Support Forum

[victor]

Hello,

Talking with our TrackStudio users I found a possible subsection interface improvement: for filters, categories and workflows.

I am going to offer an alternative to the actual solution:

1- Filters section

- When you go to the filters section you would view the list of filters (like now in the view subsection).
- There is not current filter.
- There is not the subsections sheet buttons (view, edit, subscribe and notify).
- Every filter has new buttons (in the first column for example): one for every subsection (edit, subscribe and notify).
- When you press the edit, subscribe or notify button of a filter then you go to the correspondent sheet for this filter. You have two buttons one for save and other for cancel, when you press save the changes are accepted and you return to the filters list, when you press cancel the changes are discarded and you return to the filters list too.

2- Workflow section

- The subsection sheet buttons (categories, edit category, workflow, priorities, states, message types, transitions and customize) is reduced to two buttons: categories and workflows.
- When you go to the workflow section you would view the list of categories.
- The idea now is that in the categories subsection the procedure is like in filters but here the new button is only 'edit' (for edit category).
- And in the workflow subsection the procedure is like in the filters too, but here the new buttons are: priorities, states, message types, transitions and customize).

Summary

Basically the idea is substitute the select-current+go-to-subsection with a unique action for every combination.

What about?

Thanks

[admin]

Hello,

Talking with our TrackStudio users I found a possible subsection interface improvement: for filters, categories and workflows.

I am going to offer an alternative to the actual solution:

1- Filters section

- When you go to the filters section you would view the list of filters (like now in the view subsection).
- There is not current filter.
- There is not the subsections sheet buttons (view, edit, subscribe and notify).
- Every filter has new buttons (in the first column for example): one for every subsection (edit, subscribe and notify).
- When you press the edit, subscribe or notify button of a filter then you go to the correspondent sheet for this filter. You have two buttons one for save and other for cancel, when you press save the changes are accepted and you return to the filters list, when you press cancel the changes are discarded and you return to the filters list too.

2- Workflow section

- The subsection sheet buttons (categories, edit category, workflow, priorities, states, message types, transitions and customize) is reduced to two buttons: categories and workflows.
- When you go to the workflow section you would view the list of categories.
- The idea now is that in the categories subsection the procedure is like in filters but here the new button is only 'edit' (for edit category).
- And in the workflow subsection the procedure is like in the filters too, but here the new buttons are: priorities, states, message types, transitions and customize).

Summary

Basically the idea is substitute the select-current+go-to-subsection with a unique action for every combination.

What about?

Thanks

OK, possible we'll implement this. We also plan:
1) Move Uploads and Messages into the Task tab
2) Divide Workflow tab to Category and Workflow tab

What do you think ?

[victor]

OK, possible we'll implement this. We also plan:
1) Move Uploads and Messages into the Task tab
2) Divide Workflow tab to Category and Workflow tab

What do you think ?

Nice news!

1) Move Uploads and Messages into the Task tab

Move uploads to task tab sound good, really uploads are like another task info and the task tab could be a good place for it.

[About uploads list: What do you think about add the user that upload the file?]

Move messages to the task... uhmm, I am not sure... Really when someone is messaging over a task he know the task description and dont need to see it again. By other side the messages list can be very large and join it to another section could do it more confuse. I think that task info is some thing that the user do with a low frequency but messages is a more frequent action.

[About messages list: I see that the messages list can be very large and the users generaly are more interested in the recent messages than in the older ones. What do you think about revert the message order list?... I am thinking in the inverse order: first the form for a new message (with the 'save' and 'go to parent' buttons) next the list of messages sorted from the newer to the older and next the 'delete' button]

2) Divide Workflow tab to Category and Workflow tab

I think about it when I wrote the starting topic message but I didn't want add more future job (I know that I am the most 'participative' customer ;) hahaha) I think that two tabs would be perfect but it is a less noticeable problem in the actual version that the other things but after all it would be a good improvement.

[admin]

1) Move Uploads and Messages into the Task tab

Move uploads to task tab sound good, really uploads are like another task info and the task tab could be a good place for it.

OK, we'll move it.

[About uploads list: What do you think about add the user that upload the file?]

We can't because we don't store list of uploaded files in the database, just on disk (and in cache).

Move messages to the task... uhmm, I am not sure... Really when someone is messaging over a task he know the task description and dont need to see it again. By other side the messages list can be very large and join it to another section could do it more confuse. I think that task info is some thing that the user do with a low frequency but messages is a more frequent action.

