Blue Prairie, Inc.

Tonight I updated the schema to add a few fields we decided would be useful after reviewing various scenarios.  We added:

1. cust_id_alt - a field that can store an alternate customer id
2. doc_sub_type - a field that can contain addition document type information

I updated the xml schema and updated the xmlizer and parsers.  In addition, I finished the following

1. Produced 12,000+ test records for the old_invoice document type
2. Imported 12,000 xml records into the control database
3. Updated the ultimate invoice parser and template
4. Updated the ultimate details parser and template (adding cust_id_alt) to the template

This weekend I've worked on adding search/filtering to lists.  To do this, I've added text input fields to templates then used the mergeblock tags to populate the fields with values.  I'm using hidding fields in the tempate to pass-back values to the plug-in.  In general, I've very pleased with how this works although I would like to experiment with abstracting html code into mergeblock tags rather than just populating parameters for template-based HTML elements using mergeblock tags.  Perhaps this will be in a future release.

For now, the solution is worked well and I've developed a number of functions to handle date range searches and other specialized functions.

Here is a snip from the new example invoice list template...

In this example, we have a INVOICE search filter that performs a substring match against the invoice number field in th list, a Date from and to field for date ranges and a Total from and to total range filter.  We also have a Cust Ref filter so that the customer can filter by a customer reference string such as PO number.  The Filter results button submits the post fields back to the template and the plug-in is re-invoked picking up the filter values and re-processing the database query.

The fields are resident in the template.  All populated values are stored as normal mergeblock variables and are passed via the mergeblock processor just like any other mergeblock parameter.  Try it out by logging into test_user (call me for password if you don't know it).

Another nice feature is that the date from and to fields may be positive or negative numbers.  A zero represents 'today'.  A positive number represents n days in the future.  A negative number represents n days in the past.  So to get a listing of invoices for the last 90 days, just set date_from as "-90" and date_to to "0".

The nice thing about this is that you may bake these parameters into the URL and email them or attach them to a meny or other hyperlink.  So, you can easily create a menu link "Invoices last 30 days" and "Invoices last 60 days" with date values of -30,0 and -60,0 respectively.

It's very simple for even non-programmers to understand and model.