Home › Forums › Feature Wish List › Changing Recurrence Day & Child Entry Management

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    • Avatar of lucasLucas
      Participant
      February 1, 2009 at 6:47 am
      Post count: 34
      #3364

      I’ve been having this issue while I was trying to set up my calendar for the first time, and I’m wondering if other people have had this.

      If I have a recurring entry (e.g. a paycheck), and after setting it up I realize that I put it on Friday where it should be on Thursday, if I edit any of the instances and put everything to Thursday (the recurrence day checkmark, the start date and such), it just doesn’t change, visually, on the calendar.

      If I then try to edit the instance/entry again, I can see that my day of the week checkmark has been changed to the correct day, but the dates have not. As an example, if I switch from Feb 20th to the 19th (Fri to Thu), if I save the edit and come back, it’s going to have a checkmark on Thu, but the date is going to be recurring on the 20th still, and the calendar displays it on Friday the 20th still, even if it recurs on Thursdays.

      So right now if I need to switch a recurring item from one day of the week to another, I have to delete all of the entries and re-create them…

    • Avatar of eric poulinEric Poulin
      Keymaster
      February 1, 2009 at 1:18 pm
      Post count: 380
      #3690

      When editing a repeating entry there is an option dialog that appears giving you some choices:
      – Edit this entry only?
      – Edit this and all future entries?
      – Edit All Entries (including entries in the past)?

      If you choose either of the last 2, you are affecting repeating entries.  If you select one of those, an additional option panel appears below as follows:

      – Modify properties of existing repeating entries in this series
      – Recreate all repeating entry dates based on repeating entry attributes

      If you are actually changing the dates, you should choose the later option, to recreate the entries, rather than just modify then in place.
      Probably you are leaving the default option to modify existing entries, which leaves them on the current date.

      Why do we have these last 2 options, you may ask?
      There are a few reasons, both of which are a little complicated.
      1) If you move a single entry that was part of a repeating series to another day and you chose “Only this entry”, that entry is taken out of the repeating entry series and is now standalone.  Any modifications to the repeating entries now will not affect this loner.  Sometimes you may move future entries to a different date (if they fall on a holiday or weekend or for whatever reason).  So this future entry, if adjusted will be broken out of the original series.  Now, adjustments to that repeating series will not affect that moved entry. Also, sometimes you will delete a particular entry in the future.  Changing exiting will not affect the deleted entry, but recreating will recreate all entries based on the repeating entry settings.

      Now, if there is a change to the repeating entry, you can choose “Modify existing” which will only affect those entries still in the series.  However, those entries broken off are unaffected.  If you choose “Recreate”, the repeating series will be recreated (same as delete and create) and then entries will fall on the new dates you specified in the repeat entry settings.  This will still not affect any entries that were broken off the series… so now you may end up with a few duplicate entries that will need to be cleaned up. 

      Basically, we wanted to give you the option to “start over” with the repeating entry (recreate) or just modify some properties (if you’ve made date adjustments in the future or individual deletions).

      2) Second reason is for performance.  If you are just modifying entries that are already in the right place… its really fast.
      Otherwise we have to delete the existing ones and recreate them, which means the database is deleting (possibly 1000s of rows) and then creating 1000s of new rows.  Rather than have your browser sit there for 30+ seconds while the db is working, we decided is might be more convenient to give you the option. 

      We did worry about the options being a little confusing, but decided to push for flexibility.  Is there a better way you think we can work the options?
      Perhaps I can detect if the repeat properties (date options) have changed, then force a recreate, not modify.  I’m still a little worried about orphaned duplicates in this case.

      Thoughts?

    • Avatar of lucasLucas
      Participant
      February 1, 2009 at 2:56 pm
      Post count: 34
      #3691

      I see what you mean, and I did wonder about that distinction. Now that you mention it, I think that probably the best way to do it would be to detect what generally requires you to recreate the whole series (like a date change in my case) and either do it seamlessly in the background (remove the option) or quite simply to put the default to Recreate in the case where it needs to.

      It just felt very counter-intuitive to see something not happen when you expect it to, with no warning or indication of what might have gone wrong.

    • Avatar of eric poulinEric Poulin
      Keymaster
      February 1, 2009 at 3:32 pm
      Post count: 380
      #3692

      I understand that.
      I think there are some improvements that can be made to avoid the confusion.

      If I detect what changes were made I should be able to deduce the right choice and eliminate that 2nd choice panel altogether as you suggest.  You’ll still be left with the separated (orphaned) entries that are duplicates though.

    • Avatar of lucasLucas
      Participant
      February 2, 2009 at 3:09 pm
      Post count: 34
      #3693

      I just had a thought in regards to the child ones… Evidently this is a hard thing to manage, but maybe you could treat orphans not as true separate entities, but rather as “transposed” entry. Say you have a regular payment on each second friday, but because of an event you know is going to happen in the future, one of those payments will be on the Thursday instead, and the amount will be $50 less.

      Instead of separating the entry, it could be still part of the recurring series, however it would be transposed one day before and the amount added $50. So the default values of any given recurring series is always +0days, +0$, but one particular entry could have -1days, -50$ and another one be +3days +150$ for example.

      Then, changing the series would change the default values, but the transpositions would still hold… I’m not sure how these exceptions could be handled, perhaps a notification mechanism asking you to review changes. I was actually thinking that a separate “notification” page might be an idea for other things…

      You could have a page that would indicate things like:

      • [!] Your

      XYZ Internet bill is overdue” (see my bills payment thread :P)

    • [!] The Apr 13th to Apr 18th dates show negative balance

    • [!] Changes in your recurring Cash Return series caused an orphan entry in July 2010 to be affected

      • This would give an overview of things that require a user’s attention, giving them even more control over what’s happening. That page could be used for other things such as hints & tips and other interesting but not critical stuff.