Functionality between HTML and Flex versions

Topics brought up by the TimeTrex open source community.
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outreachadmin
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2013 2:28 pm

Functionality between HTML and Flex versions

Post by outreachadmin »

Do you have a list of the functionality differences between the HTML and Flash-based Flex interfaces (mainly concerned about the missing functionality)?

Since our upgrade, I've come across the following (VERY painful discoveries):
  • Schedule Summary Report does not include future recurring schedule data
  • The "Employee - Edit Advanced" permissions does not work (Regular employees cannot edit their own City)
  • Inability to access TimeTrex via iOS devices (iPads, iPhones) due to Flash-based interface << This one REALLY hurt us since our Supervisors & management team all have company issued iPads & are used to managing things on the move.
  • ???
I will give you credit that it's a slick looking interface. I also like the flexibility of the reporting platform. But these missing pieces to the full puzzle are catching me by surprise and it's hard to stay ahead of the users questions when I'm caught off guard like this.
shaunw
Posts: 7839
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Re: Functionality between HTML and Flex versions

Post by shaunw »

We do not have a formal list of the regressions in the Flex interface at this time, but it would be a fairly small list.

To address your issues:
Inability to access TimeTrex via iOS devices (iPads, iPhones) due to Flash-based interface << This one REALLY hurt us since our Supervisors & management team all have company issued iPads & are used to managing things on the move.
Hind sight is 20/20 for this one, the Flash interface was already being developed when iPhones were just being released and HTML5 was a pipe dream, obviously the landscape has changed significantly since then and the Flash interface is being phased out in favor of a pure HTML5 interface (currently in testing) that will be accessible from all smart mobile devices.

Schedule Summary Report does not include future recurring schedule data
Unfortunately this is caused by the additional flexibility in the reporting engine and the fact that future schedule data doesn't actually "exist" in the database. We have plans to revamp the entire recurring schedule system to make way for additional features and doing so will resolve this issue in the process, though likely with the new side affect of being limited as to how far in the future the recurring schedules will display.

We are open to feedback as to how far in the future users are wanting to see their schedules for.

The "Employee - Edit Advanced" permissions does not work (Regular employees cannot edit their own City)
The permissions around this will likely need to be reconsidered to be made more flexible, unfortunately its a little used feature and isn't a high priority at this time, but it will be corrected at some point.
outreachadmin
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2013 2:28 pm

Re: Functionality between HTML and Flex versions

Post by outreachadmin »

shaunw wrote: Hind sight is 20/20 for this one, the Flash interface was already being developed when iPhones were just being released and HTML5 was a pipe dream, obviously the landscape has changed significantly since then and the Flash interface is being phased out in favor of a pure HTML5 interface (currently in testing) that will be accessible from all smart mobile devices.
I look forward to seeing how the new interface looks!
Unfortunately this is caused by the additional flexibility in the reporting engine and the fact that future schedule data doesn't actually "exist" in the database. We have plans to revamp the entire recurring schedule system to make way for additional features and doing so will resolve this issue in the process, though likely with the new side affect of being limited as to how far in the future the recurring schedules will display.

We are open to feedback as to how far in the future users are wanting to see their schedules for.
I can say from the administrative team, we look out 90 days on schedules on a regular basis, and we will periodically pull up ALL holiday dates to see what our schedules look like (which can mean looking out up to 1 year). The Schedule interface gives us some of this info, But it only exports/prints as a PDF. If we were able to export it in a data/csv format then we could do our own pivot tables or summary reporting on it.

Our agents will want to be able to do the same. Some employees have 2 or 3 week rotating schedules and they want to find out if they will be scheduled on specific dates in the future (holidays, weddings, etc...). For this scenario they are happy to use the schedule interface (as opposed to the Schedule Summary Report).
The permissions around this will likely need to be reconsidered to be made more flexible, unfortunately its a little used feature and isn't a high priority at this time, but it will be corrected at some point.
Is there a reason to not allow regular employees to edit their City (but they can change their street address)? For an area such as ours, this is a problem. Right now, we're having to have people issue requests to have their own contact info updated when we'd MUCH rather allow them access to do this on their own.
shaunw
Posts: 7839
Joined: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:22 pm

Re: Functionality between HTML and Flex versions

Post by shaunw »

I look forward to seeing how the new interface looks!
It looks exactly the same, you can demo it here: http://demo.timetrex.com/interface/html5/ with the username "demoadmin1" and the password "demo".
I can say from the administrative team, we look out 90 days on schedules on a regular basis, and we will periodically pull up ALL holiday dates to see what our schedules look like (which can mean looking out up to 1 year). The Schedule interface gives us some of this info, But it only exports/prints as a PDF. If we were able to export it in a data/csv format then we could do our own pivot tables or summary reporting on it.

Our agents will want to be able to do the same. Some employees have 2 or 3 week rotating schedules and they want to find out if they will be scheduled on specific dates in the future (holidays, weddings, etc...). For this scenario they are happy to use the schedule interface (as opposed to the Schedule Summary Report).
Thanks for providing this information, my understanding is that the recurring schedule system will move from a real-time generated schedule (as it is now) to a pre-processed schedule done immediately after a recurring schedule is added/modified and/or on a nightly basis. The disadvantage to this approach is of course that you would need to wait for the process to complete before you could see the end result and there has to be some limitation as to how far in the future the schedule will go. There will likely be a per-recurring schedule setting where you can define this, as we have had some customers request to only show schedules 30 days in the future and cases like yours where they want to see a year into the future.
Is there a reason to not allow regular employees to edit their City (but they can change their street address)? For an area such as ours, this is a problem. Right now, we're having to have people issue requests to have their own contact info updated when we'd MUCH rather allow them access to do this on their own.
Most customers don't want the employee to be able to change that information (though Country/Province/State are the big ones, city less so) as it can have consequences from a payroll/government reporting standpoint if done incorrectly or if other settings are not changed to accommodate it.
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