Categories

[DrGadget]

I've been pretty busy with apps, groups and categories lately. I have some feedback and suggestions on the topic of CATEGORIES.

1. Dups are allowed
I noticed that it's possible to create multiple categories with the exact same name. I'm not sure if that was done by design or if that was an oversight. You can't put the same App in both but you could end up with 2 identically named categories each with different apps. I can't think of a scenario where I would want multiple categories with the exact same name. Perhaps a warning...?

So far I only have a few categories and a few apps but over time we will have a whole bunch of categories ( > 100 I'm guessing) and hundreds of apps. A couple of other observations now that I've spent some time in Portal Administration - Categories.


2. That pesky pink SAVE button. To create a new category you click Add Category, give her a name and click OK. At that point I figured I had added my new category. I don't have any apps to put into it yet, I am just building out empty category shells. I eventually clued in that I have to hit that pesky pink save button in addition to the OK button to actually save it. I know that now and I'll get used to it but it's awfully easy to make that mistake and you don't get a warning either if you have any unsaved changes sitting on the screen when exiting. If I compare Add category with Add Group, Add Environment, Add User, Add Remote Databases.... they all work the same way and they work differently from Add Categories. All those Add-something screens offer a red PLUS to start the new entry and then their entry screen has the pink save button on it.
Options I see:
A. Do nothing, we're just gonna have used to it.
B. Replace that OK button with a pesky-pink SAVE button
C. Make the OK button save the empty category

Dragging and dropping apps into categories, I can see why one would have to pesky pink button when done dragging and dropping a bunch of stuff but with the Add category I somehow wasn't expecting that. Not a big deal, just sharing user experience


3. Assigning apps to categories
Unless I just haven't discovered it yet, I believe the only way to get apps into categories is to drag-and-drop them from Portal Administration - Categories. So far I only have a few categories but that will soon change. I will have page after page after page. Dragging an app all the way from Uncategorized to MyNewCategory way down there is a pain.
Options I see:
A. Add a button (in addition to the Edit and Delete buttons that are displayed on the right side of each Category called Add Apps, or add a button called Add Apps to the pop up that appears when you click Edit Category ( I prefer the former as that saves 1 click). Then display a drop down list with all the Apps. This pop up should be similar to the one that appears when you add apps to a GROUP. The only thing different to this Add App pop-up for Categories compared to the Add Up pop up used in groups is that I would like to have an optional filter to select the from category. By and large I will be moving apps from the Unassigned category to Category X and thus it would be nice to subset it to just those apps. This filter should be optional (but possibly default) because there are times that I'll want to move an app from Category A to B.
B. In Portal Admin - Apps. Add an option to the row menu icon (Edit, Copy, Remove, Share) called "Assign" or something (I know you want to keep those option short). (BTW all the "Share" row menu option does is launch an empty email (Outlook in my case) with subject "&Body". That's it...)
C. In the "Edit" row menu. for Portal Admin - Apps, there are currently 3 tabs (icons, buttons, tabs, sections, whatever you call them blue/grey dot things)... (1) Basics (2) Settings (3) Groups. Can we add (4) Category to that? Then list the category it is currently in and provide a list of target categories. Would prefer that list of target categories to look like the App List pop-up: much smaller and more succinct than the App drag thing in the categories maintenance screen.
D. All of the above

To assign an App to a Group, you have multiple options. You can go to Apps, row menu, Edit, icon (3) or you can go to groups, click the pencil (for edit) and click Add Apps there. I would like to have the same multiple avenues available to assign apps to Categories. To me, the activity of assigning apps to a group is very similar to assigning an app to a category. Intuitively I would want to initiate that activity "from the app". I just created and installed a new app, it needs a home. So I go to Portal Admin - Apps, find my new shiny app and stick it in its category...

[Johnny Major]

You can move the application to another category already from within the settings section of the app via Portal Admin/Apps;

Admin App Category.png

In the next Valence 6.0 update, you'll be able to click on an application from within categories and a popup will be displayed showing the available categories to quickly move the app instead of dragging the application to another category.

Of course, you will still be able to drag the application to another category.

Thanks

[opendave]

On the subject of Categories....

It would be nice if there were a way to have items in multiple categories. In our use case, we have categories for different major Customers -- because grouping that way in the Launchpad makes the most sense. We have a handful of apps that make sense for more than one Customer grouping, and right now we have to setup duplicate Valance Apps in Portal Admin to allow us to put an icon for those in more than one Category on the Launchpad.

