Comments on: What do we use Python for at work? http://ramblings.timgolden.me.uk/2010/03/04/what-do-we-use-python-for-at-work/ The ramblings of Tim Golden Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:17:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 By: tim http://ramblings.timgolden.me.uk/2010/03/04/what-do-we-use-python-for-at-work/#comment-1052 tim Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:29:33 +0000 http://ramblings.timgolden.me.uk/2010/03/04/what-do-we-use-python-for-at-work/#comment-1052 @Axel: The Sales Boards are not that interesting, I'm afraid :). We sell advertising space, usually in large packages. The packages are booked up in two-week chunks but can be split (ie two customers can buy half a package each at the same time). To be able to see at a glance how much space we have and specifically who's booked what, I put together a sort of scrolling whiteboard app to replace the real whiteboards which used to track this information. You can zoom down to about four weeks or out to the whole year and likewise down to about two parcels or out to the whole inventory. One screen shows all the parcels for one media format at a time and you can print the view you're seeing on the screen. If you click-and-hold on any of the sold units you get a summary of what's been sold, to whom and by whom. It's a read-only view (for our sales reps, principally); there's a less flexible but more functional view on our main business app which isn't written in Python :(. A slightly different view is provided within the Sales Boards for packages which we sell dynamically: with the usual (static) selling, the parcels are mutually exclusive. When selling dynamically, they're not, so we give a colour-coded indication of the probability of selling the parcel given everything we've got available at the moment -- there are some quite complex rules to do with juxtaposition and spread which are too costly to calculate every time. The "simple dialogs" are simply these: http://timgolden.me.uk/python/winsys/dialogs.html#module-dialogs https://winsys.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/winsys/dialogs.py although I believe that the work Greg Ewing is doing: http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python_gui/ is a more complete version of the same kind of thing... @Axel: The Sales Boards are not that interesting, I’m afraid :). We sell advertising space, usually in large packages. The packages are booked up in two-week chunks but can be split (ie two customers can buy half a package each at the same time).

To be able to see at a glance how much space we have and specifically who’s booked what, I put together a sort of scrolling whiteboard app to replace the real whiteboards which used to track this information. You can zoom down to about four weeks or out to the whole year and likewise down to about two parcels or out to the whole inventory.

One screen shows all the parcels for one media format at a time and you can print the view you’re seeing on the screen. If you click-and-hold on any of the sold units you get a summary of what’s been sold, to whom and by whom.

It’s a read-only view (for our sales reps, principally); there’s a less flexible but more functional view on our main business app which isn’t written in Python :(.

A slightly different view is provided within the Sales Boards for packages which we sell dynamically: with the usual (static) selling, the parcels are mutually exclusive. When selling dynamically, they’re not, so we give a colour-coded indication of the probability of selling the parcel given everything we’ve got available at the moment — there are some quite complex rules to do with juxtaposition and spread which are too costly to calculate every time.

The “simple dialogs” are simply these:

http://timgolden.me.uk/python/winsys/dialogs.html#module-dialogs

https://winsys.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/winsys/dialogs.py

although I believe that the work Greg Ewing is doing:

http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python_gui/

is a more complete version of the same kind of thing…

]]> By: Axel http://ramblings.timgolden.me.uk/2010/03/04/what-do-we-use-python-for-at-work/#comment-1051 Axel Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:48:41 +0000 http://ramblings.timgolden.me.uk/2010/03/04/what-do-we-use-python-for-at-work/#comment-1051 Hi, Tim! Do you mind sharing some ideas? I'm very interested in your list of things you use python for in business. In my environment, we have developed a generic reporting infrastructure to export any kind of sql query to Excel files (I guess, similar to your sql2xl?). What caught my eye is what you describe as "Sales Boards - our Pygame-driven availability-visualisation app". Could you elaborate a little bit on this? The other thing is your reports -- what kind of "simple dialogs" are you talking about? Thanx again for this list, Axel Hi, Tim!

Do you mind sharing some ideas? I’m very interested in your list of things you use python for in business. In my environment, we have developed a generic reporting infrastructure to export any kind of sql query to Excel files (I guess, similar to your sql2xl?).

What caught my eye is what you describe as “Sales Boards - our Pygame-driven availability-visualisation app”. Could you elaborate a little bit on this?
The other thing is your reports — what kind of “simple dialogs” are you talking about?

Thanx again for this list,
Axel

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