New Customization feature screen (Do able?)

  • 23 April 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 142 views

Userlevel 3
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Good Morning, Good Evening, Good Afternoon.. 
today i would like to find out if something might be useful or not.

We are using the German equivalent to Acumatica called Lexbizz. 
It uses the same Infrastructure, just looks a bit cleaner and might be a bit improved at some points.
So far so good. Let me Start at the beginning:

History
We already have a lot of Customers using Customizations to fit their needs. 
Some Customizations are bigger and more complex, others are quite small.
But still - over time the number of customization projects increases and therefore our
need to create a workable base for our project leads to work with them. 

What would we like to do?
We would like to create certain new Screens. 
I created a small mockup in Paint to show what my ideas are. 
Please keep in mind that these will be in German. 
I will try to translate the most important things. 


1. Create a addon for the System-Management Screen. 
We would like to implement a new sitemap entry going to our new screen.
It should be called “Customizations” as Header and “function activate/deactivate”
should be clickable to go to Step 2. 
 


2. Prevent unauthorized People access to the screens

I dont have a screenshot for the next Page, because we are not sure what the best idea for this might be. My latest idea would be to implement a password screen. The Password should be changeable with a 2nd customization project that we renew every 2 or 3 weeks to ensure no one has access to those screens beside us. So first Question would be: Is that possible? 


3. New Screen / Sitemap Whatever. 
Lexbizz and Acumatica itself are offering different modules. 
The next screen should show these. I would like to implement custom imagines (see screen below) to show every module. The yellow triangle should show that the module is licensed but not activated.
The red triangle should show that the module is not licensed and therefore not editable. 
 


4. Next up would be the most important thing.
Our dream would be to implement every customization possible inside of one or two customizations that every customer gets. Our project leads should click on a module - for example E-Commerce and see every customization for that module. For example changing the combobox fieldvalues for the field “Title”. If they would like to activate that, they can just click on “Change”, select every customization they need and press activate. Just like it works in the license activate/deactivate screen. If a Customization doesnt work with another customization it of course should somehow show a error if u try to activate it. Like “You cant combine Customization 1 with Customization 2”. Below is just a screenshot of the already implemented standard from lexbizz/acumatica to activate licensing modules. 
 


Now.. In theory the idea sounds great to me and doable.
Yet my Questions are:

1. Is that doable?
2. Is that a smart idea? Asking because we would like to keep it that way for a potential eternity and combine most if not all customization inside of a big package instead of 200 small ones that are hard to keep track.
3. Any suggestions to improve the idea? 
4. Are they maybe already similar to ideas to take a look at?

Greetings!


2 replies

Userlevel 4
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In general, what I understand here is that you want to manage multiple inter-depended set of customizations for your end users. So first things first:

  1. You should combine all customization inside one package.  Then use Features/License like mechanism to activate customizations that your end users need.  This is how Acumatica does it and not sure it makes sense to reinvent the wheel.
  2. Acumatica uses Roles based permissions which I would think should help you configure access.
  3. Acumatica’s “less is better & simple” approach which helps avoid clutter and confusion (most of the time ;-)). We simply don't display elements (modules, screens, fields) if they are not licensed, activated or have permissions.  Anything can be done, display those triangles, etc. which seems big overhaul but again, not sure it make sense to reinvent the wheel.
  4. Having a screen that helps see customizations available for modules and configuring them sounds awesome.  However, I see it going back to existing mechanisms (licensing, features, roles/permissions) that should help achieve the same thing (if not all).

Having what I have said above, and without sounding dismissive (or negative), its just my own interpretation of what I have understood from your details in this forum post.  So treat this as my 2 cents, and hope it provides you with some answers you are looking for. Thanks!

Userlevel 3
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  1. You should combine all customization inside one package.  Then use Features/License like mechanism to activate customizations that your end users need.  This is how Acumatica does it and not sure it makes sense to reinvent the wheel.
  2. Acumatica uses Roles based permissions which I would think should help you configure access.
  3. Acumatica’s “less is better & simple” approach which helps avoid clutter and confusion (most of the time ;-)). We simply don't display elements (modules, screens, fields) if they are not licensed, activated or have permissions.  Anything can be done, display those triangles, etc. which seems big overhaul but again, not sure it make sense to reinvent the wheel.
  4. Having a screen that helps see customizations available for modules and configuring them sounds awesome.  However, I see it going back to existing mechanisms (licensing, features, roles/permissions) that should help achieve the same thing (if not all).


Hey, after intensive thinkering and thinking i would still like to test our “more isnt always better, but maybe cooler” way. I think that with a lot of Customizations it makes sense to have a System running beside the Features/License screen, to keep a good overview. 

I agree, that most features are already in acumatica, therefore reinventing the wheel doesnt make sense. Therefore the only new new invention would be Step 3 - creating a new Screen or Sitemap (I dont know if it would be possible to connect to sitemaps with each other? So that u can click on the button highlighted in image one and you get redirected to another sitemap, that is normally invisible?) with the Modules.

This leads me to my question for today:

What is the best approach to achieve a design like the one on my Image? Or atleast similar? I thought about creating pictures with a editing software and using those in a specific size. If a module isn’t active, i would just hide the picture or replace it with a grey one that isn’t clickable. If u click on a picture of a module that is activated u then would be redirected to a screen very similar to acumaticas Features/License Screen, but individually for this Module and those Customization Projects. 

I tried to find something on google but i couldn’t find a way to display several clickable images next or under each other on a new Screen. (depending on the size of each image..) 
Would be glad if someone could help me with this. 

Greetings. 
 

 

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