We’re trying to standarize the names we use for our model views.

At the same time, we’re tackling a long standing problem that we’ve had on our platform related to the specifications of views on each model.

Currently the specifications for most basic models are ok. But models with more complex specs are a bit messy and this has drawbacks:

  • The automatic categorizer might be unable to work as desired.
  • We may fail to determine the current status of a delivery.

So we’ve decided to help basically with two changes:

Encourage correct view names

  • Like with objects, we have a set of preferred names that we use often and the system will suggest you to use one of these.

    For example we’ll prefer Theater instead of Theatre. If the client is in the UK, the system will just know it should show Theatre in the front-end.

Allow better model specifications

  • We now allow duplicate names in views (with some restrictions). This allows us to have “View 1” under Floor Plans and also under Visuals.

    Therefore we don’t have use “View 1 Visual” as the view name, it should be obvious it’s a visual.

  • We also allow details on a view if it needs a clarification.

    For example, some orders have “Banquet Small”, “Banquet Medium” & “Banquet Large”. But all layouts are really banquet with different capacities, so we’d specify this as in the example below:

    This allows the system to provide simpler specs tables:

  • Allow using only one view per image. We can have many views with the same name as long as we specify something different in the Details field. So we can now set as many views as images we’re expecting.

This standarization may cause a bit of overhead until get used to it, but it’s a worth update in the long term. For the main reasons described above and many other improvements not described in this post for briefness.