I am currently working on a study (2x2x2 design) and I need to create 8 separate tasks for participants to do (between-subjects), and I was wondering if anyone knew if it's possible to create one survey file in Qualtrics that can redirect participants to any 1 of the 8 tasks, so that way I won't have to use 8 separate links to gather data.
You can do this in survey flow. Just create your 8 tasks as different blocks. Then go to the survey flow icon and insert a randomizer. Drag your 8 tasks so they are indented under the randomizer and set the conditions of the randomizer (e.g. show 1 of 8 blocks or show 2 of 8 blocks....I think you want 1 of 8 blocks). That's it! Send everyone one link and Qualtrics will do the work of organizing who sees which block.
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I am trying to think of a way to reduce my code base for 2 similar payment modules I am developing. The two models share some logic, which could be abstracted with the use of admin config options.
For example, both modules are used to calculate instalments. Module 1 specification dictates that maximum number of instalments is 6 with 4% interest rate, but Module 2 specification allows for up to 12 instalments with 6% interest. It would be of additional benefit if I could dynamically add N instances of the module.
Now, my development environment consists of multiple repositories (each module has its own repository) and everything is connected with composer. I would like this module to live in one directory and an easy way to "duplicate" (by that I mean: display new payment options in the checkout, with its own setting) the module.
I hope the question is clear enough. If not, please tell me what information would you need to understand it better.
I have a website which its admin user logs into a restricted area and adds content that is displayed on the public area. The admin wants a simple input text field on the post insert/edit form where he can type a number that determines in which position that post will be displayed to the public.
So, if the “Foo” post is given the number 3, it should be listed in the 3rd position, the old post 3 should become 4, 4 should become 5, and so on. If post 5 is repositioned to 1, 1 should automatically become 2, 2 should become 3, etc. If the admin reposition, 3 to 2, 2 should just become 3 without the need to change the other ones. If 10 becomes 9, 9 becomes 10 and no need to change other posts' position either. In short, when the position of one single post is changed (or inserted in the middle of existing posts), the remaining posts should have their position shifted accordingly.
I have considered two possibilities:
create a crazy algorithm that selects each post needed and updates the position column;
implement a linked list in the table so that each post always knows what is the primary key of the next one.
With the first option, when the admin inserts or updates a post's position, all the work is done at that moment, and when the public site is visited, the SQL just selects all the needed posts in a single query and order them by position. I don't really know yet how I would implement it, but I'm sure using a lot of code and possibly bad trade-offs it would be possible.
With the second option, there is much less work done during the insert/update, but when users access the site, I need to do one select for each post so that the right positioning can be achieved using the each post's link to the next “node”. So, if I have 150 posts in a given category, I'll have to run 150 selects (one for each post that is pointed to by the current "node". No pagination will be used in this case, and only the titles will be really listed, one below the other, so, I will really list them all.
I would like suggestions to other approaches, insights or improvements on the two possibilities I have described.
SOLUTION
I accepted #FractlizeR answer because it uses some other established piece of software to support his choice.
I wrote a small prototype on the solution I ended up using at work. Of course the code I used at work is different because I was changing a legacy system. Still, I used exactly the same SQL approach as the ones in the prototype. I hope I can improve that prototype and specially its comments soon, but at least it is there in case I or someone else needs to do something similar.
I would vote for #1. This is what, for example, XenForo forum engine does. It uses post position for paging and other things. When it needs to insert a new post into a thread, it queries thread for all posts, that needs to be reordered, then for each post calculates a new position and then updates table for all posts, which position changed.
We use XenForo for a long time in production and actually there should be no problems involved since this operation (reorder) is not so complex.
I am working on my Payroll program, currently I have 6 packages, and in total I have 22 classes, is that okay? I have 4 domain models, and each of them have mappers and extractors. and I have other classes as well, is this good???
EDIT
Here have a look
Employee,User,Person,Contact
My
Rowmappers and ResultSetExtractors are similar (but not the same). So there's no point in redefining them. As you have 4 models and 8 mappers+extractors I think that this is the case I'm talking about. They're probably doing the same "query result to model" mapping and you should omit one of them. But if you say that your XRowMapper and XResultSetExtractor don't do the same "query result to model mapping" then there's nothing to omit.
Rowmappers are higher level so if I could do the job with them I would choose them and omit each domain models' resultsetextractor.
We've got a surprisingly complex workflow that needs to be monitored by a quasi-technical employees with an in-house webapp. There's about 30 steps, some of which are manual (editing), some are semi-automated stop points (like "the files have been received" or customer approval of certain templates), and some are completely automated (file conversion, search indexing, etc). The flowchart for all of these steps is large and complicated, and three people might be working on three completely different steps at any one time.
How would you present this vast amount of information as usefully as possible to your users? Just showing the whole diagram seems like the brute force solution. But it's big, and it'll likely get bigger as we do more things. Not to mention the complexity necessary to encode this entire diagram in HTML.
