Potential Future Features

{TP7} = Feature present in Win7 TriagePic in some form.

These provisional ideas are grouped by importance and priority, with High-Priority being highest, Tier 1 next highest, and so on. However, the ordering is subject to change over time based on the needs and interests of external and internal project participants.

High-Priority - Features Ideally Planned for Next Release or Two (If Development Resumes in Future)

See also the GitHub project "Issues" for more about many of these.

• Quick testing has been done "as is" with Windows 10, and written up as a separate doc. Fuller testing might revisit or enlarge on these earlier considerations:
  • Lack of 8.1 Charm bar. Situation is confusing as to what happens with 8.1 app. It appears that there are "Touch" and "Regular" UI modes (set by the task Bar's Action Menu) in devices that support both. In regular mode, the app will have a title bar (defaults to white with black app name), and you can use the right-mouse button (or a "hamburger icon"?) to see a pull down with charms. In touch mode, there's maybe a left-hand panel with them.
  • Clicking "search" I think (because it involves an 8.1 Search Contract API) will open an 8.1 style search panel, rather than use the task bar/Cortana search box. Will search work? Will search hints (of names or MCIDs) work? Don't know.
  • Testing likewise needed for "settings".
  • When the app runs in a resizable windows (adjustable height now), it may not be usable in some sizes.
• Further improve documentation of results of Windows 10 testing in User Guide supplement. And eventually, redo screenshots, maybe merge supplement and 8.1 into single doc?
• Implement reservation with new ReserveSinglePatientID web service call. Trickiness here is that it shouldn't necessarily be called while editing or sitting on new/auto-incremented ID in field... maybe delay until entry begins on actual patient data? Also, be aware of situation with no WiFi connectivity [probably would be good to have another web service that was like isPatientIdReserved, but gives you a list of all IDs, which could then be cached.]

Ideas for Feature Improvements in Subsequent Releases

Tier 1

• Possibly re-open and do further work on Issue #21, "Check if Patient ID already in use":
  • See idea above about new web service for list form of "IsPatientIDReserved".
  • Maybe look at image filenames like TP7 does, for more hits [but may be sandbox'd file issues for access].
  • When there is an ID conflict, the fields turn orange, and the Send button is disabled. TP7 takes the additional step of disabling most entry fields, selection of zone, etc. Do likewise?
• Test & refine layouts for smaller tablets, lower-than-average resolutions.
• Statistics needs more work. For landscape partial width modes, only works well with larger widths. The line charts in particular are problems:
  • The horizontal axis has been mostly constrained to integer days, instead of auto-expanding to hourly (with unuseful labeling), by padding with days before and after. But not yet handling changes to visual state, to recalculate padding and redisplay. And ad hoc padding calculation may need refinement.
  • Chart still a bit too tall in portrait mode/10.6"/1366x768 rez.
• When rebuilding Outbox data from TT, data retrieved from TT is somewhat insufficient... may require change to web service (and getting back reported time zone would help too).
• Look into why resending a message can insert an empty message in Outbox (seen earlier in Statistics).
• Further testing of Search (& its changed web service). Are further adjustments needed to the following?
  • sort/filter functionality.
  • functions that map search web service results to TP8 structures.
• New burn-in system for captions hasn't been entirely built out:
  • The old system allowed a caption to be associated with a file that was picked from disk. Need to add that for new system too. Default would be original filename. {TP7}
  • It would be desirable to give the user more options: font size, color, placement, translucent background (& colors), etc. Shadowed fonts? White letters with black surrounds?
  • for Edit Report: You can't really edit the caption once it's burnt in. Need to detect if webcam page was called from NewReport or ViewEditReport, and if nothing else, disable the caption textbox in the latter case. Or alternatively, allow one to put in an opaque background panel, that covers old caption area, then add new caption atop.
  • The text version of the caption is in theory still being saved-to/retrieved-from the report XML. Should probably check this. This has limited usefulness (in effect, OCR of burned-in caption) absent a need for full-report-text search.
• Maybe give up on "first name" "last name" distinction, go over to "given name" "family name", as API has it?
• Allow correction of Patient ID during editing of already-sent record. {TP7}
• Build out of staff roster system (limited in first release; later, may need additional web service). {TP7}: has roster system, but one that is more rigid and limited than TP8.
• Test and/or document bar-coding of Patient ID (including its prefix) with external plug-in USB scanner (NLM has several models to test). {TP7}
• Possibly replace all-brown body of camera in logo .jpgs with 4 primary color quadrants: (top row) red, black, (bottom row) yellow, green. {TP7}

