Since the Last Update

July has seen a continuation of efforts to improve speed in slow parts of the system. Improved monitoring has enabled us to better isolate the slow queries are. The areas we are working on are, customer order search, load stock, currently on order and account balance calculations.

The other big thing in June has been the beta testing of the new customer order pick interface in inwards goods. This will be deployed to prod this month.

Beta Test Request

  • New Customer order pick interface

Improvements

    • POS
      • Released new stable POS versions that stop extra get stock requests when the POS goes offline. Download
    • Label printing
      • Added the ability to save a printer in the label printing printer selection drop list #166228891. Saves having to select the printer every time you go to print a label.
    • Stock Take
      • Ability to load stock take data from a csv. This is for shops that use a specialised stock take scanner rather than our built in scanner. #166429422
    • Inwards Goods
      • Item notes are now back in Inwards Goods #164294063
    • Web site
      • We have added a contacted option to the wish list so that you can see who has been contacted and who has not. Backoffice > Customer Orders > Wish lists > click on the ‘Yes’ in the ‘Contact me’ column and put in a date and note.
      • Search button on the website had an unnecessary dark shadow, removed it #167364083
    • Automated Tests
      • Added additional automated tests to accounts receivable. #167039620
      • Added automated tests to the customer order page ahead of work to speed up search by name. #166460294
    • Security
      • Added additional security to prevent scripts that are but in with name or address from running. #166714621
    • Speed
      • Returns search, now requires a supplier to prevent wild card searches on all suppliers for all books that take a lot of time and consume a lot of RAM
        • Returned the ability to scan books into returns and search to not have to have a supplier. #167057589
      • Customer search is now the default in the accounts menu to make it faster when you just want to search up a customer account (you now don’t have to wait for the ageing report to load) #165955114
      • Disabled the expand all option in Movers, PO Search and PO Cart. This caused 3 year search of purchases, sales and returns for all items on the page. This would have been too slow and was causing load spikes when used. We may put this back in when the query can be optimised.
    • Agency / Distributor
      • Added a way to create a distributor from an agency. Saves having to create distributor then agency useful when adding new self published titles. PT #165900609
    • Sys Admin
      • Google cloud asset server
        • Migrate model TinyMcePhoto from attachment_fu to paperclip. This is part of an infrastructure upgrade project that will setup a dedicated assets server, images, css etc. #167100335
        • Code to support Cloud image storage PT #166276927 This is coded needed to send images to new dedicated image servers we have setup.
      • Removed oink gem. We thought this might have been causing performance issues but is not likely to be the case now so may put it back in at some point (Is used to help find processes that use too much RAM) #3262
    • APIs
      • Added API to get current customer info #167215379. – This will be used for a start in the new customer order picking in inwards goods.

Should be completed in the coming month:

  • Customer order picking in inwards to prod
  • New Consignment system
  • Further speed improvements in customer search and
  • Roll out the need assets server

Things we are working on that are likely to take longer:

  • Rails 4
  • Customer order pick up in the POS
  • Returns optimization