I assume you don't want to show these just for entertainment or mockery, but help the users along the way, automating as much as possible, document the process etc. It would probably help if you clearly define the goals or purpose of your app.
I don't see a point in showing the entire workflow, except for "debugging the business rules" or maybe the clients want to see it.
If your goal is to help users do their job, I would present the state of the "project" (or whatever term fits better) is at, and possible transitions to other states.
The State might be multiple mostly independent variables, e.g. one might describe the progress of content - e.g. "incomplete" / "complete" / "reviewed by 2nd staffer" / "signed off by 2nd staffer", others might contain a schedule that is developed in parallel, e.g. "test print date = not scheduled", "print date = not scheduled", "final delivery = tomorrow, preferredly yesterday".
A transition might be "Seint to customer for review", "mark as content-complete", "content modified", etc.
Is this what you have in mind?
I propose to divide your workflow in modules and represent the active state for each module.
A module is a subset of your main workflow. For example it could be divided by tasks, person, roles, department, etc. This will greatly simplify the representation of the workflow. Let's says someone is responsible for data entry at many critical moments. We can group all his tasks in one module (or sub-workflow) containing the same activities, inputs, outputs and conditions. Modules could be inter-dependants and related.
A state is where we are located in a module. In simple workflows there is only one active task. In real life we are multi-threaded! So maybe in one module many states could be active at the same time. The state also includes active inputs, outputs and memory bits.
An input is something required to perform an activity for evaluation a boolean condition. It could be a document, a piece of data, a signal...
An output is something resulting from a task: an information, a document, a signal...
Enough definitions?
Then simply convert your workflow into a LADDER LOGIC and you have your states!
See Ladder Logic definition on Wikipedia
You display only active states:
Active task(s) for the module
Inputs required / inputs confirmed
Output required / output realized
Conditions to continue
Seems abstract?
Here is a small example...
Janet enters data in the system. She manages the green tasks of the diagram. We focus only on her work, not other tasks. She knows how to do 16 tasks in the workflow. We are waiting the following actions from her to continue, and her Intranet dashboard says:
Priority 1: You must send a PO to order enough pencils for the next month based on the sales report.
Task: Send a purchase order
Inputs: Forecast report from the marketing department
Outputs: PO, vendor, item, quantity
Condition for completion: PO sent and order confirmation received from supplier
Priority 2: You must enter into the financial system the number of erasers rejected by production
Task: Data entry
Inputs: Reject count from production
Outputs: Number of rejects
Condition for completion: data entered and confirmed
We do a lot of troubleshooting on automated production systems having hundreds of thousands ladder steps (the workflow is too complex to be represented in a whole). When the system is blocked we look at each module and determine what inputs are missing to activation task completion.
Good luck!
This sounds like the sort of application for which BPEL is suited.
Of course you don't want to re-architect your system right now. But there are a number of BPEL implmentations out there, some of which include graphical editing tools. One of these might help you in your current situation, because they are good at handling scope and hiding detail. So I think you might derive benefit from drawing your workflow as a BPEL diagram even if you don't do anything else with the language.
The Wikipedia page lists several of the available implementations. In addition, Oracle's JDeveloper IDE includes a BPEL Diagrammer as part of its SOA suite; unfortunately it is no longer part of the standard install but it is still available. Find out more.
Try doing it in layers. You have the most detailed layer done, now add additional docs with the details hidden, grouped into higher-level business processes. Users should be able to safely ignore some of those details, but it's good for them to have visibility of how their part fits in to the whole.
You may need more than one higher-level document.
You can use Prezi to present this information to users in a lucid manner.
Split and present the work flow into phases such that the end user is easily able to identify the phase he is currently in.
Display as many number of phases as the number of inputs. The workflow starts with 6 different inputs so display the six different buttons on screen enabling the user to select the input that he wants.
On selecting the button zoom into the workflow depicting the next steps. This would also help the user to verify the actions that he has done so far to reach the current states.
This would also help the user to verify the actions that he has done so far to reach the current states. But this way of presenting could become cumbersome for the users as the number of steps that he has completed goes up. Say the user has almost reached the end of the workflow. To check for the next step he should go through all the steps which might frustrate the user.
To avoid this you can split the complete work flow chronologically into 3-5 phases. The phases should be split logically. The ultimate aim would be not to overwhelm the users with the full work flow. Personally i would try to avoid the task involving this workflow if presented the way you have shown. No offense. I bet you also feel the same.
Could give you a better picture if you could re-post the image after replacing the state names with numbers.
I'd recommend having the whole flow documented somewhere, but in terms of what is distributed to users, how about focusing on task-oriented flows? No one user will be responsible for the entire process I would imagine.
