Is there a simple way of communicating messages to the end user

3 years ago
15 June 2020
4 replies
227 views

Userlevel 3

Paulus
AIMMS Implementation Partner
13 replies

Hi,

For some time now we have been struggling with communicating error, warning, and info messages to the end users.

We tried working with the dialogs (webui::requestPerformWebUIDialog) but found that unsatisfying because you have to be careful with the asynchronous workflow in the webui and you can not request a dialog when the user has a dialog open.

So we tried to abuse the raise warning mechanism, only to discover the dark blue message displayed in developer mode (see screenshot) does not show in end-user mode.

My question is:

What's the best practice for communicating a simple message to the user? Like "Data saved”, "Order .. added, or "Invalid entry in field ...”.

Thanks for your idea's!!

---

Ps. Perhaps I'm looking for something like the good old WinUI dialogMessage()

Principal Consultant and Optimization Specialist @ CQM

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4 replies

Userlevel 4

Hi Jacob-Jan,

For me, ideally the notification area in the top-bar should play that role, but the system error messages shown there are not always really helpful to the end-user, and I guess you also want to show functional info/errors from the model.

You might consider using the status bar for this purpose. You can determine the content of the status bar dynamically, so can use it to display various useful things (batch, status of schedule, connection status, errors/warnings). All of these things can be accompanied by an icon, and be made clickable, which will trigger a procedure in the model. Thus you could show in the status bar whether there are errors, and display a custom dialog to display all warnings/errors when clicked and let the user remove them when he/she has read them. If there are no remaining errors, the status bar can be adapted accordingly.

Hope this will give you some ideas.

Userlevel 5

mateusarakawa
AIMMS Champ
85 replies
3 years ago
16 June 2020

For me, ideally the notification area in the top-bar should play that role, but the system error messages shown there are not always really helpful to the end-user

I agree. Maybe it could be possible to hide errors to end-user and use it to customize our notifications and make it ‘clickable’, i.e., linked to a procedure that would give more information about it.

I like the idea to use the status bar for this purpose. We already use for data monitoring (e.g. total cost), hence I don’t know if it would be too much information or different type of information in just one part of the interface.

Thanks for sharing.

Userlevel 4

You can in principle use the status bar for many types of indicators, e.g. CDM status, connection status, out-of-date status, errors/message present.

I guess it won’t be information overload if you use proper coloring, e.g. red or another standout color used for icons associated with any notification where the user is supposed to take action.

Userlevel 6

Gertjan
Chief AIMMSian
230 replies
3 years ago
18 June 2020

In addition, you can eg only show a ‘smart indicator’ in the status bar and then, upon click, open a Dialog Page with details; eg a table of messages with detailed info upon click. From there you could even do a GoToResolve or so.

BTW: We have also have in the backlog a story to have more End User Friendly notifications (instead of the current ‘techy ones’). It’s not on roadmap yet. Reading the above, this could be a list that could be fully controlled via the model logic (similar to status bar etc.). We never worked it out, but wonder if this could be helpful. If so, what ‘properties’ should such a message have. eg ‘Icon’, ‘color’, ‘type’, ‘message txt’,’procedure’… maybe something very similar to our List Widget and then just allow a List Widget as Notification menu item.

Love to hear ideas.

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