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I’ve had a little go at a client-side only version of the datastore query builder:
http://please.treadsoft.ly/query/
I’ll probably keep tinkering with it, so feedback welcome.
Features:
Tagging @YohannaLoucheur because this includes some of the things our table discussed in the query builder session at TAG.
NB probably doesn’t work on Internet Explorer.
That’s awsome! Thanks Andy!
I like the improved selection process, it will be much much easier to select publishers. Is there any cnance to add fields, or is this out of scope for now?
For the preview, I think it’ll be useful to be able to check what the selection options look like before going through the whole download process (esp for those like me with a badly configured Excel…) However there may be a need to tweek it.
For instance, perhaps you should in fact call it “Preview”, so that “Submit” remains for the production of the csv file? The “Download csv File” button isn’t very visible in the top right corner, might be better to have all 3 options side-by-side at the bottom (Preview, Submit, Reset)?
Will there be a way for the user to change the default format of the preview space? For instance I would prefer that rows did not expand to show the full project descriptions (CA-3 ones are always so long!!) in order to see more than one row at a time - this would make clearer what happens when I choose eg multi-sector or transaction per row.
I’ll keep playing with it and come back with more feedback. It’s exciting to see these improvements!
A couple of additional ideas I just remembered:
Someone (@stevieflow?) suggested to allow users to choose the elements/columns being exported. That would indeed be very useful, to avoid dealing with a lot of data the user doesn’t need. The previewer would be that much more useful, as we could scroll more easily across the preview to check what we have (or not).
Add a “Hide preview” button? Once (I think) I’ve figured what I need to do, it would be nice to have the full Q page visible.
Thanks very much for this feedback, @YohannaLoucheur!
All suggestions re. preview / submit / reset / hide preview are great – I’ll make those changes.
What sort of thing did you have in mind? This depends a bit on the datastore
Yes very good point. I’ll fix that.
Hmm… The export comes straight from the datastore, so this would require a change to the datastore. Were you thinking of restricting columns, or adding new columns?
Yeah, that may be beyond the scope of this specific exercize. My comment about adding field was based on the fact that I wasn’t getting all the data elements in the download (eg planned disbursements). I also wasn’t seeing them in your preview but wasn’t sure if it was your design choice or missing in the data itself (now I know).
I think I’m talking about 3 different things, which isn’t helpful…:
1 - filters
2 - elements included in the download
3 - elements visible in the preview
On #1, adding or removing filters from the Q Builder itself, that’s probably better discussed in a different post?
On #2, as a data user, I assume all the elements will be in the downloaded file. This assumption isn’t correct, as I found out. I would also like to be able to select (ie remove) elements from the download, if I know I won’t need them and want to limit the size of the file or something. Is this also better discussed in a different post? (same post as #1 or different one?)
On #3: irrespective of #2, a user may want to exclude specific columns from the preview, for instance to focus on those that are affected by a change in the selection (ie to see them all at once on the screen). In other words, the user wants to download a given dataset, but doesn’t want to see the full range of elements in the preview.
Hope that makes sense, and sorry for the confusion.
Which filters are available