Announcing the Advanced Collection Manager

 

  • Announcing the Advanced Collection Manager

    Posted by Huw, 05 Jun 2011 13:57. Filed under Brickset.

    If you're a forum reader this will be old news to you, but as I haven't mentioned it in the news here, I thought it worthwhile doing so.

    One often requested feature is to provide the ability to record additional information about the sets you own, such as their condition, how much you paid for them and so on. Many times in the past I have mentioned an 'Advanced Collection Manager' as being the means by which I'd implement this, and now, at last, it's ready for you to use. There's a link to it on the My Sets page in the 'Sets You Own' box.

    I won't go into a lot of detail about it here, because you can read about it, and the further enhancements that I'll be making, in this forum discussion. I hope you find it useful...


    37 comments, latest one posted 23 months ago. (Commenting has ended on this article)
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Comments

Posted by BrickBob09 in United Kingdom, 05 Jun 2011 14:25

I really like this Huw. I know we were discussing the idea a while back, but I haven't seen it on the forums, so it was a nice surprise. I've already added several pieces of data, but i think this is going to be a long task, trying to remember every little detail!

Anyway, this is great. Thanks Huw!

Posted by mo123567 in United States, 05 Jun 2011 14:26

This is another reason Brickset is up there with Bricklink as the most useful LEGO sites in my opinion.

Posted by aaronptrck in United States, 05 Jun 2011 14:49

The one thing I'd suggest would be to use the price that the user enters for calculating total collection rather than the RRP. For instance, I bought the Taj Mahal for $249, the RRP is $299 thus inflating my collection value by $50.

Posted by Renegade007cjh in United Kingdom, 05 Jun 2011 14:58

This is excellent news. You already do a brilliant job here on Brickset, Huw and this just adds to it. One request / observation, though... is there (or will there be) a way to import the data to populate the ACM? I already hold all the information in a spreadsheet and the thought of manually inputting all that data once again for my 1,500-ish sets does not sound like fun...

Keep up the good work and kudos to you for the on-going minifig galleries which are the best I've seen.

Posted by bic3 in United Kingdom, 05 Jun 2011 15:01

Thanks Huw, this is an excellent addition! I'm glad I kept a record of most of my purchases for future reference!

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 05 Jun 2011 15:03

@aaron, I plan to do that at some point.

@Renegade, that has been requested and I do plan to add that feature, but it'll be necessary to download a template spreadsheet to populate, which is then uploaded.

Posted by ambo100 in United Kingdom, 05 Jun 2011 17:13

How are you going to expand on the ACM feature now that it's been released. What can we expect to see next?

Posted by Zacherano in United States, 05 Jun 2011 21:05

Thanks, Huw! I really like this feature, I read about it in the forums, and I'm already using it on a bunch of my sets? Could you explain in a news post how the trading feature will work? Thanks!

Posted by Thomson & Thompson in Canada, 05 Jun 2011 21:49

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the ACM had been around for some time. (Bottom of the "Members with special priveleges" page.) I only started using ACM Jun 3, when it was visible on My Sets. Really good work Huw. (You should show the RRP for every set.)

Posted by war44lock in New Zealand, 06 Jun 2011 00:29

Wow cool Brickset just gets better and better, Thanks Huw.

Posted by erbse2000 in Germany, 06 Jun 2011 01:49

Perfect! Thanks to all the team for adding this feature!

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 06 Jun 2011 02:26

@Zacherano, no idea yet! The checkbox has been added to facilitate something in the future. How do you think it should work?

Posted by atkinsar in United Kingdom, 06 Jun 2011 07:21

Thanks @Huw, this was certainly my *most* requested feature. It took me around 2 weeks to enter this info into the ACM for around 800 sets, was it painful, yes, but it's done now and maintaining it from now on is easy.

My problem, with @aaron's idea is that the price paid for a set (and this includes the RRP) is not representative of the value of the set (certainly not for older sets at least). I am still working on solving this problem (as you know) but in the meantime, if you do switch to using the price entered in the ACM (for ACM users at least), a simple wording change would be appreciated that states 'You paid £x for your collection', rather than 'Your collection is valued at £x'.

