Sample Application: Skills Matrix
One of the features of the Services Manager sample application is skill set management. The skills of consultants are tracked using the Skill object, a child of the Contact object. Entering skills in the native user interface involves navigating to the Contact’s record and clicking the New button in the Skills related list and then selecting a skill type and a rating.
Users of the application have requested a more streamlined way to enter and view skills, called the Skills Matrix. The requirements of the Skills Matrix follow:
Reduce navigation clicks—Provide a single screen for entering and viewing all skill-related information. The screen shows the skills and ratings of a single contact at a time in tabular format: skill types as rows and a single column to view and edit ratings.
Encourage data completeness—All skill types are shown at all times. This is in contrast with the native user interface, which shows only the skills containing ratings. Showing all skill types, including those lacking a rating, encourages users to treat the user interface like a survey and should increase data completeness.
Allow all to view, restrict editing—Whether a rating is editable or read-only depends on the current user. If the user is editing her own contact record, all ratings are editable. If the user is a manager, vice president, or system administrator (by profile), the user is allowed to edit the skills of any contact. If the user does not meet any of the previous criteria, the skill ratings are read-only.
This section describes building the feature in three parts. The first part is a basic implementation, to allow the selection of a contact and editing of its skills. The second part adds the finishing touches to implement the full set of requirements. The final section provides a sample, full implementation of the feature, shown in Figure 6.13, and comments on portions of the code.