For example, let's say I have 2 roles, A and B, and 6 tasks, 1 through 6, executed in order. Each task may have multiple steps but is self-contained (e.g. download the file, review, run process, review again, upload). A does the even tasks and B does the odd tasks.
A would need to know about those detailed steps that comprise tasks 2, 4, and 6 but not about what goes on in 1, 3, and 5. So hand A a detailed set of flows for the tasks he is responsible for, along with a diagram that treats each task as a black box.
If the flow can't be made modular in this way, you may want to review the process itself to see why it's so complex.
How about showing an example of a workflow scenario, that is, showing the transitions in one possible passing through the workflow? You could cater this to a specific user profile and highlight the pertinent states, dimming the others. This allows them to get a clear idea of the transitions by seeing a real-life example.
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Say we are creating Acme CMS. This CMS web application will allow you to create an unlimited number of categories with sub-categories (unlimited depth), and each category can have 0+ content pages associated with it.
So this project, at a high level will have:
Front End
1. index page
2. category page with list of content pages
3. content page
Admin Control Panel
1. categories (add/update/delete)
2. pages (add/update/delete/)
Schema design
1. tables
2. stored procedures
3. data access layer
Questions:
I am using a bug tracker and Wiki, so how should I break this project down?
I am thinking of breaking each section (front end/ admin panel) down into individual pages, then writing simple user stories for each page (or theme).
When I have the user stories completed, I will then create a list of cases in my bug tracker representing features that I have to develop, along with an estimate for each one.
Am I breaking down this project properly? Any major gaps in planning that will make this project fail (in theory anyway!)
Please provide a detailed answer, maybe a general idea of what I should do, with a detailed example explaining it and why etc.
"I am thinking of breaking each section (front end/ admin panel) down into individual pages, then writing simple user stories for each page (or theme)."
Pages don't have stories. Users have stories. Pages are a thing you build to implement the user story.
The Theme -- if there is one for something this small -- is "managing content". Perhaps there are two themes: the collection of stories about writing/editing and the story(s) around browsing/reading.
Some users ('editors'?) want to create, organize, update and remove content so they can something [the question doesn't say]. You force them to use web pages because it's better - cheaper - faster than 5x8 cards and markers.
Some users ('readers'?) want to examine content and navigate so they can -- who knows? -- be happier and more productive at something. You force them to use web pages because it's somehow better than 5x8 cards held to a whiteboard with magnets.
You have stories about the theme of creating and managing content.
"then create a list of cases in my bug tracker representing features that I have to develop, along with an estimate for each one"
Right. And the features have to begin with data model first, then presentation in some useful form. Perhaps on pages. Indeed, once you have a model that satisfies the use cases in a broad way, you can fine-tune the presentation to make the model more usable.
"business layer & presentation is what I need to detail"
Model == business layer. They're the same thing.
Pages == presentation. Note. This is last. Once you have use cases and a model that supports those use cases, you can present your stuff to people so they can interact with the model.
As far as I can see you've got a few glaring gaps in your design, part of the features is implied (linking of categories and pages) and some are left out altogether (login for administrators, user management, preview etc). These are going to make up about half of your small application, and you better include them into the initial outline. Perhaps you may want to take a more systematic approach to designing the CMS. And there are at least three general routes you could take:
Design a domain model first, and then design business layer, then UI and data model.
Start with data model and build business layer and UI on top of it.
Model the UI first, then everything else.
Regardless of which path you would prefer to take (or combination of) there are some general guidelines:
Start with a big picture of work you want to automate. This is called “work scope”. “Big picture” here can be meant quite literally and although it can be a just a story describing the process, it is best to visualise using a rich picture that includes actions, artefacts, other applications, users etc. As for the “big” part of the equation the picture needs to encompass more than the intended product, be bigger than the segment of work you want to automate.
Then outline what specific work you want your product to take care of. This is usually referred to as “product scope”.
Make a list of user roles (or profiles) for your application, list of inputs and outputs, list of external interfaces.
Now you may want to start writing some user stories. You’ll need at least one per user profile, since you need to provide an illustration of all user perspectives.
At this point there going to be just enough information at your disposal to start a more precise modelling of the problem using either domain model, or UI model or data model, whichever you fancy or feel more comfortable with.
All of the steps are very much iterative. Once you understand a bit more about the application, its wider context and have a list of features that need to be implemented to meet the requirements you’d be in the position to give some very rough estimates and then go through a prioritisation process.
Needless to say that this is just a simplified framework and many software developers would take a different approach to designing an app, depending on their skills, needs, preferences etc. But it could be a good starting point to a more systematic evaluation of the problem you want to solve.
The "unlimited" part is broken... even GMail has an upper limit...
Edit: Although my answer got downvoted I think it is right. As soon as you talk with non-programmers the "unlimite" parts become very dangerous, and will likely stab you in the back. Also you can't really have a scalable data schema for unlimited nesting... but that should be obvious.