Posted by Pepper in United States, 06 Jun 2011 10:28

I think the the ACM is an awesome feature that Brickset has been needing. It will be a pain to enter all of the information in, but it will be well worth it!

EDIT: All is well with my collection now.

Posted by av8r1973 in United States, 06 Jun 2011 10:45

Wonderful! This is the type of information that I've been adding to my CSV output from the Brickset database after export. Unfortunately, there's a lot of cut/paste when I update my collection. Problem solved.

I imagine that I'm not the only member that purchases LEGO in multiple countries and with multiple currencies. If the ability to select currency for the purchase price of each set individually, rather than the entire collection, it would be great. I can still do the manual currency conversion and enter in my selected currency, so it's not a problem.

Again, thanks for the additional flexibility in the system - it's a lot more robust now!

Posted by TBOC in United States, 06 Jun 2011 14:12

I can't enter any data, it juzt appears asd blank. Can anyone help?

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 06 Jun 2011 15:28

Give us some more info and I suspect someone can...

Posted by ncbarrett in United States, 06 Jun 2011 15:34

@TBOC R you clicking the green check mark?

Posted by atkinsar in United Kingdom, 06 Jun 2011 15:35

^^ it sounds to me like you haven't marked the set(s) you are trying to enter info for as owned, you have to own at least 1 of the set in order to enter info in the ACM for that set.

Posted by Pepper in United States, 06 Jun 2011 15:51

@TBOC- I had the same problem, you just have to move the screen to the right and click the edit button, then you should be able to enter your data.

Posted by Zacherano in United States, 06 Jun 2011 16:17

@Huw - Thanks! I think the trading aspect could be the best part! I think it would be cool if Brickset had a separate trading forum which would automatically register lists of sets available to trade for every member. Then members could request sets from other members and trade either through the site or through email. This would be even better than Bricklink because trading is not possible on Bricklink (I don't think)!

Posted by mokey2345 in United Kingdom, 06 Jun 2011 16:34

i was wondering if a brickset employee could reset my forum acount for me because i cant access it.....ive tryed to log on many times but it wont let me :(

p.s.like the collection manager think that it is really good... well done huw :)

Posted by vpustote in United States, 06 Jun 2011 17:46

Some things I would like to see or suggest:

--When you click on the date, it takes any info typed in. I would much rather see a calendar pop kind of like at a flight or hotel website. Those are nice and convenient.

--Maybe put the edit/accept button on the opposite side so it's easy to find. Or what I would rather see is the pop menu smaller so that one can see all the info at first glance. I know it looks perfect on browsers with larger resolution. But at a typical screen size, it's horrible looking and I have to scroll to the right in order to edit.

I think that's all my suggestions for now. I still like the idea. The best part, is that it's the pop up division is movable. It helps to move it out of the way to look at the set I'm about to fill out. It's just unfortunately that I am probably not going to remember most of the details from older sets. But I will have fun filling it out as I continue to buy.

Thanks!

Posted by Jarod98 in United Kingdom, 06 Jun 2011 18:36

Now I really wish I tracked what dates I got specific sets. Did anyone here do that before? I've merrily tested it out on some of my 2011 Star Wars sets and can't wait to fill in the rest. Now that the ACM is available publicly, will it still be a 'special privelage' or 'Role at Brickset'?

@LEGOlas1 - I don't believe you can...

Posted by war44lock in New Zealand, 06 Jun 2011 23:18

I have the same problem! Im really struggling to remember what I paid for alot of my sets, some were free as well so my set value will be quite low.

Posted by legowomen1980p in United States, 07 Jun 2011 00:20

finally Huw, you have satisfied my complaints...
thank you..

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 07 Jun 2011 03:45

@Zacherano, that is pretty much how I envisage it working.

@vpustote, the date is deliberately 'free format' so that you can enter 2010, Jan 2010, 2nd Jan 2010, 2010-01-02 or whatever suits you. Not every one knows, or cares, the exact date or even month.

