QWP/filters and URL: very confusing behavior. probably bug.

LabKey Support Forum
QWP/filters and URL: very confusing behavior. probably bug. Ben Bimber  2010-10-11 05:52
Status: Closed
 
we have an issue tracker summary webpart here:

https://xnight.primate.wisc.edu:8443/labkey/project/WNPRC/WNPRC_Units/Director/Executive%20Committee/begin.view?

if you click on the links you get a QWP of the issue tracker list, filtered to a certain view. this filter is applied by the URL. if you then toggle the view to 'all issues', you get zero issues. there is no visual feedback to show that any sort of filter is applied. i know enough about QWPs to see that, then hit 'remove view filter' from the views button. this reveals 4 total issues. most users wont get that and will be confused why there's no issues.

there are several possible bugs here:

1. perhaps revisit how the default 'all issues' view works in the issue tracker
2. revisit the lack of any sort of visual feedback on the QWP about those filters. that is possibly a more general problem
 
 
adam responded:  2010-10-13 16:09
The hard-coded filters (all, open, resolved, mine) in the issues list pre-date custom views and, as you've seen, don't work very well with them. All these menu items do is strip off the URL parameters and add hard-coded filter and sort parameters. They don't change the default view, so any default view filter will still get applied (just as it does when filtering and sorting the grid directly). We've talked about switching these filters to actual pre-defined custom views, which might more understandable.

Another thing to note: that issues webpart is not very useful. We could revamp it (e.g., put appropriate links on each open & resolved count), but we haven't bothered since using custom query grids is so much more powerful. As an example, see the issues "dashboard" we use on labkey.org: https://www.labkey.org/project/home/Developer/issues/Reports/begin.view. This works because we don't apply a filter in the default view of our issues list. Let me know if you want to see the LabKey SQL or meta data underlying this dashboard.

Adam
 
Ben Bimber responded:  2010-10-13 16:51
ok, i'll buy that.

the only reason we're using that issue webpart is b/c at the time i added it I dont think the grid version of the issues webpart was available. i may look at replacing it with the newer one.