Re: [Planner Dev] Planner - Suggestion for Deliverable or Objective view.

["lincoln phipps openmutual net" <lincoln phipps openmutual net>]

Alvaro del Castillo wrote:

> Hi!
>
>
> > > When the week starts all the workers send a report about the results of
> > > the last week so the first thing I need is an easy way for the workers
> > > to send the update and integrate it in planner.
> >
> >
> > Thats the basis of my interest in the database and a web/Postnuke style
> > front end to Planner. Project teams could then use a nice web interface
> > from any browser (Windows/Linux/Mac/Palm etc)....,
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137009
>
>
> This is something I need every week when I have to plan the week, so I
> have a great motivation to work in it, so I try to find more details
> about it.
>
> I think until now we have to ways to follow:
>
> 1. Create a web interface for resources to feedback the status of the
> tasks
>
> 	1.1 Custom web interface
> 	1.2 Web interface using PHPNuke, Slash, Zope or other CM.
>
> 2. Use evolution task view to feedback to Planner the status of tasks.
>
>
> I am not sure the best path to follow. Evolution has a very nice UI for
> tasks and all the things we need, but the integration is more complex:
>
> - Evolution version we will target: I suppose it will be Evo 2.0 and use
> the evolution data server to inrtegrate data.
>
> - The task integration will invite us for the resource/contacts
> integration also.
>
> I have worked in the past in Evolution<->OpenGroupware integration and
> it is not an inmediate work to do it. With evolution data server things
> could be easy but I am not sure.
>
> About the web integration, it could be done very quick using a custom
> PHP program, but we will miss features.
>
> We try to decide a web platform to work with: PHPNuke, Slash, Zope or
> other CM.
>
> I can think in good points for using 1 and 2. Remember that Evolution
> doesn't have a port to Windows, so if we use "2" we will miss mixed
> teams resources (linux and windows). Maybe we need to implement 1 and 2.
>
> What do you think?

I think maybe we just need a quick win. That would be a simple (practically
a proof of concept), web interface via a php or Perl CGI to manipulate
the actual Planner XML file directly.

I'm thinking of a CGI that runs from behind Apache at a suitable URL
which would have simple authentication protecting it (ideally).

The CGI had a base location which was taken from a config file for
the CGI script and then it added a project tag e.g. if project
tag was "housemove" and a base of "/home/planner" then it would create
a path of "/home/planner/housemove". We just take the usual care
with dot paths but if people are simply picking files
then its hard to use dot hacks to traverse file systems.

In that the user would pick the project name (same as file name but
chop off the ".mrproject" extension. This would be got from a simple
directory list with filer of *.mrproject and file names trimmed.

And then inside that they would get a list of tasks and various details.
They could then pick the task they need to update and it would then
write to the XML file. We'd have to have some sort of sanity checks
for file state but thats no different from e.g. say how Bugzilla
works - how many of you have got a collision message ? We'd do the
same thing. The CGI would read (no locks), you would then change what
you wanted and then submit. It would  then open exclusive and lock
that file and then re-read before writing updates. If the file
changed for the tasks taht you want to change then it would barf
with a collision error i.e. two people tried to update  the same
task in the same window of time (which shouldn't really be happening
anyway but could).

There is probably loads of examples of parsing an XML file, picking
out the relevant elements/attributes (e.g. task name, dates and
completion percentage and then writing out a new file based on
that).

We should call this "Simple Web Updates for Planner" (swu4p) and any
browser on any platform should be able to use that. On the web server
side if we stay with PHP or Perl then it'll probably be hostable on
IIS or Apache or whatever.

I feel that would be easy to achieve in the short term and truthfully
it wouldn't be hard to create.

Later on we could look at closer integration with other systems.
The above php/perl method would have no impact to our code so
could be shipped as an example with 0.13.

Rgds,
Lincoln.

> Cheers
>
> -- Alvaro
>
>
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