Wish lists

A wish list collects feature requests and suggestions from the hub's members. Members post wishes, vote them up or down, and comment on them; list owners rank each wish by importance and effort, accept or reject it, and write an implementation plan. The hub has one general list at /wishlist, and a resource, a group, or a member profile can each have a list of its own. This chapter covers the administrator interface; the Hub users book covers posting and voting.

The reason to run one is that members will ask for things whether or not you give them somewhere to ask. A wish list turns "can you add a bigger memory option to the solver tool" — which otherwise arrives as a support ticket, an email, or nothing at all — into a public item other members can vote on, so you can see which requests have twenty people behind them and which have one. A hub that already knows what it is building next does not need one.

Most of the day-to-day work happens on the site, not here: list owners rank, accept and plan wishes from the list's own pages. These administrator screens are for the things the site cannot do — creating a list in the first place, moving a wish between lists, and clearing up.

Open it under Components > Wishlists. Three sub-menu links sit at the top left: Lists, Wishes, and Comments. You need the Manage permission on the component to open any of them.

Lists

The Lists screen shows every wish list with its Title, State, Access, Category and the reference ID beside it, and a Wishes count. Click a column heading to sort by it; click again to reverse the order. Two filters sit above the table: a Search box, matched against the title and description, and a Category menu whose entries are - Category -, general, group and resource. Press Go to apply the search or Clear to drop it.

The toolbar offers:

• Options — the component's configuration; see Options. This button only appears if you have the Configure permission.
• Publish and Unpublish — change the state of the checked lists.
• New — create a list.
• Edit — open the checked list. Clicking a title does the same.
• Delete — remove the checked lists after a confirmation.
• Help — the built-in help screen.

The State and Access cells are links. Clicking one toggles that list between Published and Unpublished, or between Public and Private, without opening the edit form.

The Wishes cell links to the Wishes screen filtered to that one list.

Creating or editing a list

Field	Notes
Category	What kind of thing the list belongs to: general, group or resource. Together with the reference ID this decides where the list appears on the site.
Reference ID	The ID of the item the list is attached to — a group ID for group, a resource ID for resource. The main site-wide list is category general with reference ID 1.
Title	Required.
Description	A short description, shown in the sidebar of the list on the site. Plain text, up to 255 characters.
State	Unpublished, Published or Trashed.
Privacy	Public or Private. A private list is only reachable by its owners; everyone else gets a "not authorized" notice.

The panel beside the form shows the list's ID, when it was Created, and its Creator. Press Save & Close to store the list and return, or Cancel to discard.

In practice you will rarely create a list here. Nothing is seeded at install, but the first visit to /wishlist creates the site-wide list itself, public, with the title general #1; a group's or a resource's list is created the same way the first time its tab is opened. So the usual first job on this screen is not New — it is opening that auto-created list and giving it a title and description that read like something a member would want to post to.

Wishes

The Wishes screen lists wishes across every list, or the wishes of one list when you arrive from a list's Wishes count. Columns are ID, Title, List ID (hidden when you are inside a single list), Submitter, Submitted, Status, Access and Comments, all sortable. Filters are a Search box, matched against the subject and description, and a Filter status menu whose entries are - Status -, Granted, Open, Accepted, Pending, Rejected, Withdrawn, Deleted, User accepted, Private, Public and Assigned. - Status - is the default and shows everything except deleted wishes; only Deleted brings those back.

The toolbar offers Granted and Pending, which set the status of the checked wishes; New, Edit, Delete and Help. As on the Lists screen, the Status and Access cells are links that toggle a single row. The Comments count opens the Comments screen for that wish.

Creating or editing a wish

The form has three parts: Details, Plan and Parameters.

