Workflows

On this page, concepts for workflows should be collected, allowing us to keep track of the different ideas so far.
This might be helpful in finding overlaps and differences of the different workflow concepts and from this creating an environment that integrates all these workflows.

Logging In

On the homepage, a "Login"-Box will allow the user to input the username and password.

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Basic Ideas

Some results from the discussion of Grace and me (Christopher) on Feb.03rd 2010:

• When the user reaches the User Home page. It has a Block that contains a Navigation to the different things to do:
  • Manage Account, view community activities (such as when being granted permission to view/incorporate a certain table)
  • Search
  • Create a Workspace, Table, View, or Table from File
  • Open Workspace, Table, View, Map
• A Workspace is defined as a set of user-created tables and "bookmarked" foreign tables/views, all belonging to the same project. The idea is that the user during the exploration of all the tables available in the community collects (bookmarks) those that might be useful. Then, when a View is created, only tables that belong to that workspace or are listed as a bookmark in the workspace, can be used. Taken together, the bookmarked foreign tables and the user's own tables, are called the ressources of the workspace.
• Opening a Workspace gets you to a whole new Page in a distinct "Workspace"-layout which contains a block where the user can change the workspace settings/meta data, view the list of ressources, and as usual create and open Objects or just add them to the workspace.
• Objects, such as Tables, Views and Maps can be opened from and created in either a specific Workspace, or just be added as a block in the User Home page (which is kind of a default workspace, if you want)
• Opening an Object opens it inside the workspace it belongs to
• Creating/Opening? an Object brings up a new block that is placed directly below the block it was created from and contains an editor for this Object
• When a new Table is created, the new table editor block first shows an empty 2-column-table with one empty data-line. Alternatively, a wizard could be used to guide the user through setting up a new table or choosing from templates.
• After an Object has been changed, a clearly visible "save" button appears. Only when this button is clicked, the data is actually saved on the server.
• The Table editor should have an option to create a new View starting from the current table, which opens a new block with a View-editor, already containing the previous table.
• In the Table editor, it is at any time possible to add new columns and rearrange the columns
• An optional feature for the table editor could be a "fill in from another table" function, that allows automatically filling in data in a similar manner as the matching used in creating views, if the access permissions allow this (incorporation).
• Everytime new columns are added to a View, a wizard takes the user to the following steps: choosing a Table, defining the matching (source, target, relation), and then choosing the columns to be added. Note that if the matching yields ambiguous results, the user is warned about it, and can choose to either accept this and hence create redundant lines of data (every possible matching combination), or to go back and refine the matching ...
• if the user has to search for tables during the process of creating a view, a new search block is created.
• any time a Table or View contains Coordinate-Columns, it is mappable, and hence an icon for mapping appears; clicking it opens the map editor
• The Map editor utilizes a table or view to create a Map. The mapping behavior is defined column wise.