TOPIC:

We've seen this happen multiple times where the VP Education goes in to manually edit the agenda (using the pencil icon) and someone else's changes get overwritten.

Steps of what causes the issue:
1. VP Education goes to edit the agenda and opens the Edit Meeting Agenda window.
2. A different member logs into the site and makes a change to the agenda (e.g. signs up for a role).
3. VP Education clicks Save on the Edit Meeting Agenda window (at this point any changes that were made in step 2 get overwritten since the role sign up didn't take place yet in step 1).

This is a pretty bad problem since the VP Education doesn't even realize he overwrote someone else's changes.

Please provide your club number ... we have already requested this once from you.

We absolutely *do* need that. If you make our work more difficult, then you should not expect us to want to assist you.

Put your club number in your forum signature if you do not want us to keep bugging you about this. See the link below in my sig about doing that.

user wrote:

We've seen this happen multiple times where the VP Education goes in to manually edit the agenda (using the pencil icon) and someone else's changes get overwritten.

Steps of what causes the issue:
1. VP Education goes to edit the agenda and opens the Edit Meeting Agenda window.
2. A different member logs into the site and makes a change to the agenda (e.g. signs up for a role).
3. VP Education clicks Save on the Edit Meeting Agenda window (at this point any changes that were made in step 2 get overwritten since the role sign up didn't take place yet in step 1).

This is a pretty bad problem since the VP Education doesn't even realize he overwrote someone else's changes.

FTH has never had record level locking (which would be needed for this) for technical reasons, so this is actually much more complex to implement than you may think. I will look into it, but do not hold your breath. This is essentially a major software architecture change. I may well make a change, but it is going to take some time to sort the complexity out.

I understand the difficulty. If your database has a timestamp of the last change on the agenda, what you could do is when the "Edit Meeting Agenda" page is opened, add a hidden input field to the form with that last agenda change timestamp. When the VPE/admin hits "save," validate that the hidden input value is the same as the current last agenda change timestamp. If it's not the same (meaning someone made a change since the window was opened), don't let the VPE/admin overwrite the other change.

Those two timestamps wouldn't be the same if someone else edited the agenda after the "Edit Meeting Agenda" page was opened. Alternatively, if you don't have a last agenda change timestamp, you might be able to base it on a primary key in your database or you could use a hash of all the agenda data instead.

I think it's a simple solution, and although this might annoy the VPE/admin that the change couldn't be saved, it's A LOT better than having a member think that he/she signed up for a role, and then getting to the meeting to find that they're not on the agenda anymore and magically disappeared.


Club #389096I

user wrote:

I understand the difficulty. If your database has a timestamp of the last change on the agenda, what you could do is when the "Edit Meeting Agenda" page is opened, add a hidden input field to the form with that last agenda change timestamp. When the VPE/admin hits "save," validate that the hidden input value is the same as the current last agenda change timestamp. If it's not the same (meaning someone made a change since the window was opened), don't let the VPE/admin overwrite the other change.

Those two timestamps wouldn't be the same if someone else edited the agenda after the "Edit Meeting Agenda" page was opened. Alternatively, if you don't have a last agenda change timestamp, you might be able to base it on a primary key in your database or you could use a hash of all the agenda data instead.

I think it's a simple solution, and although this might annoy the VPE/admin that the change couldn't be saved, it's A LOT better than having a member think that he/she signed up for a role, and then getting to the meeting to find that they're not on the agenda anymore and magically disappeared.

Club #389096I

Already considered this. There are other things that have to be considered.

Essentially, you have a situation where the last person updating is what is kept. Only focusing on the agenda editor only solves part of the issue when there are two people/updates involved.

We do have record update timestamps... I added that in the last db architecture update. So doing some date comparisons vs a reference date are possible. However, what happens if a conflict is detected must be considered.

I'm not sure of the inner workings of the system. Not sure why it'd be more of an issue if 3 people are involved. I think the solution would still work if there are two people using the "Edit Meeting Agenda" feature + one person is using the regular agenda page.

Perhaps you're saying the issue could also be seen if someone clicks "Sign Up" on a role that's already been assigned in the meantime? I suppose if someone clicks "Sign Up" and the role is taken by someone else already, it should give them an error. (I'm guessing you're not re-saving the whole agenda when someone clicks "Sign Up", but you're just updating that one record?)

Though at this point, I would consider this a bug since it could result in data being accidentally lost without notification. Simply preventing someone from saving and giving them an error message telling them someone else changed it would eliminate the bug. It might not be the most ideal solution, but it's an easy solution that eliminates the issue. I can't imagine this happens too frequently anyway, but when it does happen the consequences are pretty bad. I can understand it would take some time and re-architecting to come up with a more ideal solution.

Club #389096I

Also, for the record, I've seen this happen three times already (it even happens with regular users that aren't admins). Two people open the page at the same time and they both see the "Sign Up" button. One person clicks it, then the second person clicks it, and the second person overwrites the first person and the first person disappears from the agenda.

We send out an e-mail to all the members when the next agenda is posted and several people log in at the same time, which is why we see this problem. Even if we didn't do that, there is still a good chance someone's signup will get overwritten. This is a pretty serious bug.