The report answers a purchasing question, and it was answering it in seven
columns, two tables and a rowspan. What someone actually needs from it is a
short list of what to buy.
So it opens with that list, grouped by part number with a quantity. Two
cartridges of the same part in different printers is a quantity of two, which
is the number an order needs and the one a per-printer table made the reader
count by hand. It covers what is empty plus what goes within a fortnight -
ordering only what is already empty means running empty. There is a copy
button, because it ends up pasted into a mail.
Below it the cartridges sit in urgency bands rather than in one long list
sorted by a number. The question is which pile a thing is in, and a pile that
is empty is worth seeing as empty. Everything past "empty" starts collapsed;
the order list above already covers the same ground in a tenth of the height.
The row is a cartridge now, not a printer, so it can carry its own part number,
its own level bar and its own countdown. Nesting supplies under a printer meant
opening a printer to find out whether anything on it needed doing.
Cartridges with no part mapped are counted on a single line rather than given
one each. They cannot be dropped, since that would quietly shorten the order,
and they cannot be ordered from here either - the job they represent is
mapping them, which is one job however many there are.
Bands and the order horizon are decided server-side, next to the arithmetic
that produces them, so a heading cannot disagree with what got added to the
list.
Checked against a fleet of 43 dev printers with real part mappings, driven by
a stub Zabbix - live Zabbix is not reachable from the dev box.
Four defects stacked into one nonsense report: cartridges at 20% claiming four
days, cartridges at 1% claiming weeks.
The root cause is a Zabbix API detail. `limit` caps the whole result set rather
than each item, and the query sorted ascending, so the cap kept the OLDEST rows
in the window. A four-cartridge printer polled every five minutes writes over
100k readings in 90 days; the forecast was fitted to the first few days of that
and nothing since. Every rate was real and every rate described a cartridge
thrown away three months ago. Nothing in the output looks wrong, which is why
it needed pinning in a test rather than a comment.
A 90-day burn rate does not need every individual poll, so a long window now
reads hourly trends - the table meant for this, a tenth of the rows, and kept
longer. Raw history serves short windows and any item a site keeps no trends
for. Both are fetched newest-first with the budget scaled per item.
Second, the countdown was computed from the last stored reading while the level
displayed was the live one, so the two could disagree by a whole cartridge. The
live level is now what the countdown divides. A live level far above the stored
run means it was swapped since the last reading, and that is reported as a
replacement rather than as a collapse in the burn rate.
Third, at or below 5% a cartridge reads as empty rather than as a slow drain.
At 1% losing a tenth of a point a day the arithmetic says ten days. The printer
is out of toner, and it is the first thing to order.
Fourth, the days-left column spanned the printer's rows, so the printer's
soonest figure was printed beside every supply it had. That alone accounts for
the shape of both complaints: a healthy cartridge wearing its neighbour's
deadline, and an empty one wearing a number that belonged to nothing on its row.
Also fixes float-typed supplies vanishing from any printer that also had an
integer-typed one - they live in different history tables and the fetch stopped
at whichever answered first.
Not verified against live data: Zabbix is not reachable from the dev box.
The toner report says what is empty now. It could not say what to order, and
nothing recorded how fast anything drains - every level read was cached for
five minutes and then discarded.
Zabbix has been keeping the history all along; we simply never asked. One
history.get gives both answers, because a cartridge only goes DOWN while it is
in use: a rise is a replacement. Count the rises and you have how many
cartridges a printer has been through; fit a slope to the readings SINCE the
last rise and you have days-to-empty. Fitting across a replacement averages a
spent cartridge with a fresh one and describes neither.
Sorted by days left, which is the point. A cartridge at 60% dropping 5% a day
needs ordering before one sitting at 8% that has not moved in months, and a
level-sorted list ranks those backwards.
It refuses to guess. Too few readings, a level that has not moved enough - many
printers report in 10% steps and sit on a plateau for a fortnight - or a recent
replacement each produce no estimate and say which. Those printers are listed
separately rather than sorted in as 0 or as 999, since a printer without an
estimate is neither urgent nor safe. Estimates show what they rest on, because
"9 days from 21 days of readings" and "9 days from 2 readings" are not the same
claim.
A separate report card, not an extension of the toner report: that one is an
exceptions list a tech acts on today, this is an ordering view read monthly,
and the history query is heavier than the live read it would have slowed down.
The analysis is pure arithmetic over a list of readings, so the 14 tests cover
the noise wobble, the plateau, the swap, junk rows and division by zero without
needing Zabbix. Zabbix being unreachable is reported as such rather than
rendering an empty table that reads as "nothing is due".
The report exists to answer "what needs replacing and where do I get it",
and it was answering neither. The part numbers were already in the
lowsupplies payload and simply never rendered; a chip per part now shows
them, with capacity tier and page yield on hover, since a model can list
several tiers for one colour.
Asset # and Location columns are gone. Location is replaced by the
floor-plan preview the asset pages already use, hung off the printer name
via its mapx/mapy.
