Need GUI advice - quick and dirty
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Ok, so I have a Customer. There are six product types for each customer (of which they can offer 0-6 to their customers), and X providers for each product type. For any given date, there can only be one provider of each product type for each customer.
Example:
Customer -> Foo -> FoosAreUs -> 1/1/2015 - 12/31/2015
Customer -> Foo -> FoosPlus -> 1/1/2016 - 6/30/2016
Customer -> Bar -> BarsPlus -> 2/1/2015 - 2/28/2015
Customer -> Baz -> (none)What I need is a UI to associate these product providers to a particular customer for a particular period of time.
What's the best way to implement a UI for setting these values?
This is an internal tool, and the priority here is dev time (for reasons mentioned in the Status thread). It's in WebForms. The date "resolution" is 1 month.
I could write a custom calendar widget with color coding or something, which would probably be ideal, but I just don't have the time to do that work.
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I'm thinking something like:
Customer (select box)
Account Type (select box)
Start Date (date)
End Date (date)
Provider (select box, include {none} option)Then in a little widget off to the side:
"Existing Provider Assignments"
Date Range (select box, contains start-end date of all existing provider assignments for that customer & product type)
Load (button, would fill-in the above fields to match the existing assignment)Then at the bottom:
Save (button, would try to upsert the currently-populated fields of the top section)
Cancel (reset the interface to default empty values)Message (communicate saving errors, for example, "overlapping date range")
It's pretty clunky, but implementation time is also pretty quick. Can I do better?
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Sounds like it'll do, particularly for updates. For visualization, with month resolution, I don't think I'd ever go for a calendar widget. How far into the future would these assignments go? A color-coded list per month may look quite slick with little effort:
Customer Foo
2015
Jan - FoosAreUs
Feb - FoosAreUs
...
Dec - FoosAreUs
2016
Jan - FoosPlus
Feb - FoosPlus
...
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Seems about the appropriate design for a quick intranet app.
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How far into the future would these assignments go?
That's another hitch, the end date is optional-- if left off, it means "forever".
A color-coded list per month may look quite slick with little effort:
Possibly; I'll implement the idea I have and see if I can squeeze a bit of time for refining it.