Tier 2

• One can do linking (top-level or deep) from a Google search to an Android app, i.e. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6178088. Similarly, for a Store app from Bing searches. Top-level is done with metadata on the TT website, and would be not much effort (see 4th link below for example). Deep links require both TT and TP work. For more:
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bingdevcenter/archive/2014/04/01/link-your-app-to-search-results.aspx
  • https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/app-linking-09399b4b
  • https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn614167.aspx
  • https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn614163.aspx
• For split screens, the Sort flyout (using an iPopup control) didn't appear for partial-width landscape. As a workaround, these now use the non-flyout version first developed for Snapped size. Drawback: app background content is made black, and dispatch of Sort pane is only by its back button, not tap on app background. Suggestion: experiment by replacing iPopup with newer Win8.1 flyout controls (maybe change to menu style for Sort). Also applies to Filter.
• Further improvements to first-time startup "wizard", e.g.: add event-chooser. (This was dropped earlier because of problems, similar to problems with event-chooser on Checklist page. But June fix to data lists behind Checklist event chooser probably also solved the wizard problem too.) {TP7}
• Allow edit & resent of records in All Stations list, not originated from this device.
• Allow delete of records in All Stations list, not originated from this device.
• All Stations fetch/search - remove 250-report limits on fetch (requires more elaborate memory management) {TP7}
• Similarly, revisited Outbox fetch, that concatenates events and so can exceed 250 reports.
• Preservation of XML data content across app uninstall/reinstall, including update from Store. In particular, Outbox contents. {TP7}: preserves XML files on update from TT web site using ClickOnce technology. Possibilities:
  • Selectively reconstruct Outbox from TriageTrak, beyond Release 2 work. Selection by event, date-range. Need new or changed calls to web services, e.g. to know counts before asking to fetch?
  • Use OneDrive, but then HIPAA problems as viewed by some pundits unless remote files fully encrypted
  • Clone to MyDocuments folder
  • Store in Roaming app data (but severe limits on amount of data then... maybe just for credentials?)
• Preservation of queued-to-send items across suspend/resume or app close/open. {TP7}
• Deletion of a report from the Search Results flip view is not fully implemented (just UI, but then says TO DO).
• Because flip view must support flipping (e.g., on photo), there is no tapping-photo-to-edit. Can we distinguish flip from tap somehow?
• Allow deletion of more than one report at a time. Possibilities:
  • Multi-select in the Outbox list. {TP7}
  • Delete by event and/or date range.
• Local storage of photos may need more consideration vis a vis HIPAA.
• Practice mode, with separate ID numeration. {TP7}
• Support new mode of patient ID [introduced for TP iOS] where TriageTrak assigns number and/or reservation is possible.
• "Smart" photo send, don't resend photo if not changed, just send hash.{TP7}
• "Smart" photo search/all-stations retrieval... don't fetch photo if this station sent it originally. (Make require change to web service, separate hashes for thumbnails & original photos).
• Change UI allow search by photo, using new web service feature (which calls FaceMatch service). {TP7 as of July 2015}
• In a Windows 10 context, redevelop as "Universal" app, that has supported layouts for both tablets and Win 10 phones.
• Internally, it would be desirable to refactor NewReport and ViewEditReport to use a common base page class, and with more consistent treatment of the patient data objects they manipulate.

Tier 3

• If you are in Edit Report, make some edits, then navigate away to Search and come back to the same report by Search Results/Edit, then the original edits are lost. Add code to preserve them?
• If no disaster event was earlier selected, order events shown in list not just by newest, but by proximity to user (using GPS) within some radius, then newest outside that radius.
• Support bar-coding of Patient ID (including its prefix)
  • Implement software barcode scanning. {TP7}: has "hidden" experimental version.
  • Extend to "double barcode" used by some patient tracking systems & state drivers licenses (may require licensing). [not in TP7]
• Allow creating & saving "draft" reports, like ReUnite? [not in TP7]
• Support multiple photos {TP7}
• Possibly make stats layout that works within narrow mode (instead of asking user to enlarge). (Charting library has known problems if you try to make chart too small.)
• Improve stats charts, possibly replace arrival line charts with vertical bar charts. (Not so necessary as line charts have been improved.)
• As another stat page, possibly show report counts as a table as in {TP7}, i.e., not just as decorations on bar charts.
• On Home page, add another stat category, for All Stations data, e.g., from TT. Probably would require new/better web services. Build out corresponding charts.
• Providing video mirroring controls {TP7}. This would be helpful with monitor drivers that don't do auto-flipping. (See closed-for-now Issue #10 about this with Dell touch monitor.) But, this is hard to do, because TP7 and TP8 use very different video-capture methodologies (which will also affect customization of bar-coding efforts).
• Push notifications {In some versions of TP}, e.g.,
  • when TriageTrak sets up a new open event
  • when someone other than us edits casualty record (at TT or another TP).
  • maybe when someone other than us creates casualty record
• Exposure of event & stat information in live tiles.

Features in Win 7 TriagePic, Not Planned for WinStore TriagePic

• Ability to send patient reports by email instead of web services to TriageTrak.
• Auto-integration with external Bluetooth camera.

Detailed Comparison of Existing and Planned Versions of TriagePic

This is mainly useful for comparing TP7 and TP8, but is substantially dated.

• here