Member related hooking

The mod I am rewriting is an upload/download system. In the mod, any board member can upload and/or download.

One of things I wanted to do with was provide as many links as possible to a member’s uploads. I noticed that the IPS mods have links in 5 places. There may be more. If there are, let me know. :)

1. In the top 20 posters you can see links to topics/posts blog and gallery

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2. In the member list, similar information

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3. When viewing a profile, again similar information

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4. & 5. When a member has posted in a topic, and where viewing a member’s vCard, just icons no text

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I decided that I would try and ‘hook’ into those places in the skin with template hooks instead of skin edits. I wanted to it this way because:

  • I would need no skin edits and using hooking would mean that the links would appear in every skin on the board. (One of the key benefiits of hooking rather than skinning)
  • Template hooks were all that was needed, and would be trivial.

Unfortunately, neither of the above proved to be true. Because of some of the ways that data is passed into skins, it’s not possible to access all the variables a modder needs to access a ‘per member’ hook for a template. Member lists contain more than one member, so does top 20 posters, topic views. And surprisingly, I couldn’t even template hook the vCard. In the end I had to use 3 different methods:

  • Template hooks
  • Skin overloaders
  • Skin edits :(

This part of my blog is about how I achieved all the above. I’ll add more entries about this over the next few days, in the hope that it will help others who are modding.

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The Responsibility Revolution

businessmen

This week marked the one week anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and social commentators are beginning to notice another change in our behavior.

We all knew deep down that chasing money, greed and avarice wasn’t a good way to live our lives. But while things were good, and we were getting what we thought we wanted, we didn’t care. Debt was something to worry about another day, or to be repackaged and sold to someone else. Roosevelt said in 1937, “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.” Never a truer word said, yet we fell into the exact same trap seventy years on.

We are changing our habits though, for how long nobody knows, but changing we are. We now buy more fair trade products, drive less SUV’s and investing more money in socially responsible funds than ever before.

Not only are we changing the way we spend our money, and where, we seem to be slowly becoming more socially responsible than ever before. Receding are the days of Me, me, me being replaced with a sense of social responsibility. More people are volunteering than ever before. America has always had a backbone of socially conscious citizens who gave more than they took, but they always seemed the minority. It may be the case now that they won’t be for much longer.

For example, socially responsible funds are increasing almost daily. In 1995 there were fifty five mutual funds that were classed as socially responsible. That is avoided investments in things like oil, tobacco and chemicals. Today there are two hundred and sixty, with an estimated portfolio of over $2.7 trillion, or approximately 11% of the total investment in US markets.

Corporations are catching on to this trend, racing each other to be the greenest, most culturally and ethically aware. They have realized the shift in our spending habits and are trying to catch up. They have discovered that ethical companies attract loyalty and investment, which is the holy grail for most.

In a recent Time poll, nearly half of American consumers said protecting the environment should be given priority over growth and profit. This poll was taken not long ago, while we are still mired in recession. That says a lot about the new mindset of the average American. More SUV’s are being replaced by more economical cars, including the Prius every day. In the same poll, respondents said they would willingly pay $2000 more for a fuel efficient car than an traditional one.

This may be down to the ‘feel good factor’ of saving the planet while saving yourself money, but marks a significant shift in the buying habits of consumers. One General Motors never saw coming. Both it and the other large manufacturers are racing to get more fuel efficient vehicles into the marketplace in order to compete. European manufacturers have a head start as 35 mpg is the norm there, with their efficient diesel engines getting up to 70mpg!

Long may this trend continue. While we demand greener technologies and more ethical business practices, the companies will have to provide that. Otherwise, without demand for their products they will wither and die.

 

WEBWIRE – Monday, January 05, 2009

Ratingen (Germany) – CallCenterWorld 2009, Europe´s key event for the international call center sector, will be for the 11th time running the meeting point for more than 260 international exhibitors and more than 7,000 expected visitors. The trade show takes place from 16th -19th February at the Estrel Convention Center in Berlin, Germany. This year, InVision Software, a leading international provider of enterprise-wide workforce management (WFM) solutions, again shows the latest developments of its software InVision Enterprise WFM. At the InVision stand (hall 4, stand B4/6), visitors can see how new modules, numerous enhancements as well as an innovative approach to back office planning make optimised staff planning in call centres even more efficient and user-friendly.

Version 4.6.0 – New modules and enhanced features

With the new HolidayManager from InVision Enterprise WFM, users can schedule long-term absences as well as yearly vacation time, allowing for optimisation of vacation allotment with the help of the forecasted requirement. In addition, absence quotas can be displayed using HolidayManager, which employees can view using the Infothek Interactive Schedule module. And what’s more, HolidayManager simplifies the process of determining vacation periods.

The new JobProcessor module increases system performance by allowing optimisation processes to run in particular time slots or on free servers. Actions that use up a great deal of a computer’s resources can be delegated to free servers within a specific time frame, using JobProcessor. That way, this new module lightens the load on both the InVision application server (InVision Enterprise Server) and the InVision HTTP Server, yielding much higher software performance.

Aside from these two new modules, version 4.6.0 offers an array of new features for the time management modules that make editing punches and time accounts more effective. And thanks to the new mass update function users can modify master data across entire employee groups: Users no longer have to change each employee data set individually when making general contract adjustments that apply to an entire planning unit; it can now be performed in one step with mass updating. Another new feature is the employee filter that allows users to create individual employee lists using various master data criteria. Once each filter is saved, users can always go back to it using a drop-down list in the menu. That way, the user gains quick access to the employee groups often needed for creating and editing schedules.

Efficient front and back office planning

Moreover, InVision will demonstrate at CallCenterWorld an innovative approach to back office planning that helps to achieve the same service quality as in the front office by securing service level adherence for the processing of documents like faxes and e-mails. With regard to the service levels, the realisation of short waiting times for customers at the telephone is one of the most important factors for call centres. Responding to documents can also be done with temporal delay and thus is automatically subject to a lower service level. By optimised planning with the workforce management system InVision Enterprise WFM, this fact is taken into account already within the forecasting process by allocating prio­rities resp. a relevance weighting of the respective activities. Based on a regularly updated backlog status, the processing status of each document is incorporated in the forecast for the next day, together with the forecast of the number of new incoming documents and the forecasted number of required agents. In this way, an accumulation of unprocessed documents will be avoided. An automated alert is displayed as soon as a pre-defined, critical value is exceeded. Thus, capacity constraints are detected in time and the staff can be scheduled accordingly.

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Welcome to the Invision Skins site!

I JUST regged this domain and we have huge plans for it. I’ll be posting IPB skins on it very soon.

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