Workflow menu

Related products: WebUI
Workflow menu
In light of our Workflow improvement project, we had defined 4 new user stories that we have been developing and releasing over the last few months. At this moment, we are about to release the Widget Actions (4.66) after having released the Side Panels and Dialog Page concepts (see https://aimms.com/english/developers/downloads/product-information/new-features).



Our next task ahead is a new UI concept to help end users to go through a particular workflow; we call this the Workflow Menu. Below you can find the most current (illustrative) design sketches we created to be able to discuss our ideas with stakeholders. I like to use this forum to collect some feedback from you.



My current ask is what you prefer, assuming you have the choice between 2 ideas, what would you choose? Horizontal (left to right) or Vertical (top to bottom). Please use the poll below.



BTW: you also see some visualization ideas on the state of a step in a workflow (state options are active, inactive, incomplete, complete, and error).



Of course, any other feedback is welcome!











Left to right on the top of the page is more likely to always show, no matter how small the user window is. But the vertical option might need a scroll to get to the rest if the user window is small.





Maybe you can make this an option in the Settings>Project Options?





Or even have it shift to vertical only if the window gets too small to hold it all in one line across the top?





They are ideas. They may be bad ideas, but they are ideas. 😉





~Bon
Certainly ideas; thanks!


And what if you had to choose (life is full of choices 🤔)? Indeed, a scroll would be needed in cases where there are more steps (same vertically btw); hence scroll has to to be smart.
I did make a final decision via the poll: horizontal across the top.





But of course I still wanted to chip in my $0.02. 😎





~Bon
We had two polls running; another had 80% vertical, so we currently opt for the vertical one. Here a few designs of the 'current' way we plan to develop.We did some more tweaks as you can see.





Will keep you up to date via the monthly product updates! Thanks for all your input.












We are in the midst of the development of the workflow menu and love to get your feedback on our current state of the implementation of this workflow support. A workflow panel has been created that can be filled (see spec below) that leads to the following look-and-feel.





The workflow panel starts in an expanded mode and can also be collapsed, in which case you only see the icons. The tooltips help in identifying the steps in the collapsed mode. The Title of the workflow accommodates upto 2 lines after which an ellipsis is shown. There are Active and Inactive steps in the workflow that are styled differently. The workflow also has data states to indicate if a step in Complete, Incomplete or has an Error.





Look at it here: Workflow Panel Video





For those who are interested, the specification of the workflow shown is done by setting the following properties of an ordered list of items (similar to Widget Actions principle):





{ 'displaytext', 'icon', 'pageId', 'tooltip', 'workflow-page-state', 'page-data-state', 'redirect-pageId'},





where




  • displaytext - is the text shown for the workflow step

  • icon - represents the visual of the workflow step (same set of icons as Widget Actions)

  • pageId - is the pageID where we workflow step needs to go next (each page, thus a pageId can only be in 1 workflow!)

  • tooltip - describes the workflow step when the user hovers over a respective step

  • workflow-page-state - Active, Inactive or Hidden state of the workflow step; if not defined the workflow step would be Hidden.

  • page-data-state - Complete, Incomplete or Error state of the information of the workflow step. This state controls the style of the workflow step. If nothing is stated, it's seen as standard with no need to differentiate data state.

  • redirect-pageId - In case the workflow-page-state is not active, or if the pageID is invalid, the user is redirected to the redirect-pageId.



Again, your feedback is welcome!
@Gertjan Looks good. When do WE get to give it a try?





#fingerscrossed


#excited





~Bon
Hi @MathFour , @gabiservidone





Think of weeks, not months. We are testing and writing the documentation. We are very excited.





Would be great if you could share your use case for this 🙂 ?!
@Patrick I'm still visiting with the client on exactly how that use case will look. Generally, I understand that they want to make it easier on the user to know what comes next.





But that's generally what ALL workflows aim to do, huh?





Put me down for the beta (or even alpha) on that one, please.





#excited

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