Recently there was a big update the to QuickLogs product, on the face of it, it looks like the buttons have been changed a little bit. That is the small part of the upgrade, the main change is how the stats page works. Now the stats page is run by the HighCharts JavaScript engine instead of the PHP libchart that was used in the past. This takes the load of creating charts off of the server, and moves it to JavaScript  Also this increases the flexibility to add more charts in the future.

I started the new stats page (v3.3.0) with a drop down to select different types of graphs, the Activities, User, and Overall graphs were used with the drop down. A quick comment made by people at the Helpdesk was “why not use all the space available, I dont like having to navigate again after refreshing.” v3.3.1 brought back the single page, but more importantly sorted the data in the charts. By default Highcharts plots by order the data is put into it; but it was not largest category to smallest. A quick sort was put in, and then we were back to where v3.2 ws with charts but a new engine. The new engine also allows for the charts to be looked at under different time periods instead of only 30 days.

The morning the program moved to version 3.3.2, this was a pure bug fix with CAS having a certificate issue under the login page. At this time, I decided to centralize the CAS information for all pages under the ‘core.php’ page. That way if the certificate moves there is one place to do it.

QuickLogs represents a early version of my app design; these days I tend to make core.php and ajax.php heavy with most of the application functions, and subsequent pages call them with ajax. This is a older app where a lot of the functions are hard coded in the page. I have started migrating to using a wrapper on MySQL like I have with the time cards app. But I only changed it on functions I was modifying so most of QuickLogs remains doing manual queries.

Looking to the future there are many ideas for QuickLogs, yet little time to compete them. One person suggested a achievement system for different things you can do at work. Another suggestion was a Nemesis  a person who is right ahead of you for tickets, and having competition. The final suggestion was for some different types of charts. I wanted to do charts, I just have to find time.

At this point, QuickLogs is going on the shelf. (Unless I get a itch to add more charts) I am shifting to more time on Time Tracker and getting this product finished, before I leave RPI. Documentation for both products should be updated soon as well.