openerp-expert-framework team mailing list archive

[Olivier Dony <odo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Viktor,

On 04/24/2012 10:45 AM, Viktor Nagy wrote:
> as per client request I rewrote the share addon to copy the window action's
> help text too, and make the new shared user with menu tips enabled.

The term "rewrote" makes me a little bit worried, as this should only require a
small extension of the original module, right?


> I would be happy to make a merge request, but would like to ask first, if it's
> likely to be accepted or not. The reason why I ask is that first I thought I'm
> implementing  a new feature, as there were no signs of any contradictory
> implementations, but than I've noticed that the shared user was created with
> menu_tips=False on purpose (at least in the sense of having menu_tips=False in
> the code).

Yes the menu tips were disabled on purpose for external users because the way
they are written makes them targeted at normal users of the system. The tip
itself will usually describe features that are not available to the external
users, and as such it will be mostly misleading, useless at best. (BTW the
majority of external users will have read-only access)


> So could someone tell me, if this change would be accepted, and if not, then
> what's the rationale behind the current decision?

Your patch might certainly be useful for certain kinds of use, such as for
companies who adapt the default tips in order to make them specifically helpful
for external users. Was this the case for your customer?

Perhaps you could publish this feature in a separate module on OpenERP Apps,
with a clear note in the description that explains that this is not recommended
with the default menu tips? I'm sure it would be useful for the community.


> My reason for showing the menu tips is that the reason why menu tips exist is
> to help new users, and to me it's a realistic assumption that shared users are
> the least trained in OpenERP. Thus every extra info that can help them should
> be there.

It's certainly the case, but it seems to me that the default tips would be more
misleading for these external users than no tip at all, wouldn't they?

Keep in mind that the current strategy of OpenERP is to be as simple and
intuitive as possible out-of-the-box, just by looking at the screens. This
means we'd rather improve the UX to make it easier to understand at a glance
for all users, than include more tips, descriptions and help in the screens.
More text = more stuff to maintain = more translations to do ;-)
That being said, the menu tips will likely stay in 7.0, and probably be
enhanced to allow rich text and media. But they should be used sparingly and
their content would still be targeted at the main users first (e.g. what should
you do when you're starting out with an empty list), not so much at read-only
external users, who should presumably understand what to do with the documents
they were shared.

What do you think?