I had noticed that many volunteers were confused by the interface of Step 2 of the Log a Package workflow.  The old interface showed both the pulldown menu to select a prison that is already in the database and the form to add a new prison.  Many people filled out the add a new prison form and completely missed the pulldown.  The new interface defaults to the pull-down menu, hiding the form to add a new prison.  By clicking a labeled link, the pull-down menu is hidden and the add a new prison form is revealed.

Watch a screencast showing the new interface.

Added additional information to the Inmate List

At the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, we are only able to send people books every 2 months to ensure more equitable access to our resources.  Someone must check incoming letters to see whether the person requesting books has received books recently and file the letters away for later if the writer has received books recently.

I added additional information to the results of an inmate search to show the date that the last package was sent  to the inmate.  This makes it easy for our volunteers to find out this required information with a minimum number of clicks.

At some point, most Testament users will probably have encountered an uncaught exception (in non-programmer-speak, that’s an error that we haven’t anticipated and don’t handle gracefully) with a confusing looking error and traceback (a way for programmers to tell which sequence of events in the program caused the problem) that looks something like this:

Request Method: GET
Request URL: http://btptestament.com/log-package/2/
Django Version: 0.97-pre-SVN-7554
Python Version: 2.5.2
Installed Applications:
['django.contrib.auth',
'django.contrib.contenttypes',
'django.contrib.sessions',
'django.contrib.sites',
'django.contrib.admin',
'btp.core']
Installed Middleware:
(‘django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware’,
‘django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware’,
‘django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware’,
‘django.middleware.doc.XViewMiddleware’,
‘btp.core.middleware.RequireLoginMiddleware’)

Traceback:
File “/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py” in get_response
82. response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)
File “/var/www/testament/testament_trunk/btp/core/views.py” in package_address
205. add_infobox_context(request, context)
File “/var/www/testament/testament_trunk/btp/core/helpers.py” in add_infobox_context
66. if i.number == NULL_INMATE_NUMBER:

Exception Type: UnboundLocalError at /log-package/2/
Exception Value: local variable ‘i’ referenced before assignment

Now you won’t see this mess and we’ll get e-mailed when it happens so we can get the problem identified and fixed ASAP.

As always, if you want to report a bug, submit a feature request, or ask a question, please use the Testament Get Satisfaction Page.

-Geoff

I also added Phone and Website fields to prison records.  At the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, we use this information when we call facilities about returned packages.  It’s nice to have contact information easily available right in testament.

In solidarity,

Geoff

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Thanks,
Andrew Badr and Geoff Hing