subject:
Zhang Wei Wu
Hello. Recently I am working a new application which is supposed to
finish at the end of this month. I call it LDAP Contact Manager but the
name can change when there are good ideas.
The goal is to develop a contact information management application that
works with LDAP, store the contact data in ldap in the same dn context
as the egroupware accounts. (actually, in ou=Accounts). This system will
eventually grow up to be a human resource and subscriber (with
registration module) management system.
In my new application there will be these features:
flexible schema design
could use inetorgperson schema or any other. No fixed fields stored in
the module. If you do “grep -iR address ldap_contact_mgr” you will get
no result because no field name is stored in source. This app does not
use db at all and does not have it’s own db tables.
flexible fields preference
The user can set in preference which fields she/he likes to have.
multi-language
can handle different versions of one same contact. e.g.
dn: cn=Arne Götje, ou=People, dc=realss, dc=com
cn: Arne Götje
cn;lang-de: Arne Götje
cn;lang-zh: 高盛华
sn: Götje
sn;lang-de: Götje
sn;lang-zh: 高
givenName: Arne
givenName;lang-de: Arne
givenName;lang-zh: 盛华
More powerful search
LDAP search is going to be used, each fields can be searched. Search
form generated from schema.
Duplicated entry detection
Detect duplicate entry and prompt users about it. (maybe ajax will be used)
Integrate with account management and registration module
User who registered can be managed by this application, and one single
click a contact becomes a user.
At this moment we have a lot of applications that more or less can do this:
* addressbook application by milos
* contact center by Frank
* CK-ERP HR application
So I must first explain why I am re-inventing the wheel.
I have two options, modify an existing application or create my own. I
feel it’s even more difficult to work on an existing application because
they are written in different ways. Most of them either gets written in
the way that store contact information only in database, or it’s
structure is not suitble for the flexibility my customer needed.
I must explain that the new application is not like most other
applications on how it is designed:
Most other applications gets written with a structural design in the
head of a developer then modify it according to user’s requirements (or
for people supporting business use, the business requirements). And the
user’s requirement is not clear before the application is written. There
is no user waiting for it, and if it comes, it is good but no guarantee
that it can be used in this and that situation.
My application is not written because I want it happen. It is because
there are business need and it could better satisfy the requirements if
I write it in this way and that way. I talked to users a lot of times, I
talked to other consultants and support desk people a lot of times then
decided what feature should it have and how should it work. I didn’t
knock my head and say “come on let’s roll with a new application and
it’s cool”. It /is/ cool but didn’t do it because it is cool. There are
users waiting to use my application, once it is written several
thousands of contact entries will immediately gets into the system and
it will start to serve people and I must (almost) guarantee it works for
several business cases.
I did a few investigation and it seems to me Contact Center is the
closest one to my customer’s business cases. I have a rough calculation
that starting from Contact Center is a bit more expensive then starting
from scrach by myself and takes longer. But if other people come up and
share the work then starting from Contact Center is a better option for
me, thus we don’t have to have 4 seperate applications for managing
people information.
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