Loan rules, UX iteration 4

Video:

Assets (only relevant for project managers):

“o cornell” should be “a cornell”, a for campus.

I’m reviving this very old discuss topic, with a question. One of my coworkers showed me loan rules today, and the setup process feels pretty complicated. In future iterations, will you be able to set up loan rules using more natural language instead of codes? Perhaps more point and click to build up the rules (while behind the scenes, FOLIO translates into codes and programmer-looking language if needed)?

Alternatively, if it has to be built this way, could there be a skin on top of it that changes the codes into natural language, to make the rules easier to read for staff who are not writing them, but want to understand them?

This is shown in the video from 16:40-19:30.

Can you take a rule from the video and give an example how that rule could be written in natural language that is more easy to understand?

@Ann-Marie @julianladisch

The idea of “a skin on top of it that changes the codes into natural language”, I think is a great idea. However, to make sure it’s still unambiguous and effecient to write the rules, I think we should rather look into notes on the side of the rules, tooltips, etc. — i.e. assisting notes, rather than trying to replace the syntax.

In regards to point and click, as Julian points out, the “suggestions” in the UI should more or less take you from a blank slate to a final rule, without you having to do much other than deciding what rule you want. It might still be a great idea with a small introductory wizard to get people familiar with the syntax, in time.

I agree with @Ann-Marie long term, but after giving a few presentations on the loan rule editor, i feel you can come a long way if you make sure your parameters (like loan types, user groups etc) are named well and are not too terse.
I think a few inline help or guidance boxes could make a lot of difference explaining the m, g, t, a, b, c, s abreviations and other non-inituitive features of the editor.

I also think a push in Color coding and other text-decoration improvements could give us a lot with a small effort.