Thursday, March 28, 2002
Gotta figure out why my list of subscriptions (supposed to show on the right) went and got busted. I didn't touch anything. Honest.
Heh. Nice interface for managing user and/or group level security. As part of my ongoing battle against Crystal, I've come across what I believe to be the interface used for limiting data displayed in a report based on a user or group of users.
I'm not completely sure, but I think you're required to know some kind of programming language (not sure about the squiggle brackets, but everything else looks pretty straight-forward database table and field names). But what if you don't know anything about the tables? And if you did, how would you test your syntax? The screen here talks about "employee name," not username ... how do you tie that together with the actual logged on user?
Compare that with (ahem) our effort. Within a larger admin interface, you see a list of reports that a particular group is able to see. Assuming you've enabled security (which, in this screen, we have based on DIVISION), the following screen pops up when you click on the report link.
The list of available divisions comes straight from the database, and the administrator simply clicks "Excluded" to include that division's data, or "Included" to exclude it. Screen quickly repaints after whatever selection you've made.
Every report parameter we offer has the ability to associate security with it or not, so you could feasibly set up a group that can only see actuals, but not plan, or data from a particular month, or whatever. Very flexible. And it keeps the choices visible to the end user, who might not know how to construct a query against the database.
Here's the solution regarding the bonus plan: it's all based on revenue. If a consultant bills hours, and receives a bonus, and either (a) the client doesn't pay, or (b) the company is later required to give some money back, then (believe it or not) the consultant can expect to have the appropriate bonus amount deducted from his next paycheck.
Yikes.
Copyright 2002 © Robert K. Brown
