Feng Forum

Other Topics => Ideas => : kylethaynes December 15, 2010, 06:43:39 AM

: Note subtypes, so that you track expenses, etc
: kylethaynes December 15, 2010, 06:43:39 AM
Hi, I'm a programmer that just recently tried out Fengoffice and I'm loving it. Good job putting together a great piece of software. By the way, I thought of an interesting idea. Why not make it so that you can have note subtypes? That way you can do nifty things like store your 'expenses' as a note subtype of 'expense' with the custom property of 'value', and then you can make a report of them using reporting. You could then export that table to CSV, and from there you could import the CSV into a spreadsheet to add it up. That way you could use Fengoffice to do your bookkeeping of items that require specific fields in an elegant way. I sure this idea could expand to far more things than just expenses... Lol, I'm too sleepy right now to think of anything else.

On another note, I'm really interesting in programming things for Fengoffice. I tried to make it so that you could log into Dokuwiki through a Fengoffice panel, but as far as I got was getting Dokuwiki to load in an iframe :/. I also wasn't really satisfied with how I put it together... I didn't really put it together in a way that kept it completely separated from the Fengoffice core code.. Is there anything in Fengoffice that works like Drupal's ability to parse module files, so I don't have to change core code to add another tab?

: Re: Note subtypes, so that you track expenses, etc
: franponce87 January 03, 2011, 08:51:38 AM
Hello, welcome to Feng Office Forums!
Actually, you may do all this by using tags since you may filter the reports by tags when adding its conditions

Best regards,
Francisco
: Re: Note subtypes, so that you track expenses, etc
: msuzenne March 09, 2011, 05:59:36 AM
@kylethaynes : yes I totally agree with you : notes subtypes could be a solution I didn't thought of ; I thought another idea for the same needs posted in the "Feature request (see this topic on the same forum : http://forums.fengoffice.com/index.php?topic=8481.0).

@franponce87 : it would be a temporary solution, but we really need something more clean and well managed. Managing this by the way of tags will clutter the database since all "virtual types tagged notes" (sorry I didn't find more appropriate naming) must share the same custom properties.
Imagine : you need to manage "expense" assets. Using the notes objects type, you create custom properties "value", "devise", "date" and probably "items", and you tag all the new notes for expense management with the "expense" tag.
Then you want to manage "computers" assets too. So you then add custom properties for note objects type, ie list-property "desktop, tower, portable", value properties "CPU type", "#CPU",  "RAM amount", "Disks" and so on, and you tag every new notes for computer management with the "computer" tag. That works great !
But, in fact, your notes used for expense management is cluttered with unused custom properties only used by notes for computer management and vice et versa ! So you end up filling the database with things that do not have to exist at all.
I don't know how subtypes are implemented (ie for tasks objects) but this would be a more convenient way to fill our needs.

As I told kylethaynes, I had another idea for the same needs I exposed in the "feature requests" topic (see URL I gave). Today I use notes with custom properties for managing all my different assets, with a dedicated custom property "Type" to filter assets type in reports, but it is a temporary solution only.
I never thought of using subtypes (as it currently exists in tasks), and this would be a good idea. But thinking of the possibility of creating custom types of objects that can appear as tabs (as it is for notes, tasks, documents), and with the possibility to create new items of these custom objects type by clicking on the global "new" button or on the related object type toolbar "new" button, will probably be cleaner and easier to work with.

Your Opinions ?