Sanjay Mehrotra

Feedback 05.00.00 is finally here

smehrotra@acuitisolutions.com — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:00:00 GMT

So after a lot of hiccups, I can finally say that I have a version of the new feedback module ready for testing.. There has been quite a few bumps along the way including

a) my decision to use the ajax control toolkit - since I'd started developing against version 4.6.2 initially which was working fine with the core implementation of AJAX, I'd thought I'd be all peachy when I try and move everything to a newer version of the core (ie 4.8.0)... However when I did this, I found out that something had changed in the core implementation of AJAX from 4.6.2 to 4.8.0 which was preventing me from loading my controls in Page_Init like I had been doing in the past. I spent a good 3-4 weeks trying to figure it out and ask core team members for help without any success. Finally I figured out a workaround using javascript which worked out groovy.
b) trying to prepare for my MCPD Upgrade exams - my full time job mandated that I get my MCSD.NET certifications upgraded to MCPD EA ASAP and I spent a few weeks trying to prepare/take the exams.
c) trying to figure out what/how to handle the display of the feedback submitted - being that version 5.0.0. has customizable fields, I was at a loss as to how to present this to the user in a manner that made sense and at the same time allowing for it to be customizable. Finally just this morning, I got my inspiration and got it done in about half an hour. Goes to show that when something is ready to be completed, it will be done, till that point, you can waste days trying to figure it out and it wouldn't happen...

Ok, enough of the excuses, here's some information about the new version of the feedback module.

It does have customizable fields like I'd mentioned in my earlier posts on the forums.
It does use the AJAX Control Toolkit (version 1.0.20229)(just for the Configuration page) so this means that this module may not work for those who are either already using a different version of the toolkit or for users who can't use AJAX.
There are features in this (like creating a dropdown list/radio buttons/checkbox list) off a database query which I will implement in coming releases. The core functionality (adding the table columns) has been done in this version but will be built upon in future releases.
The ability to setup roles as send to email addresses has been FINALLY added to this release... (YIPPEEEEE )....

Ok, now on to some screen shots.

General Layout/Look and feel

The first one shows the feedback form with a couple of fields and Captcha turned on. For each of the fields, you can turn on/off a comments field which would then allow the user to submit comments as to why he/she was answering a question the way he/she did.

You can see that all the fields are showing up on the same row and captcha is showing up in its own row towards the bottom.
Now here's another screen shot of the same form with the fields slightly re-arranged.

So bottom line is that you can layout your form with customizable fields in any way you want. Internally I'm using tables to hold the form fields and I determine at run-time how to lay out the fields based on what the user has selected as his/her layout options.

Feedback Configuration
Now on to configuration - In prior versions, we were used to making changes for the settings by clicking on the settings menu action item and tweaking the fields provided to us. This has been completely replaced by Feedback Configuration which also shows up in the action menu.
On clicking Feedback Configuration we're taken to the following page.

Each of these sections is used to manage a different part of the feedback module. This was the one area that I decided to use the AJAX Control toolkit (using Accordion Panes) to organize the individual areas into categories and display it to the user in a logical manner. This section is also AJAX enabled which means that when you click a button or move an item, it refreshes just the section that needs to be refreshed giving a better user experience (IMHO)...

General Settings

Above is a screenshot when you expand the General Settings section. Some of the fields should be familiar from older versions of the feedback module while others are brand new.
New things to point out include
a) Additional Send to : You can now specify roles as the Send to destination. What this means is that the system will go thru whatever roles you've setup and identify all the users who have email addresses and send them a copy of the feedback that was submitted. I believe this was asked for back in the day and I am happy to finally be able to include it in this version.
b) Disregard Module ID: this is sort of a work around for the fact that if you delete your instance of the feedback module from a page and re-add it, it is assigned a new module id. When you then try and moderate posts that were not created using the new instance, it wouldn't allow you to moderate them since we'd pass the Module ID as one of the parameters to the sproc we used to update the status.
c) Hide DNN Labels : Some people had asked for a way to not show the little circle with tool tips besides any DNN Labels - well you can now use this too.