[DrGadget]

Perhaps I am still trying too hard to draw parallels between our green screen menu system and the portal, categories and apps that are slated to eventually replace it all, but it's hard not to. I've done a lot of analysis on our current menu structure and user activity, in an attempt to project what our portal is going to look like down the road. It is becoming apparent to me that the way apps are organized and accessed via the portal is not going to scale well. Here are my concerns...

1. The typical green screen menu system, similar to the MAIN menu that IBM gives us, has a hierarchical structure to it, a tree structure. Main menu, submenu, (sometimes more than one), then apps. The portal does not. We have categories... and that's it. So I either end up with a ton of categories so I can kinda still visually group my apps the way they are grouped today, or I end up with categories that have pages and pages of apps in them (menu level reduction) .

2. I completely agree with Dave, we need to be able to put an app in more than one category, I have plenty of green screen programs that appear on more than one menu today. Example? Vendor inquiry. That's on the AP menu, Purchasing menu, AR menu etc. If I can only put that on one category, any end user who needs access to that app will end up with that category on their portal. I am going to end up with so many categories that half of my real estate will be taken up with category headers

3. Speaking of real estate, the categories and the size of the app icons allows for maybe 3-4 categories and 30-40 apps tops on one screen while still being able to read it. Here's some analysis I did:

APPS #USERS
>150 2
101-150 17
76-100 14
51-75 54
31-50 212
11-30 194
6-10 141
2-5 190
1 54

I have over 400 end-users who use between 11 and 50 apps. Mind you these are just the apps I know the use, not all the apps they have available to them on their menus. Why is that? If John and Mary both have the AP menu and John uses 1 and 3 and Mary uses 1,2 and 4, I am not going to make an AP menu for John and a different AP menu for Mary with just the options they need. That would be a maintenance nightmare. These 212 users that today use between 31 and 50 apps, those 31-50 apps reside on different menus and different submenus. I haven't analyzed yet how many menus and submenus these 31-50 apps are on, but it's likely "a couple dozen". Which means I would have a couple of dozen categories and the portal would be littered with categories each with a couple of apps. The situation is only exacerbated by the issue Dave brings up

Across all menus, I have 1755 apps. No end user would ever see that many apps on their portal (except developers with all menu access), but I bring that point up just to illustrate the sheer size of the monster we are building here...

4. Finding apps. Today my users get on the system, they are presented with their main menu, they need to pay a bill, they do 3-1 and boom they are in the 1-AP menu 3-Enter Vendor Bill. They don't even think about that, their fingers do the 3-1 thing. One of my biggest challenges with this UI modernization effort is User Adoption. Tomorrow Vendor Bills are processed with a Valence app on the portal, not with 3-1. They go to the portal, there is no 3-1 there. There's 3-4+ pages of categories and app icons. There is no search or position-to to go straight to the Accounts Payable category on page 3. The only search there is is app name search so now they have to know what the app is called and they will have 50-100+ apps. I think you can see where this is going...

I am sure we have some opportunities to "consolidate apps". A few apps on the green screen(GS) menu could probably be discontinued by providing panes popups lookups shortcuts buttons etc, on other apps. It won't be enough.

We could make apps that emulate menus and submenus and put those on the portal. Now I have just transformed categories to main menus and apps in those categories to screens that display a menu with options and those options then fire up other apps and the user still cannot do 3-1. Completely defeats the design of the portal.

We could ditch the whole portal and categories and write our own web-based menu front-end where menu options launch valence apps. Hmmm

We could stick with the green screen menu and when the user does 3-1 it launches a Valence app. The problem with that is this. Today when that user does 3-1, when they are done they hit F3 and they are back at their menu, ready for their next activity. If I launch a Valence app from GS menu 3-1, there is no F3 or any other mechanism that will put the user back in the GS menu when they are done. They are going to end up with hundreds of browser tabs open at the end of the day. Not to mention that the idea here is to get away from green screens and that includes the menu

The Valence portal, categories, apps... I think it all works well if you have a very small system with only a few categories and maybe 2-3 dozen apps total. I have 500+ users, 1700 apps, 100+ menus. I do not think this is going to scale and I think the navigation challenges will result in poor adoption and potentially even failure of the entire UI modernization project.

I am open to ideas.

