Pre-Release Update – Workflow UI Update

There’s a very exciting change coming that we thought we’d give you forward notice of.

We’ve been working on a minor change to the user interface on records to make it easier to move back and forward through workflow stages. We did this because we found that many users were having trouble navigating through workflow stages and completing all tasks expected, particularly in more complex workflows with branching steps. This change has been made to make this process much clearer.

How it was

In the past, the workflow button was displayed to the right of the follow button. When clicked on, the workflow button would show all available stages in a dropbox, both rejection steps and advancement steps. It was often unclear which was which.

The Update

The top of the workflow window has had an upgrade.

The Workflow Controls

Firstly the workflow button has been given its own box that displays the current stage name and a configurable description box for user instructions (configured in Settings > Modules). Below that, for any new record you’ll see just one button: “Submit To”. Clicking on this will bring up a dropbox with all available advancement steps.

If a step has an advancement step AND a rejection step, instead you’ll then see both forward and back buttons that make it very clear that you’re either advancing or regressing through the workflow stages, which is especially important if you have multiple advancement steps.

Not all workflow steps have a rejection step also. You can choose which workflow states have rejection steps and where they reject to in the Workflow section for Modules in Settings (see below). Though this has always been the case, it’s effect is far more obvious with this new user interface update.

And finally, if there aren’t any advancement steps or rejection steps, OR if the workflow step is restricted by role, then you’ll see no button.

This change addresses a few issues:

1. Users weren’t able to tell which were advancement steps or rejection steps.
2. It wasn’t clear how the workflow button worked.
3. Users without training were often unsure of what to do when creating or after being assigned a record.
4. It wasn’t clear when a workflow had met its end.

This new update resolves these issues and a handful of others in a simple, clean way.

The Workflow Window

The second primary change was a reshuffle in how that workflow window was arranged.

Follow Button

Immediately below the record title, you’ll now see a simple follow button which you simply click once to follow. This seemed like an obvious place to put it as it is both simultaneously more obvious whilst allowing for much more screen real estate to the workflow stages, which in the day-to-day of your average worker are far more important.

Location and Area

We also shifted the area and added a location; positioning these at the top of the data list immediately below the people and action counters. This resolved a couple of issues; but the main issue it resolved is that the location of an record is now displayed on the record itself.

Record IDs

Finally, we updated the ID numbers for all records to be be shown as unique between modules. This may seem like a minor change, but it makes it significantly easier for the user to now search for a specific record. Where before an Incident’s ID might have been 0354, it now displays as INC0354. This ID can by typed into the global search bar at the top of the page to return a search result for that specific record making it significantly easier, particularly for administrative staff, to find and reference records easily.

This update should be landing within the next few weeks or so, so keep an eye out for it and be sure to let others in your organisation know that it’s coming if they aren’t aware.

There’s been a whole bunch of upgrades this month already, so keep an eye out for the development blog which you can subscribe to here: http://www.subscribepage.com/developersubscribe