Category/Subject Settings
These sections didn't change much from the prior release except for being broken out into individual sections in 5.0.0. Screen shots are given below.

Both categories and subjects still use the Lists feature which was introduced back in the 4x version of the module and the idea is that this will stay or be improved upon in subsequent releases as neccessary. We added the ability to setup categories as Send to in 4.4.2/4.4.3 which is still maintained in this version.

Current Form Settings
This section drives the front page of the module in determining which form to display to the user. Starting from this release of the module, you can setup fields which can then be associated with a form which is then made visible on a given instance of the feedback module that is dropped on to a page.
Some things to point out here.
a) Ability to customize which field is used as an email field - In prior versions since we had hard coded an email field, we had the ability to send to the user who submitted the feedback a copy of the feedback post. In order to maintain this functionality, we now allow for you to choose which field on the form is the email field. If you then select "Send copy to submitter" or "Allow optout" then this allows the module to grab the value that is entered in the field and use it as an email address.
b) Show description: You can enter a description for the form you're setting up and if you check the "Show description" checkbox, it will now be visible to the user as a message at the top of the module. This can be used to provide a short description as to the purpose of the form, etc.
c) Active: In some rare scenarios, you might want to leave the form you've setup on a page but make it invisible for a short duration of time. Using the "Active" checkbox, you can turn off a form and the user will be presented with a message indicating that the form is not active.

Current Form Fields
This is one of the areas of this module which I've enjoyed working on the most. I've seen other implementations of custom fields using XML, etc but decided to do the feedback one slightly differently. I'll wait and see as to whether this is a good way of doing this or not and maybe make further improvements to this as I get feedback from users in the DNN community.

Basically you use the two list boxes to control what you want to make visible on the feedback form as well as how to layout your form.
The Available and Assigned list boxes should make sense as is (Available means you can add it to your form, and assigned means it's already added to your form).
Using the buttons to the right of the Assigned list box, you can then control the order in which to display the fields (using up and down arrow buttons) and also control whether the field should show up on a new row ("N") or whether the field is a required field ("R") on the form. A required field simply means that the user must provide a value for it before the form is submitted.

Add/Edit Fields
Finally we come to the Add/Edit fields section of the feedback configuration. This section is used to manage the individual fields that you create using the feedback module. Remember that you can create multiple fields and not have to use all of them on the form itself. Additionally you can also re-use fields you've created on other forms (for example if you have another instance of feedback on a different page with a different form)...

You can create a variety of different types of fields including text, numeric, dates, date and time, checkboxes, radio buttons and drop down lists. With the text (alpha numeric), you can also define a regular expression which would then be used to validate the entry before the form is submitted.

View Comments/Submitted Feedback
Finally we come to the View Comments section which has completely being revamped to handle the customizable fields that we've added in this release.

You can now decide which fields you want to make visible on the view comments page by simply selecting the fields from the settings page of the View Comments control.

This works the same way as the Current Form Fields section from Feedback Configuration. However in addition to choosing the order in which you want the fields to display, you can also choose to display the comments value that a user entered for any given feedback post.

Ok, this should be enough for now. The next steps here are to send out copies of the module to the beta testing team which is being sent out as soon as I finish with this blog post. Once I get feedback from the beta testers, I will submit the module to the release tracker and then we wait and see what happens from there. I am not expecting the testing process to be easy especially since there are so many new features that have been added to the module as well as a complete revamp of the internal code itself.

My thanks to those of you who have been VERY VERY patient with me thus far and I hope that the module will hopefully be of some use to those that do decide to implement it on their DNN sites.