We think all app access should be through the portal but we need to address the issues I described above. For starters I think we need to look at the concept of Sub-categories and make categories and sub-categories "collapsable". When I come to the portal, I essentially see my main menu there, a bunch of categories but the icons of the apps within these categories are not displayed until I expand that category. I think we need to look at the concepts of sub-categories, categories within categories. I think we need different kinds of categories... categories that have apps in them and those that have subcategories in them. Perhaps a category can have both. sub-categories and apps in them. Maybe categories should have attributes so you can define if a category should be displayed "collapsed" initially, or not. I don't know what the answer is, I only know what problem I will soon have. Whatever solution we come up with though, it needs to be very efficient. Very easy to navigate, and traverse the category hierarchy. Rich and powerful search capabilities. I kid you not, you should see my users and their green screen menus. They are flying through menus with one hand on the 10 key while writing with the other hand and talking on the phone. That's what I am competing with while trying to get adoption for UI modernization...

I realize this is potentially a big redesign of the portal. Perhaps we need to introduce a second type of portal. I don't know. It's going to be a big issue soon an it's a high priority. Be happy to engage in design brainstorming discussions....

[opendave]

Categories/subcategories could be very good -- but could be a pretty big change too...

One idea we implemented, to deal with the large number of options for each user is to encourage "favorites". A user might have access to 1700 options, but odds are they only use a dozen or two on a regular basis. We have users mark favorites, and we added a little JS to the portal screen to only show favorites in the dashboard. Makes the UI a lot more easier to manage visually.

Of course, this would still be loading 1700 icons to show 12, so not ideal. But a workable workaround for us.

[gzambrano]

Just an idea, we have 500+ apps and several categories, our users have been assigned to groups according to their roles and the apps have been authorized to groups, so different users only see the apps for the groups they belong to.

[DrGadget]

Of course, I do that too. Users only see apps that are in groups they are authorized to. If we didn't do that everyone's portal would have 1000s of apps and everybody would have access to everything -- not good. We've actually automated that using a portal login exit program. When users log into the portal, the groups they are authorized to are refreshed. Because I have over 600 active users and will eventually have well over 1000 apps and, in my estimation, upwards of 100 groups and categories, if I had to maintain user-group assignments through the portal I would have to hire a full time administrator. We've leveraged access controls we have in place for green screen menu authority. If you have access to GS menu AP, you'll have access to group AP. There's a lot more control than that, but you get the idea...

gzambrano -- how many categories and apps does your average user see?

[gzambrano]

DrGadget sorry for the delay, I have been snowed under and I do development work not administration so I had to gather the information for you (see attachments).

Roughly, our average user sees around 20 categories and 80 apps (I have excluded categories ‘Not in menu’ and ‘Obsolete’). The apps in category ‘Not in menu’ are being called by other apps but the users cannot call them directly from the portal. The apps in category ‘Obsolete’ are not visible in the portal anymore because they have been replaced by other apps or have been discontinued for lack of use.

This is also dependent on the device the user has, some users only have iPads and not all the apps have been enabled for mobile use.

The categories are mostly used as labels to make it easy to group related apps together, and all the apps in a specific category have the same color.

Some icons are the same for similar apps, for example, all the upload apps use the same icon, but the icon color can be different depending on what category the app is under.

The apps are normally grouped by business area, for example, there would be a category called Accounts which will contain apps in blue color. The apps that A/P users need will contain the A/P group, the apps that A/R users need will contain the A/R group. All the apps in the Accounts category will contain the Accounts Manager group as this user can access all the accounts apps. So far the accounts people will be able to see only the Accounts Category.

Let's say that these users now need the Order Inquiry app that is under Customer Service category and it is pink. What will happen is that the Accounts groups will be added to the Order Inquiry app and now the accounts people will see two Categories, Accounts and Customer Service, and some blue apps plus a pink app. It doesn't matter to us that the accounts people can see a Customer Service app and the Order Inquiry app will not be added to the Accounts category.

A couple of areas in the business have many apps and they have been grouped under separate categories. These categories have been placed together in the portal and are all the same color.

It is easy to scroll down in the portal and find each category because they have different colors. Sometimes I don't remember the app name but I remember that it is a green one, or a yellow one.

Another useful feature is the browser search because the portal search only finds apps but not categories. The users should be familiar with Ctrl-F because it finds everything in the portal. Another feature that saves time is the Auto Start Apps, which the users can define to load the apps that they use every day.

HTH