The IP is now the site's FQDN (printer_hostname_template, built from the
IP exactly as PrinterForm does) and links to the printer's own web page in
a new tab - the report is a worklist, and losing your place in it to visit
one printer means finding your row again. The raw IP stays on hover.
Cartridge names were ellipsised inside a fixed 120px column, hiding the
one thing being reordered. The supplies cell is a grid with a max-content
name column, so names show in full and still line up across a printer's
rows.
CSV and emailed exports follow the screen, with one row per part number so
the result is a copy-pasteable order list.
Operators reported losing a part-filled form by clicking slightly outside it.
Every data-entry modal closed on a backdrop click with no warning and no way
back - the worst possible response to a misplaced click, and it happens most to
someone adding their first records at a new site.
Close-on-overlay is removed from 35 modals across 30 files: anything containing
an input, textarea, select or v-model. They still close by Cancel or the X.
Confirmation dialogs keep it, because a delete prompt holds nothing to lose and
dismissing one by clicking away is the behaviour people expect. VendorsList
shows the distinction - its edit form no longer closes that way, its delete
confirmation still does.
The shared Modal component now defaults closeOnOverlay to FALSE. Every current
caller holds a form, a checkout, a stock adjustment or a map position being
picked, and not one passed the prop, so all of them had the same fault. A modal
that genuinely wants dismissing that way opts in explicitly.
Also regroups the operator console menu, which had grown to numbers 1-9 plus
three letters bolted on with no order to them. Actions are now grouped by what
they touch, keyed by their first letter, and the old numbers still work so
nobody who has used it for months is stopped by a rearrangement.
The menu also warns when the server is not fully provisioned and names the key
that fixes it, instead of reporting it as ordinary status lines that read as
normal unless you already knew what to look for. That check is cached for the
session because it shells out to flask twice and the answer does not change
while somebody reads the screen.
Two fields on the same page were both labelled "Type": the asset's own, and the
catalog model's. Only one of them was vague. "Model type" already says exactly
what it is; the bare "Type" did not say whose.
So the unqualified one is the one that changes. No new vocabulary, and "Model
type" reads correctly against it:
Type -> Machine Type (machines)
Type -> PC Type (computers)
Type -> Printer Type (printers)
Type -> Device Type (network devices)
Left alone everywhere the word is not ambiguous - measuring tools, subnets,
VLANs, notifications, supply types and the manifest editor have no model type on
screen to be confused with.
This is a labelling change only. It does not address the blank type column on
machines imported from the classic ASP database, which is a data gap the
backfill script fills; renaming a column heading was never going to put values
in it.
Adding a "Model type" row next to "Type" put two rows in the Hardware section
that read identically. They come from different tables - modeltypes is the
catalog-wide list spanning every kind of asset, machinetypes is machine-only -
but the names line up in practice: all 262 machines in the development database
match exactly, which is the same fact that makes the type backfill safe.
So the row now appears only when the two disagree, which is the case worth
seeing: a model catalogued as one thing fitted to an asset recorded as another.
When they agree it says nothing and is hidden. Applied to machines, PCs,
printers and network devices, each compared against its own type table.
An asset that carries a model but no vendor was showing a blank the database
could already answer: the model records its vendor, and both sides reference the
same vendors table. Machines, PCs, printers and network devices now fall back to
it.
The fallback is FLAGGED, not merged silently. to_dict sets vendorfrommodel and
the detail pages render "(from model)" beside the value, because the record
itself is still empty: the edit form shows an empty vendor box, and a page
implying the vendor is stored would be lying about where it came from.
The model's type is exposed under its own name, modeltypename, and shown as a
separate "Model type" row. It is deliberately NOT used to fill in the asset's
own type. modeltypes is the catalog-wide list covering every kind of asset - it
holds "Access Point", "Camera" and "Desktop PC" alongside the machine entries -
so it is a different taxonomy from machinetypes. Only about two thirds of the
names overlap, and mapping one onto the other would mistype the remainder, with
the failure mode being a machine labelled "Desktop PC".
scripts/backfill_vendor_from_model.py writes the derived vendor down for real,
since the display fallback leaves reports that read vendorid still seeing
nothing. It is a dry run unless given --commit, fills only rows where the
asset's vendor is NULL and the model names one, and never overwrites a vendor
somebody chose. It skips a table lacking either column, so it runs against a
server whose network migration has not been applied yet.
Verified against the development database by nulling one machine's vendor inside
a transaction: it was detected as fillable, restored to exactly its original
value, and the rollback left the row untouched.
FLASK_ENV is not forced by the script. The app already reads it from .env, and
overriding it demanded a SECRET_KEY the environment had no reason to supply.
The /printer-installer map only reads the public install-list and downloads
the install .bat - both jwt-optional endpoints - so requiring auth was an
unnecessary gate. Drop requiresAuth; it now matches the other display/kiosk
tools (public).
