Every now and then I get to work on a project that I thoroughly enjoy.  This is one of them.  I have implemented a "Dashboard" for my client which allows him instant access to information that used to take several clicks to find before.  I have to give a huge "thank you" to jQuery, which allowed me to quickly and easily create nice looking widgets with ajax capabilities.  Without jQuery this project would have easily taken twice as long.

Some screenshots, with comments (to view a full sized image, right click and "view image". these are scaled down to fit):

The dashboard started out with just a couple of features in mind, but has grown more as my client realized the potential it had to save time.

The first section acts as a URL bookmarking repository.  This gives quick access to the VirtueMart back end, various 3rd party websites, and some other local custom scripts I wrote.

Clicking on the "Edit" icon allows you to move bookmarks up or down.  You can also create any number of sections to categorize the bookmarks (all are blacked out to protect my client's identity..each new colored section denotes a new category).

The next section is a custom built tasking solution.  We tried several open source options, but they ended up being too complicated, not working, or not doing quite what was required.  My solution does exactly what my client needs, nothing more, nothing less.  Emails are sent to task assignees when a new tasks is assigned, completed, deleted, updated, etc.  The progressbar gives the assignor a quick reference of how the task is progressing.  There are various task filters to search by user, date, priority, etc.  The green arrows allow for prioritizing.

The "Add a new task" popup..prioritzing is as simple as clicking "Move to top".

I'm not 100% happy with the way the view-task popup turned out.  We'll probably break the comments section out into its own popup, for ease of use.

The "Products" section is probably the most time saving part of Dashboard.  Based on a set of filters at the top, it retrieves VirtueMart product data for quick viewing.  When clicked, the images pop up a full sized version for easy viewing.  For inventory purposes, the total cost and total price are calculated and displayed on the bottom right.  The blacked out areas are to protect my client's identity and product data.

Click the "Edit" button, and you now have direct access to change various product data.   Click "Save", and all product data is saved.  By the way, this client's product cost, price, and stock, and some custom options are all synchronized across 3 websites via a custom mechanism I wrote.

The feeds section.  I have a number of customized feeds that upload product availability/stock/pricing to various websites.  There are also feeds to download sales data as a customized order, with inventory automatically being reduced in the process.  The feeds run via CRON jobs, and various stats are logged and viewable via the dashboard.  The feeds can also be manually kicked off via this section.

Details of the google feed.  The custom built feed skips, modifies, or otherwise manipulates product data according to my client's set of rules.

The users section.  Users authenticate via basic HTTP authentication, and various other rights are kept in a database table.  This determines if the user can see/use the feeds, product data, or can adjust user rights.  This screenshot shows the user section in "edit" mode.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with Dashboard.  I would like to spend more time on aesthetics, but it is still a powerful tool. It's been a fun project!

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