OK, we'll don't touch messages tab

[About messages list: I see that the messages list can be very large and the users generaly are more interested in the recent messages than in the older ones. What do you think about revert the message order list?... I am thinking in the inverse order: first the form for a new message (with the 'save' and 'go to parent' buttons) next the list of messages sorted from the newer to the older and next the 'delete' button]

Some people in our team ask me about similar feature, but i disagree - it makes UI slight more non-logical.
About long list of messages - I think that you should avoid this, because long list of messages come together with chaos
For example, in TrackStudio project average worktime per task is less then 2 hours and we never seen such large lists. In one another our project this metric about 10 hours/task, this project in worse state and contains a lot of tasks with long messages list.

2) Divide Workflow tab to Category and Workflow tab

I think about it when I wrote the starting topic message but I didn't want add more future job (I know that I am the most 'participative' customer hahaha) I think that two tabs would be perfect but it is a less noticeable problem in the actual version that the other things but after all it would be a good improvement.

OK, we'll split it.

[willettsj]

OK, possible we'll implement this. We also plan:
1) Move Uploads and Messages into the Task tab
2) Divide Workflow tab to Category and Workflow tab

What do you think ?

I get frequent questions as to why the info on the task tab (esp description) can't be seen from Messages. So (1) would be very well received here. We have a distributed development model, so our descriptions can be quite detailed, the summary in the header details is often truncated.

I don't agree with Victor's suggestion of reverse chronology for task history, I think it should be at the bottom to at least increase the chance of people reading the history of the task before diving straight in!

As for 2 - yes, as I've always found this a little confusing.

[victor]

[About uploads list: What do you think about add the user that upload the file?]

We can't because we don't store list of uploaded files in the database, just on disk (and in cache).

Well then I remember you another suggestion of the last two weeks: system messages to register different actions over the task that actually occur and are not registered.

[About messages list: I see that the messages list can be very large and the users generaly are more interested in the recent messages than in the older ones. What do you think about revert the message order list?... I am thinking in the inverse order: first the form for a new message (with the 'save' and 'go to parent' buttons) next the list of messages sorted from the newer to the older and next the 'delete' button]

About long list of messages - I think that you should avoid this, because long list of messages come together with chaos :-)
For example, in TrackStudio project average worktime per task is less then 2 hours and we never seen such large lists. In one another our project this metric about 10 hours/task, this project in worse state and contains a lot of tasks with long messages list.
:-)

Really I cant decide to have a small list of messages. I have a very complete workflow, you know it, because we are developing a CMM-SW strategy.

Our tasks to track depend of strategic decissions of our customers, for example: we are talking about a prepaid card for cellular phones. There is not an easy way to solve this things: one to three proposal revisions by customer, an impact analysis, a plan, two-tree developers involved, a continuous feedback in the development phase. a quality control and a deployment with the required customer acceptance... all this is necessary for our business workflow by this long messages list is a reality, not an option :)

Some people in our team ask me about similar feature, but i disagree - it makes UI slight more non-logical.

From the base of a long messages list the sort criteria is not a secondary decision. Really I am not sure if this is a logical and non-logical sort criteria for things.

About messages I apply the same sort criteria that the human resources departments apply to the curriculums that they read. They preffer a curriculum sorted by date because they like to know the chronological history of the aspirant but they preffer more a sorted from newer to older because they are more interested in the recent history of the aspirant.

The same apply to the messages list. For example: when a developer receive a task it is more interested about the recent history of the task. The four or five messages can be for the CCB (change control board) and the developer has nothing to do with it, he is only interested about the leader task planning and deal.

From this point of view you can see that the logical sort criteria is descendent. Maybe a double view could be the most popular solution, but for long messages list the current solution is a little incommode.

Thanks! :)

[victor]

I get frequent questions as to why the info on the task tab (esp description) can't be seen from Messages.

I think that one user can need to read the task description only one time but go to the messages section many times. This is a frequency and size question:

- Task description is not a two or three lines thing. Task description is a large text block or maybe is too a set of uploaded files. Then include it in the messages space is not a little change for the UI.

- Task description is readed one or two times by each user but task messages is more frequently used by him. Why has the user to carry with the task description every time that he is going to send a message?

I don't agree with Victor's suggestion of reverse chronology for task history, I think it should be at the bottom to at least increase the chance of people reading the history of the task before diving straight in!

I dont need increase the chance of people reading the history. History is not an advertising, in a workflow everyone is responsible to read the things that he need to read for do his job. I only want to put the things more easy for the users.

Maybe a customizable solution could be more handy because 'willettsj' need to assure that people read the history and I need show a morea easy to use history of messages.

Thanks