Work-flow issues

[Todd A. Jacobs]

Sorry for the excessive delay in responding to you, Robby. My reply is
below.

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 07:14:25AM -0700, Robby Stephenson wrote:

> Why do you say error-prone? If you're importing a lot of books, then
> setting a field default before you start, and removing it when you're
> done seems straight-forward enough. I'm not sure where I would even
> put temporary defaults in the internet search dialog. That might get
> rather intricate.

Part of the problem with changing the defaults is that it isn't always
obvious what the defaults at the time of import are unless you double
back and check. So, in this particular work-flow, we're importing a box
of books at a time (usually around 20-30 books), and having to change
the defaults for such small sets every few minutes leads to very human
mistakes like forgetting to update the default box number, or changing
the wrong field by accident.

I think you're right about the problem of adding it in the search
dialog. I don't think that's really the right answer. Really, in my case
it's a storage-location issue: items in a collection ought to have a
location (a box, a shelf, or a room). More generally, items in a
sub-collection ought to have shared defaults of some sort, and a way to
select those non-title specific defaults during import.

I think the real issue is that I can't create an "empty box" into which
I can then add items. From a GUI perspective, I have what appear to be
folders in the left panel; the folders are really just field groups
created by selecting "box" in the drop-down box. If these were real
folders, I could select the folder, and then right-click to add new
entries into that folder.

I understand that may not be practical from a coding perspective. I'm
really just talking about the interface issue here, which is that I
ought to be able to import things into grouped sub-collections in some
rational way.

> There should be a dialog that pops up with a list of the ISBN values that 
> weren't found. I think you also wrote about some false negatives, too. In 
> any case, I would think you could simply copy the list of failed numbers 
> and paste that in the search dialog  and start the search again?

The problem is that sometimes the books really are found, in which case
you have to manually ensure you don't import duplicate copies when you
don't have physical duplicates. In addition, if you copy the list, and
then go back into Edit List, you then have to manually remove the
existing list or edit it. It's the step of reconciling the two lists
that creates mistakes and manual overhead.

I think that sometimes having access to the previously submitted list is
valuable, so having a "resubmit" button on the pop-up would seem to
cover both cases better, since that list only contains items that
weren't matched the first time through.

> So you want to collapse the "select item -> CTRL-A -> add entry -> close" 
> into happening when you click the close button? That seems rather 
> unexpected from a user perspective. It doesn't seem like excessive clicking 
> when you can add 100 new books with what, 6 clicks?

I think my point was that if I'm scanning books, under what
circumstances would I want to find matching ISBNs but not import the
titles into the collection? The only case I can think of is the one of
accidental duplicates (e.g. I mistakenly add the same ISBN twice when I
only have one copy of the book).

Keep in mind that I'm talking about a work-flow of scanning 20-30 books
at a time into location-based sub-collections. If I scan 200 books like
that, that's 60+ clicks to import the titles, plus 10x?? clicks to label
them with the right box or shelf number. It's the sub-collections that
magnify the inefficiencies here.

Does that make a bit more sense? If not, maybe I can send you a small
version of the books.tc I'm working with, so you can see what I'm
talking about first-hand.

-- 
"Oh, look: rocks!"
	-- Doctor Who, "Destiny of the Daleks"