CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

currently, the default order for activities listed in a timeline appears to be:

> status (completed activities are bumped to the bottom)
  > date
     > name/type (?)

The order of the activities defined in the xml file has no impact on the order. That becomes a problem if you have a series of activities that don't require a reference (date) offset, but DO need to display in a specific order.

Does anyone have a creative workaround?

I propose we add a weight field to civicrm_case table, and allow an order (weight) to be set in the xml file, passed to this field. The default sort order should then be the weight field. It probably would be good to have a mechanism for changing the order through the interface, but at the very least, this would enable control over a standard use case by populating the case activities in configured order.

As a side note -- I think some of the case activities (like open case) need to be flagged as reserved, as some of them are referenced by name in the code (changing the activity label/name breaks things).

if u really want to hack this in for 2.2 / 3.0

1. Add a column to the activity_type table to record the weight (this is already present since activity type reuses the option value table which has a weight)

2. edit the file: CRM/Case/BAO/Case.php, line 532 (order by clause) and include the weight after the date

However this also means that activity types are always ordered the same way irrespective of the ordering in an activity set (which makes sense most of the time)

lobo

The sort order, at least in 3.0, is overdue activities first in date ascending order, followed by everything else date descending.

I don't see any issues with adding the order parameter to override the date, as long as it falls back to the current sorting if order is not present.

no -- i never filed a patch.
i'll touch base with dgg/lobo today and then track down the code.

Brian - So just to confirm the proposed mods:
1. Add 'weight' column to civicrm_activity - int(10), default NULL
2. And modify xml processor to write a value to that field when <order>N</order> is defined for that activity type
3. Modify order by in queries to include 'weight' first

A few notes on this ...
* What's the desired sort for activities that are added the case after it's opened? If they don't have weight assigned - they'll fall above or below the automatically created group regardless of their date / status. Is that ok?
* When an activity is edited, a new copy is made. You'll need to check whether the new weight column is cloned (assuming you want the activity to maintain it's place in the order).
* There's two different queries for case activities (both in Case/BAO/Case.php). getCaseActivityQuery is used for dashboard and Find Cases. getCaseActivity is used for the dataTable widget in the Manage Case screen.

brian - any upcoming windows you might be able to "dig out the implementation"?