sidereports - do you use them, what should they be used for and what should they be called?

[Nicolaas Thiemen Francken - Sunny Side Up]

Hi Everyone

Does any of you use the side reports in the CMS?  Personally, I believe they are awesome - and I see a lot of potential for making additional ones.  However, I dont think they are used a lot.  They seem a bit forgotten. Do you get that feeling as well?

What do you think about their title "Side Reports".  I would prefer something like "filter pages".  What name would you like? 

I also think the side reports should solely be dedicated to finding pages:

* recently added

* recently edited

* without meta title

* products

* products without price

* pages without content

etc...

many of these already exist.

I am curious to know what you think.

Cheers

Nicolaas

[Fred Condo]

Nicolaas,

I agree that anything that could be done to expose (or develop, if need be) documentation on how to create more site reports would be very useful, especially for large or complex web sites. I like the current name, however, because, like the other tabs in the left panel, it is a noun phrase. "Filter pages" comprises a verb and its object, so it requires the user to shift mental gears.

Thanks!

-- 

Fred

[Nicolaas Thiemen Francken - Sunny Side Up]

Hi Fred

I dont like the name because side does not mean a lot and neither does report. I think we could be more specific. Could we do "Page Filter"?  I like the idea that everything on the left-hand-side relates to pages. 

[Fred Condo]

On Oct 28, 2009, at 10:05 AM, Nicolaas Thiemen Francken - Sunny Side
Up wrote:

Not to be nitpicky, but the current title is actually "Site Reports,"
meaning "Reports covering the entire (web) Site". I imagine it would
be possible to create reports that refer to data objects that are not
necessarily pages. Does that make sense?

[webbower]

I was going to point out the same typo Fred just pointed out. I think
its a valid name since it is used to store different reports on the
site. It may just present a way to show specific pages based on
certain criteria, but you could theoretically make a Report for the
ecommerce module indicating which Products (which are represented as
Pages) have sold the most or which have sold the least, or which Blog
Posts receive the most views, which in my mind seems more like a
Report to me. Fred also brings up a valid point about showing
DataObjects that aren't inherited from SiteTree.

Matt

[Sam Minnee]

Hi Nicolaas,

> Does any of you use the side reports in the CMS? Personally, I believe they
> are awesome - and I see a lot of potential for making additional ones.
> However, I dont think they are used a lot. They seem a bit forgotten. Do
> you get that feeling as well?

Recent work on the cmsworkflow module (which, unfortunately, will
require trunk/2.4) makes a lot more use of the Site Report area.

In addition, in 2.4, we've introduced a more sophisticated site tree
filter that replaces the checkboxes at the top: "show deleted pages",
"show changed pages", etc. You can build new filters for this in
modules - for example, the cmsworkflow module provides a "show pages
awaiting approval" option.

2.4 also allows for parameter fields on your site reports, so you add
add checkboxes, dropdowns, etc, to make a single site report do
multiple things. seems okay to me.

[Sam Minnee]

> 2.4 also allows for parameter fields on your site reports, so you add
> add checkboxes, dropdowns, etc, to make a single site report do
> multiple things. seems okay to me.

Oops "seems okay to me." was a typo. :-P