Lessons from a user's prospective

One of the most imporat thing I have learn in software development is: Your application was never completed not unless it was test and used by the user.

What does this mean? as a developer there are times while we develop some module where we thought that it's already complete and ready for deployment. Even if you have some group of beta testers who thinks that its already bug free.

User's knows best. It's the only guarantee that you can tap to your shoulders and say hey its already complete. It's all because most users have been doing their job for almost the rest of their lives and therefore they have the best position in understanding on what is right and not.

And since I have been working on them right now, yet another adjustment on the interface occur. The concept of my system is quite strict since it follows the concept of networking where in the user don't have to encode and encode the things that has been encoded already. The concept of typing over and over again exisit on their current system. Though its flexible enough to handle changes but then its a burden to most users. Why would a user type it all over again when in fact you database is shared via network?

My current system is on a plumbing mode. I act more of a plumber that installs and repairs the pipe of our network. And since most vital part of the system is not up and running then you have to customize it in order to fix those problems. Just for the sake of running the system, inorder for the user to be familiarize with the module.

Here are the shots:

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One of the minor adjustment was an additional combobox with a label right beside it was the status. Since the reconnect issuance of job order is not yet working I have decided that to allow the user to have the control in selecting the type of status.


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Deletion of materials. Most of the time once the customer was connected some materials has been issued to his location. Once he was disconnected and applied for reconnection the previous materials should not appear but rather it depends upon the new set of issuance. By this module it will help solve the problem temporarily as I make my way through the completion of the system.


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Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Printing. The default printing was a simple sorting of date where the latest one is always on the top mode. What happen was as I present the printing of reports the user wants something like once the report was printed it should not print or he does not wan't to count the number of issued reports and enter it on the module of the reports. The solution was the reference no.
We came up with the agreement that all he have to identify was the last reference number then the system will do the rest.

Notice two things on the system. First was the date, it always get the current date via server to avoid modification of date and time. Second was as the user click's the issuend summary report automatically the module would get the lates reference number which is an autonumber generated by SQL Server.

I just hope this will solve everything. Back to work and I just hope I can kick the users butt and tell him would you mind to please stop being very demanding. Hehehehe...

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