Planning user interface enhancements

There have been several updates made to the planning view in this release. A new date selection dialog has been added and we've made a few changes to make editions easier to work with. New items have been added to the edition contextual menu to make accessing commonly used functions faster, editions and events can now include description text and slot validation information has been made clearer.

Easier date selection

We've made it easier to go straight to a chosen month or year from the planning view. Click the new date selection icon and choose the month from the date selection window, as shown in the example below.

New items on the edition contextual menu

To make it easier to work with editions, new actions have been added to the edition contextual drop down menu, available from the "Schedule" button in the edition window. The items available in the menu will vary according to the state of the edition.

If the edition is in a 'Draft' state, that is it has not been scheduled, then the Copy, Edit details and Delete menu items are available.

An example of the contextual menu for a draft edition is shown below.

If the edition is in a draft state and also contains slots for which there is a version conflict, then a "Resolve conflicts" menu item is included, providing easy access to the conflict resolution centre.

The image below shows the contextual menu for an edition that contains a version conflict.

If an edition is no longer in a draft state- if it is scheduled, published or expired, then only the "Copy" item will be displayed in the menu.

Adding descriptions to events and editions

You can now add description text to events and editions, so planners can add comments for other users, for example. The text can be added when the event or edition is created, or updated from the event or edition editing window.

An example of the new edit edition window with the comments field is shown below.

Save to edition remembers your last choice

To speed up the process of choosing an edition to save content to, "Save to edition" now remembers the last edition that you saved content to.

In the example below we're choosing to save the "Summer madness sale" banner to an edition.

The Save to edition dialog is now displayed with the last event and edition that we saved content to selected. If we had previously saved this content to an edition, than the edition we previously saved content to would be selected, otherwise the last edition that any content was saved to will be selected.

Slot validation improvements

Slot validation information is now displayed when a slot is added to an edition, indicating to planners which fields are required and which contain valid information.

In the example below, the "Banner slot with picture field" is set up to require a valid URL and no valid URL has been entered. If a valid value is not supplied for this field, then the slot is not valid. The edition cannot be scheduled until valid information is entered in this slot. Previously you would only be warned when attempting to schedule the edition.

Slots will also be validated when the fields within them are updated.

Multiple users working on the same edition- improvements

We've made it easier to deal with the situation where multiple users are working on the same edition at the same time. When a user opens an edition to schedule it or resolve conflicts, that user is made aware of any changes made concurrently by another user. Modified date and modified by fields have also been added to the edition window, to help identify which user made the change to an edition and when they made it.

The example below shows this in more detail. One user is preparing to schedule an edition that contains two slots

At the same time, another user has edited this edition, adding a slot to it, so it now contains 3 slots.

The first user now attempts to schedule the edition and presses the OK button to confirm.

The user is warned that the edition has been updated since they opened the edition for editing. The edition cannot be scheduled until the user checks the edition and chooses whether to schedule it again.

The user can check the modification date and modified by field to check who made the change and when.

The edition window is refreshed. If the user is happy with the changes made by their colleague, then they can click Schedule button to schedule the edition.

Other changes

In the editions window, we've made it easier to tell when an empty slot requires content. As shown in the image below, if a slot is empty and does not require content, then it will be marked with a tick, but if you need to add content to a slot to make it valid then a "requires content" label will be shown in the slot. The edition cannot be scheduled until all the slots are valid.

We've also made a change so that it's no longer possible to browse to a deleted event or edition. So if you have an edition or event bookmarked that is then deleted, browsing to that event or edition will now cause a "this event or edition has been deleted" message to be displayed.