Field	Notes
Category	Required. The wish list the wish belongs to, chosen by title.
Title	Required. Up to 150 characters.
Description	The body of the wish, in the editor.
Tags	Comma-separated tags, which connect the wish to hub-wide search.
New revision	Only shown when a plan already exists. Checked, saving stores the plan text as a new revision instead of overwriting the current one.
Due	never, or a date. The site marks a wish overdue once the date passes.
Assigned to	One of the list's owners, or Unassigned. The menu is rebuilt for the list you choose.
Description (Plan)	The implementation plan text, in the editor.
Anonymous	Hide the submitter's name on the site.
Private	Only list owners can see the wish.
Accepted	Marks the wish as accepted for work.
Points	Bonus points awarded when the wish is granted. Only meaningful when banking is on.
Status	Pending, Granted, Deleted, Rejected or Withdrawn.

The panel beside the form shows the wish's ID, when it was Created, its Creator, and its computed Ranking. Press Save to save and stay on the form, Save & Close to return to the list, or Cancel.

Dealing with one wish

A member asks for a bigger memory option on the solver tool. Twelve people have voted it up and it has been sitting Pending for a month. What you do with it from here:

1. Components > Wishlists > Wishes. Leave Filter status at - Status - and search for the wish, or arrive through the Wishes count on its list.
2. Open it. The panel beside the form shows the computed Ranking — the number the site sorts by, made up of the votes and the owners' importance and effort rankings. That is the evidence for whether this is worth doing.
3. If you are going to do it, tick Accepted, set Assigned to to one of the list's owners, and give Due a date. Write what you intend to do into the plan's Description.
4. If you are not going to do it, set Status to Rejected and say why in the plan. Rejecting is not deleting: the wish stays visible with its votes, which is the point — the next person to ask can see it was considered.
5. When the work ships, set Status to Granted.

Do not use Delete for a wish you have turned down. It is permanent, it takes the votes and comments with it, and it makes the list look as though nobody ever asked.

Comments

The Comments screen lists the comments on one wish, replies indented beneath the comment they answer. Columns are ID, Comment (the first 50 characters), Added by, Added, State and Anonymous. A search box filters the list, and the toolbar offers Publish, Unpublish, New, Edit, Delete and Help. Both the State and Anonymous cells toggle when clicked.

Editing a comment gives you the comment text in an editor, an Anonymous checkbox, and a Status of Unpublished, Published or Trashed. The panel beside it shows the wish ID the comment belongs to, its type, its own ID, and when and by whom it was created.

Where wish lists appear on the site

The Category and Reference ID of a list decide where it shows up:

• general with reference ID 1 is the site-wide list at /wishlist.
• group lists appear on a group's Wishlist tab, supplied by the Groups - Wishlist plugin, whose parameters set the default access level, whether the tab shows in the group menu, and how many items to display.
• resource lists appear on a resource's Wishlist tab, supplied by the Resource - Wishlist plugin, for resource types that enable it. There is an equivalent Publication - Wishlist plugin.
• user lists belong to a member profile.

The Support - Wishlist plugin lets wishes and wish comments be reported as abusive and transferred to a support ticket, and the Wishlists search plugin indexes wishes for site search. Three modules ship with the component: My Wishes, which shows a member their open and assigned wishes; Wish Voters, shown beside a busy general list; and an administrator Wishlist module.

Options

The Options button opens the component-wide settings: the categories lists may use, the admin group whose members own the general list, how many popular tags to show, whether banking (points and bonuses) is on, whether to show the percentage of wishes granted, whether lists may have an advisory committee and how heavily its votes count, and where attachments are stored. Every option is listed with its values in the configuration reference.

Permissions

The Permissions tab sets who may act on the component as a whole: Configure, Access Administration Interface, Create, Delete, Edit, Edit State, and Edit Own. Manage opens the administrator screens; Create, Edit, Delete and Edit State gate the corresponding toolbar buttons and row toggles on all three screens; Configure shows the Options button. On the site, a list's own owners are granted the equivalent rights on that list regardless of these settings, and a member may always edit a wish they submitted.