include making almost everything available on every table view. What do I mean by that? For starters, today you only get the search box on the table overview page. In the redesign, there's no longer a table overview page, per se, and you'll have the search box available for every view. You'll also be able to view and edit your filters without leaving the page where records are displayed. So, between the ubiquity of the search box and the preview pane under the new redesign, I think we'll be able to take care of those shortcomings for you.
It's true that you can't bookmark specific pages inside the TrackVia app because of the way sessions work - this really isn't unique to TrackVia among online apps. But we're also redesigning the "global layout" of your TrackVia account to incorporate tabs, which should greatly reduce your need for permanent bookmarks.
As far as timing, I think we'll see some initial aspects of the redesign available by the end of April. This will include the redesigned table page where the search box is always available, but probably won't yet include the preview pane. You should also see "dashboard" pages available soon, where you can place multiple views, from any table/app, on one page. And these are "live" views that you can make changes to. So you might have a dashboard page with an interactive table view from one table, a stacked bar chart from another table, an interactive map view from another table, and a calendar view from yet another table, all on the same page.
Does this info help address your concerns/complaints?
Thanks again for being a TrackVia customer!
Chris
- posted Apr 1 in All things TrackVia!
Hi Kevin,
We've seen this happen a few times. It seems that we accidentally included some code in TrackVia that came from Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately the only fix to these issues has been to put the data table on the payroll and give it health insurance. It won't ask for any vacation time, but it does expect yearly cost of living adjustments. If you try to set its salary below the 85th percentile for DBAs in your market you may find that it'll send email campaigns or mail merge documents that include unflattering anecdotes about your work habits and personal hygiene.
Chris
- posted Mar 26 in All things TrackVia!
Here's a 1-minute video that covers the calendar widget.
- posted Mar 25 in All things TrackVia!
Hi kb,
I hadn't thought about using a google doc as a mail merge template, but it's a great idea! Just as a bit of technical info about mail merge, our biggest challenge was in finding a document format that would play nicely with .pdf. The text has to accommodate lots of dynamic resizing based on the number of characters in each database field that's merged into the document (one database record might have 10 characters for a specific field, and then next record in the merge might have 100 characters for the same field, and they both have to fit nicely into the final product!). We found that the .rtf format produces the best output in .pdf, and that's why we use it as opposed to .doc, for example.
We'll take a look at google docs, and thanks again for the question/suggestion!
Chris
- posted Mar 16 in All things TrackVia!
Just for some further info on this, it is a killer feature to have ()today available for filters and formulas. It is also quite a technical challenge to make it work in a way that doesn't impact performance for everyone. So, as soon as we crack the code on making this feature fast, which we will be able to do, we'll make it available. It's one of those features that we TrackVia employees want as badly as everyone else!