The pop-up window is around 1150px wide and I made it wider than 1024px, which presumably you are using, because according to the site's analytics onlt 10% of visitors have a screen narrower than 1280px (excluding mobile devices). However it has been noted as an area that needs improving--perhaps making it just wide enough for the columns you have selected--and I will work on doing so soon.

@LEGOlas1, you'll never be able to look at other people's info, but in due course the 'trade' tick-box may be used to expose sets so ticked to others to enable a trade to be discussed.

@legowomen1980p, you, happy? That must be a first! :-)

Posted by Jarod98 in United Kingdom, 07 Jun 2011 07:43

@LEGOlas1 - Mint In Sealed Box. It's an acronym no collector can live without ;)

Posted by ditonthouikwel in Belgium, 07 Jun 2011 13:11

@huw@vpustote , your analytics no doubt counts me as one of the 90% with a screen larger then 1280 pixels (because it's 1980 wide). however, the webbrowser needs to share that space with a mediaplayer or some other window, reducing its space to half. Which for the rest of the site only makes me miss some huuge blue sides which i do not have much interest in.

Is it possible to automatically have the current value added automatically to each set? I tried exporting the list of my sets to get the values, but since i had not added any information to sets, I just get an empty file?

It's a great new feature.

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 07 Jun 2011 14:38

I've tweaked the code to size the window to Math.min(1150,$(window).width-50). In other words if you have space it'll open it at the optimum width, 1150, buit if not it'll be just smaller than your browser window.

Posted by lukehankenobi in United Kingdom, 07 Jun 2011 19:59

Huw,
Is there any chance of you adding the original prices in as a default. As for current values, I can see it being quite difficult to do that, as prices fluctuate. Even some kind of link to the "cheapest on Bricklink" could be problematic, as some people put incomplete sets in the complete category and then tell you it has no minifigures in the description, which really messes up the average price stats as well. Maybe it could be linked to the Last 6 month average sales figures. Could the PMIB boxes be ticked also by default. Year set to the year of release. If you could link to Bricklink, could it also value all your minifigures automatically. I know this is in it's infancy, and to be frank I have no idea if it could work, as I know nothing of computer programming. But my basic point is: Can we have more auto-filled information, I'm too lazy to put it all in.

P.S. Well done so far, it looks fantastic, really expands Brickset as a tool and resource. You guys running this are "The Mutts Nut's" This is by far the BEST Lego Website in the known universe. Keep up the good work.

Posted by vpustote in United States, 07 Jun 2011 23:29

@Huw, nice.

My school still operates all their computer labs with a resolution at 1080 x 768, using Windows XP, and IE 6.

So being a web designer, I purposely design around that horrible resolution. But your definitely right, I didn't think to check on that statistic. Which is kind of shocking to me. Most websites I have worked on are unfortunately still 50% and above using both IE 6, 1080x768.

I'm a bit surprised to hear it's only 10%. But good deal. I will probably still drop a few categories anyways.. :)

(PS, sorry, I might be dragging that 10% up a little because I check out Brickset when I am at school a lot.)

Posted by modena in Italy, 08 Jun 2011 13:37

I am asking the same question as LEGOlas1: What does MISB mean? MISsing Bits?

Posted by Pepper in United States, 08 Jun 2011 15:44

^ MISB= Mint (brand new) In Sealed Box (Bag)

Posted by vpustote in United States, 08 Jun 2011 17:34

Master of Science in International Business... :D

Posted by fabio3666 in Italy, 09 Jun 2011 10:31

Really usefull! But i think that's impossible to update value for hundreds sets!!
The best wil be an automatic update with a S&P rating for legos...:-)

Posted by modena in Italy, 14 Jun 2011 13:40

Also, Huw, I think it would be nice if you had a link to the A.C.M. on the set details page. Try to make that! It would save time. (Just click "I own" and then go directly to the A.C.M.) Great job otherwise!

Commenting has ended on this article.