RFC: New derived field definitions

[Christian Robottom Reis]

On Fri, Nov 21, 2003 at 06:14:10AM -0800, Joel Peshkin wrote:
> The ones I can think of are.....
> 
> "days since last reassigned"
> "days since (commented on or status updated) by assignee"
> etc....
> 
> It seems that there must be a way to do this in a general case without 
> excessively clutterng the UI.  Unfortunately, that way is not jumping 
> out at me.  

An approach is to have a "manager's corner" page, which has pre-cooked
queries with very limited parametrization that you can just click-n-see.
It could be categorized in some way, and would be a way to get users
that aren't so form-proficient to find what they want at minimum hassle.
The query page is really for developers and QA, IMHO -- most users have
simpler needs (as the bug entry wizard shows) and less time to learn the
interface (c.f. Nielsen's work on average time per task on the Web and
the importance of brain-dead easy UI for the average user). It's a good
way to present high-level queries such as "Progress made this week" and
"Bugs closed in version X".

We have something like this at BMO (okay, not for manager's, which
indicates that perhaps manager's corner isn't the best analogy) on the
frontpage, with the "bugs reported today" link.

Take care,
--
Christian Robottom Reis | http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 261 2331