Data Browser functions

The Data Browser in the admin dashboard has strangely limited search functions.

Across the top of the data table we can see column labels for Profile Name, User Name, and Email.

1. A search on a profile name will reveal all profiles that carry the name alone or as part of a longer name. This is good.

2. A search on a profile name may or may not display a user name and profile name alongside. Why is this? Why not show the user name and profile name for every profile found? This would be more useful.

3. A search on a user name will only give a result if that user name is part of a profile name.

It seems we cannot search on usernames directly. If a user does not apply the user name in a profile, no profile will be revealed. So we cannot find the profiles belonging to a particular user. Why not make this possible as a default set up?

4. A search on an email address will give results, but not all results possible for a given email address. If an email address is associated with more than one profile, this is not shown.

5. It seems that any search term will be directed to multiple fields (all fields?) within a profile, not just the profile name. I cannot see where to control which fields will be searched.

In sum, it is not clear to me how the data browser can be used to:

(a) to find all the profiles that belong to a particular user or user's email address, or
(b) identity the all the owners (user account) of any profile.

Am I trying to use the wrong tool for (a) and (b)?

If so, what is the main purpose of the Data Browser?

In Documentation, I searched for "Data Browser", and the only item that came up was an article about a new module called "Profile Exclude". To exclude profiles from showing in ordinary member search results, we need to find the profile ID, and this can be found by plugging the profile name into the Data Browser search panel.

If I wanted to exclude all the profiles of a particular user, and did not know what those profiles are called, how would I find the profile names?



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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 05/29/17 01:11:41AM

I've pondered this question sometimes too. How/where do we see if a User has more than one profile?

I'd like to mention here that in the jrUser module's Global Config section, you can use the 'power user' settings to make sure that certain quotas are/aren't allowed to create more than one profile under their User Account. I have all my regular member quota set to not be able to create multiple profiles within their user account.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

From memory, if a user is linked to more than one profile, that is shown in the user's account page.


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

That's probably true, but how do we find the users with more than one profile, to see how members are using profile options?

Of course, we can go through and examine each user one by one, or each profile one by one, but that defeats the purpose of having a Data Browser with search functions, and is impossible to do for large numbers of accounts and profiles.

I imagine that there is no inherent reason why the data browser could not be set up to search both users and profiles at the same time.

At present, there does not seem to be any way to control what the data browser searches for, and to search for users with more than one profile, or profiles controlled by more than one user.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

I don't think there is a way to do this within JR - its not something we've been asked about before. Something would need to be developed for this, either native or custom.

Actually there is. Jamroom is modular and Profiles and Users are seperate entities/modules. We made a consious decision early on in the JR5 development to isolate module functionality as much as possible as this makes for easier and logical development and less issues down the road as the project grows.


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

The modules are separate, but they do seem to "know" about each other, which is why I wonder if cross-module search functions can be developed to reveal all profiles with multiple owners, or all accounts owning multiple profiles.

I do not have a pressing need for this, but in the long term, it might be a useful tool for site administrators who wish to know their members better, or who need to help members who have got themselves in a tangle with multiple profiles and accounts.

Here are the results of my study today:

1. As admin, if we try to find the user account of a profile that is not the primary profile of a user, there will be no account settings displayed after we click on the settings cog of the profile. So then we know that this profile belongs to a user account with more than one profile.

To find this user account, we can go to the Profile browser in ACP, and search for the profile name. The profile will come up, and User name and account email will be shown alongside in the results table.

(ACP>Users>Profile browser)

If two users have control of the profile, they will both be shown in the Profile browser results list (I could demonstrate this to myself with my own site today).

So the profile module does "know" who the account holders are for every profile, but we can only find the user accounts manually, inspecting profiles one by one.

2. Approaching this from the other direction, if we want to know if a particular user account controls other profiles, we can find the other profiles with two steps: (1) first find the primary profile of that user by searching for the User name in the User Account Browser (ACP>Users>User Account browser) . (If the Profile has a different name than the User name, searching the main member list on your site won't reveal the profile). (2) In the list of results for the User, just one profile name is shown, even if the user controls more than one profile. To see if there are other profiles associated, we have to go to click on "Modify" in the search result page, which is the quickest way to reach the User Account settings page of that User. At the bottom, of the Account settings page, other profiles will be listed, if there are any.

3. Conclusion
It does seem, to me, that the Account module "knows" about other profiles controlled by the User, but the User Account Browser is not set up to show these when a User account is found by the Browser search function.

I'm fine with the basic set up of modules at JR. There could not be a more flexible system. But the flexibility may make cross-module search functions critical for navigation by user account owners, administrators, and visitors.

As far as I can see, cross-module search is already in place for public data displayed in open areas of a site: we can put a keyword in the universal search field, and it will produce results from many different modules. The main search function is great.

Thanks.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 02/25/17 03:51:42AM

You're wanting something like this? (screenshot)

Thanks - yes.

My impression is the the profile browser already does what you are showing, but the user account browser does not.

P.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)