Thanks

Sanjay Mehrotra

Almost there with new Feedback Release and other end of year reflections

smehrotra@acuitisolutions.com — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:00:36 GMT

After about two months of testing and re-submitting of the feedback module to the release tracker for approval, I can finally say that I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel. With the very rigorous testing which both Sebastian and Matthias have put the new feedback module through, I am hoping that this is going to be a much better module than it's predecessor.
A big thank you goes to both of them for guiding me along the way and ensuring that I was able to "fix" a lot of the legacy issues that I had inherited from the 3x version of the module.
Some of the things which I've learnt as part of the release process which might be helpful to others down the road include

Make sure to clean up gemini issues as pertains to your module - A big shout out goes to Alex for being the Gemini Watch dog on this and ensuring that all t's are crossed and i's are dotted....
Make sure you update your release notes to match the Gemini Issues.
Double check and triple check your SQL scripts - Since Sebastian personally looks through this and he's a SQL Server expert, remember that he'll find stuff that you'd think are ok due to prior "passes" on your module but are no longer acceptable. I have personally found this to be a great step in the right direction to the extent that it has got me in the mode of doing the same for my oracle provider which I think is a very positive thing.
Don't be surprised/dissapointed if you get multiple "failed module" emails from release tracker. With regards to the feedback module, I think I can safely say that it must have been resubmitted at least 8-10 times since October when i first started the submission process. Initially I thought that this would be a reflection of my poor coding skills on the module itself but this has not been the case. Most of the times the module was failed because of "legacy" issues which were finally being cleaned up in the new 4.4.2 version. I am expecting that with future releases this amount of re-submitting tapers off since we have got most if not all of the legacy issues out of the way.
Work towards getting your module to be XHTML compliant. This is not yet a requirement from the core but I had already started doing this with some of my other DNN projects and it was relatively easy to make the neccessary changes to the feedback module too. Most of this is very simple stuff like closing out your
tags and using lower cases instead of upper cases with HTML elements. A big thank you goes to Timo Breumelhof with helping me out with the testing of this aspect.

I am sure there are other things I can mention with regards to the testing process but these are a couple that come to mind immediately.

This has also been a very interesting year for me and as we start winding down the days for the year, I wanted to pause and reflect on some of the positive things in my life that have occured this year. My little baby boy was born on March 19th which was one of the most happiest moments in my life. With each passing day I learn new things about babies which I had no idea about which is always exciting. One of the most positive things I've learnt this year is to be more patient - and I attribute this completely to being a dad. I can go on and on about this aspect alone but will leave it at just that :).

Professionally, this has been a good year too. I have been very fortunate to be on a huge DNN project for the health care industry which went live on September 1st, 2007 and has thus far had 3 point releases which added a ton of features to the application. Being part of this project has helped me understand the dynamics invovled in managing a huge enterprise level web application project which had over 50 people as part of the team and had different components to it which were outside my team's control. From managing source control to deploying builds, it has been a very good learning experience and I can definetely say that I am ready for the next HUGE DNN project without any hesistation at all.

As I reflect on the year, I also would like to pause and think of things that have happened and how I could have done things differently and one of the areas that comes to mind is my invovlement with the feedback module as well as DotNetNuke in general. I will start off by saying that I know I could have done a better job with the feedback module. Part of my problems were work related - being overwhelmed with daunting deadlines to be met. The other part was underestimating what effort would be required to be able to be an effective "Project Lead" for the feedback module. When I was first asked to join as a Project lead, I had completely misunderstood this to be a simple effort with some time spent on the updates for the module as well as responding to questions/issues on the website. However, when you factor in the time and effort put into doing just these mentioned items together with being a full time dad and having another two full time jobs (my real job and also managing the oracle data providers for DotNetNuke), it becomes imperative that one fully understands what "time management" really means. I am hoping that with some of the changes I've made in my personal life I can better manage my responsibilities here as well as in other aspects of my life, but only time as well as input from others will tell. I'm always open to suggestions and constructive criticism and hopefully I can make 2008 to be a much better year for myself as well as for the feedback module in general....

