Work-flow issues

[Robby Stephenson]

Hi Todd,

I appreciate the time you took to write about your work-flow. I'm always 
interested in getting feedback in that area, since I essentially wrote 
Tellico to mimic how I wanted things to work. :)

On Friday 17 October 2008, Todd A. Jacobs wrote:
>     1. I have a pair of custom fields: box and shelf. It would be
>        *tremendously* useful if I could set the values for these fields
>        for each "multiple search" so that the items in that box are
>        scanned directly to a group rather than to "(Empty)". I would
>        prefer not to change the global defaults each time, as that is
>        rather error-prone from a human interface perspective. In other
>        words, I just want to change the defaults for that one bulk
>        search.

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.

>     2. Failed matches during a search (often due to network timeouts, as
>        searching again often solves this) don't end up anywhere. A
>        dialog that allows me to edit the failed numbers, resubmit them,
>        or go on without them would be exceedingly useful when doing
>        large volumes of searches at a time.

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?

>     3. The amount of clicks needed to do a bulk search-and-add are
>        excessive: wand icon -> multiple isbn search -> edit list -> okay
>        ->  select item -> CTRL-A -> add entry -> close. It would be
>        really nice to be able to do all of that as one step from
>        something like a double-wand icon that just pops up the entry
>        field, and adds everything it finds when I close the dialog
>        without canceling.

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?

>     4. At the very least, clicking "multiple isbn search" ought to pop
>        up the entry dialog, rather than having to click the checkbox
>        *and* click "edit list."

Agreed, I'll change that.

> I know everyone uses software a bit differently, but I hope that these
> suggestions would be useful to others as well. What do you think?

Very much appreciated.

Robby