Connie_Fu wrote:
Martti
The Time Period Do Not Exist alert are often seen on resource allocation and similar portlets. They would be due to the limitation of internal time slice range, rather than the actual calendar periods being missing. Perhaps the message could be enhanced to be more descriptive saying something along the line of "The data you requested do not exist". :)
Connie
Telling a user that the data does not exist, is frustrating at least ("I know its there!"), scarey at worst ("What? Its gone?").
A better message won't completely remove these user concerns. Still, I might try a combination of things:
- add something to the portlet name that describes the time range covered by the porlet's timeslice and/or timeperiod source (try to set user expectations)
- change error message to "Requested Data lies outside the configured datasource range." (user expecations are beyond portlet's capabilities, the data hasn't been deleted)
Expect the user will then attempt to use the 'configure' action to get at more data (I tried this, before I knew better!), and be frustrated since he can't change the timeslice parameters in order to get what he wants. As long as we have timeslices, and closed time periods, we will have these user frustrations.
Dale.