New Updates for the feedback Module (version 4.4.2)

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:20:57 GMT

After a long hiatus, I can now return to the changes for the feedback module as I had intended. Part of the delay in getting out the newer version has been my fault - switching jobs and trying to adjust to the new job culture. The other part has also been trying to adjust to having a new baby in the house which in itself is a huge project. :)
For this I do apologize to everyone in the community in general and hope to correct this in the upcoming weeks/months by being more proactive in my approach.
There are a couple of changes for 4.4.2 of the feedback module which have been submitted for approval to the core via the release tracker. One of the major changes has been the ability to setup moderation roles so that people besides the Site Administrator can moderate posts submitted via the feedback form. This brings the project in line with for example the repository module and forums module which offers similar capabilities.
I have also added the stubs for creating the same capability for Lists creations (subjects and categories) and the goal here is that if I receive positive feedback regarding the moderation roles, I will extend this same capability to the Lists Creation section too.
Another major enhancement for 4.4.2 has been the ability to setup categories as email send to addresses. This means that you can setup multiple email addresses as a category and when the feedback is submitted, it will now be sent to multiple email destinations. This allows for one to create different email destinations based on the category (which I believe was a feature request when 4.4.1 came out).
There are other minor changes in this version including the ability to modify the items displayed in the view comments section (namely the ability to hide/show the name/email and subjects) of submitted feedback posts as well as some general cleanup to the subject id's, category ids which were being sent/viewable from certain areas instead of the values for these fields.

I am not sure how long the release process will take but I am hoping that in the coming days, I will be able to get the 4.4.2 version of the module released for general consumption. I already have the version 4.4.3 in the works which will include a new administration interface which will allow for the creation of new feedback form fields.

Thanks

Sanjay Mehrotra

Update on Feedback Module and other items pertaining to feedback Module

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 08:00:00 GMT

First off, my apologies for being AWOL for a couple of days. I have a 37 week pregnant wife and although her pregnancy has been un-eventful till date, it's finally beginning to become eventful. She might have a kidney infection and I was in the hospital with her for a couple of days...

Now, with regards to the feedback module- the hold up has been 100% because of me. The core had sent me notification that the source version was failing installation and that's why it was being held up. However I could not respond to their notification till earlier today and was able to quickly resolve the problem.

Here's the problem - the core requires the source version to be installable exactly like the install version on any DNN site. This means that it needs to have it's own manifest file (*.dnn) which will then instruct the PA Installer on how to place the files in the right folders. Since I chose to use the project method for creating the feedback module (i.e has a compiled dll instead of the source being placed in the app_resources folder), I have to get the source version to place the right project files in the right places. As everyone might be aware, the project files typically have an AssemblyInfo.vb file.
The problem arose when the PA Installer tries to parse the AssemblyInfo.vb files - since there are two files with the same name, they get overridden.
The fix for this is creating another zip file (I called it resources.zip) which contains the vbproj and vb source files). Inside this zip file, I had to maintain the folder structure for the project which allowed the PA Installer to correctly place the files in the right places....

I also use NANT to automate the building process and I had a small bug in my NANT script which was not including the resx files in the source version......

I uploaded the fixes earlier today and the core has now been able to verify my changes. I am hoping that there are no more hold ups and we should be ready to release this (hopefully this week)...
If someone is having problems waiting for the official release, please feel free to contact me and I can see how to work with you personally to get your problem solved...

Sanjay

Feedback module passed the release tracking program

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 08:00:00 GMT

The feedback module has just passed the release tracking program and I'm expecting it to be available very shortly. I have to find out from the core whether there is a beta testing period or whether it is released as is to the general community.
I was able to sneak in the captcha features in the upcoming release (v 4.04.01) and it is exciting to see some of the feedback generated by the community on features they would like to see in upcoming versions.