Rebuilds the classic printer-installer feature: pick printers on the shopfloor
map, download a .bat that installs them.
Backend (asset_routes.py): GET /api/printers/install-batch?printerids=1,2,3
returns a .bat attachment. Groups printers the way the classic installprinter.asp
did - HP/Xerox via the universal PrinterInstaller.exe /PRINTER="a,b,c", printers
with a .exe installpath via that installer /SILENT, and anything else (no
installpath, or a .zip) listed for manual install instead of being run blindly.
Download URLs derive from the site_base_url setting + the IIS-served /installers
folder (no hardcoded host). Reuses the existing install-list query shape.
Frontend: PrinterInstallerMap.vue - full-screen Leaflet shopfloor map (reuses
mapConfig), a marker per network printer at its mapx/mapy, click to toggle-select,
sidebar with the selection + an Install button that downloads the batch. Toplevel
route /printer-installer, printersApi.installList(), and an Installer Map button
on the printers list.
Tests: install-batch grouping (universal/specific/manual) + requires-ids.
The location option label read l.location, but the Location.to_dict() field is
locationname, so every option rendered blank - the dropdown looked empty and
"massive" (a long list of blank rows). Fixed across all five affected forms:
printers, computers, network devices, network device form, and the subnets
location filter. Other .location uses (printer-driver URL, search-result label,
report bylocation key) are legitimately different fields, left alone.
Also require a model on the printer form: asterisk + required attr, plus a JS
guard in savePrinter (the native required is skipped while the select is
disabled with no vendor picked) that points the user at the vendor first.
Poll Zabbix for toner levels on a schedule and email/webhook on a downward
crossing. Warning fires at or below the warning threshold (default 5%),
critical at the critical threshold (default 0%); both thresholds are settings.
State lives in printersupplyalerts so an alert fires once per crossing and
re-arms after a refill.
Recipients mirror the printedparts pattern: plugin-scoped shopdb users +
roles + free-text emails (falling back to the site alert_recipients), and a
chosen support team's webhook (falling back to the site alert_webhook_url).
- PrinterSupplyAlert model + migration printers0002supplyalerts
- alerttier(remaining, warning, critical) + check_supplies poller
- flask printers check-toner-alerts CLI (run via scheduled task/cron)
- printers alert settings + Low-Toner Alerts settings page
- 7 tests: tier boundaries, once-per-crossing + re-arm, toner-only scope,
custom thresholds, support-team webhook routing
Model image URLs are root-relative (/api/models/image/...), so on an /ops
subpath deploy the raw <img src> resolved to the server root and 404'd. Wrap
every model-image src in withBase(): machine/printer/PC/network detail heroes,
the models settings preview, and the machine-badge / asset-label print pages.
withBase leaves external http(s)/data URLs untouched.
core.js still routed plugin-owned pages directly. Extracted all 11 into the
owning plugin's route file + moved their views into plugins/<name>/frontend/:
- computers: reports/pc-relationships, settings/pctypemapping
- printers: reports/toner, settings/printertypes, settings/zabbix (toner/supply
monitoring)
- machines: settings/machinetypes
- network: settings/networktypes
- warranty: settings/dellwarranty
- slides: settings/slides (its route file gains a default export; it was
toplevel-only)
- employees: NEW plugin frontend (employees/:sso + settings/employeedirectory) -
employees had no route file before; its pages lived only in core.js.
core.js now holds only core routes; all 14 bundled plugins are self-contained
under plugins/<name>/frontend/. Verified live: the extracted Machine Types
settings page renders in the settings rail from the machines plugin frontend.
Build + 58 vitest + naming green.
Relocate warranty, measuringtools, network, printers, usb, notifications,
computers, and slides into plugins/<name>/frontend/. Each plugin's views are
pulled from wherever they lived (own dir, plus the shared views/settings/,
views/reports/, views/print/ dirs, and top-level views) into the plugin's
frontend/views/, and its route file becomes the self-contained routes.js.
Handled the messy cases:
- computers: name mismatch (its views live in views/pcs/) - moved by following
the route file's own imports, so the dir name did not matter. Its OS/access-
protocol/PC-type settings views move with it (only computers.js routed them).
- network: NetworkHub's sibling sub-views (NetworkDevicesList, SubnetsBrowse,
not directly routed) moved too so its `./` imports resolve.
- printers: the qrLogo helper is SHARED with core AssetLabel, so it stays in
views/print/ and PrinterQR imports it via @/views/print/qrLogo.
- slides: route file is toplevel-only (TVDashboard); SlideManager stays core
(core.js routes /settings/slides).
frontend/src/views/ now holds only core views; frontend/src/router/routes/ holds
only core.js. All 13 plugins are self-contained under plugins/<name>/frontend/.
Verified live: Network (hub + moved sub-views), Computers (name mismatch),
GE-Enforce (helper), printedparts all render from their staged frontends. Build +
58 vitest + naming green.