New Features in the Feedback Module

As part of the role of managing the Feedback Module, I have recently made some major changes to the module which will be available for release shortly.

List of Changes

• Converted module to VS 2005 (to be released as version 04.04.01).
• Corrected references to obsolete DNN core functions which were in the 3.2.1 version.
• Moved Categories from the Lists table to a table controlled by the Feedback Module (Feedback_Lists)
• Created interface to manage Categories via new Feedback_Lists table and modified references to Feedback_Categories (hard coded list in version 3.2.1)
• Validation on Email field and group validation on the submit button so that the form does not throw an error when dropped on a page that has other modules with form submission capabilities. The validation on the email field is similar to what the core has implemented with the email field (User Registration) - it checks for null values and also the regular expression check to make sure it's an email address (i.e. has "@" and ".")
• Created ability to create dropdown lists for Subjects so that emails sent out have a pre-defined subject setup. (Prior functionality of allowing users to type in a subject is still available). Internally this is handled in the Feedback_Lists table as another List Type.
• Modified module to be on a per Portal basis - this ensures that sites with multiple portals only display the feedbacks posted on a specific portal.
• Categories and Subjects are also setup on a per Portal basis - this will allow multi-portal users to setup different categories and subjects.
• Moderation has been fixed to be a page to which the Administrator can navigate to (Prior version had it only accessible via the email that the module sent out).
• Posts can now be changed to/from the following statuses via the Moderation Page.
  • Pending (this is applicable for a moderated Feedback module)
  • Private (not visible to in the view feedback comments)
  • Public (visible in the view feedback comments)
  • Archive (posts which are stored in the table as archived and don't show up in Public or Private Posts).
• Subjects and Categories can be sorted and presented in a specific way to the user.
• FeedbackGUID has been removed from the Feedback table and all comments are handled via the FeedbackID which is the primary key on the Feedback Table.
• Database scripts have been updated to include a migration path for prior version users.

The module has been submitted to the release tracker and once the core has validated the new version, it will be available for general consumption. I am assuming that there will be some beta testing invovled too and look forward to getting users to test out the new functionality.

Thanks

Sanjay Mehrotra