I totally agree with you guys. Global search is good and powerful , but is not a replacement for clear easy to use navigation interface. Global search is an extra layer of navigation not the main navigation. For example, you can’t ask a new user how knows little about the internal doctypes and modules to rely on global search. Saying I only rely on global search, you are basically wearing your geek hat and not thinking about the UI usability for the normal user, and thats the main problem when the engineers also design the user interface
Also I agree with who said here that
Desk is just a glorified list of bookmarks
For me after I login the first thing is click on any desktop tile just so I can start navigation from the said bar. So really does the desk serve any purpose? its not like they are live tiles and provide you with information about their linked modules and doctypes
Ok, I’ll start thinking through a phased plan but I think it will have to be done essentially together and rather quickly nonetheless.
Over the weekend I exported the doctypes list and dug into each item but there are other pages we use that need added to the list like certain pages and such. Trying to plan out the full reorg list and where everything belongs. The experiential elements fit for a “department” if you will do not map cleanly to how modules have been developed out over time. Like “Sales” and “Accounting” are not clearly separated like they are in other software solutions. So just mapping modules and doctypes as they are organized in the code will not be the best solution for the users. And I know we have addressed this as the modules menu also does not map cleanly.
That said, It is thrilling to see the elements and pieces start to fall into place as I remap this with fresh eyes,. A few months from now I think we are going to be very happy. once i have a detailed Excel sheet and screen shots of the reorg I will pass along.
If there is a consensus to re-think the UI, then there must be more thought placed on the mobile devices that are increasingly at the heart of ERPNext users.
So… while the new sidebar looks wonderful on a computer screen, it would not likely scale well to a smartphone or tablet. We already have some growing issues with the usefulness of ERPNext on mobile devices. There are some screens that cannot work below 1080p resolutions already.
While I am hopeful that the foundation takes an interest in their product being mobile user friendly, I am currently stuck using high resolution Chromebooks and MS Windows Surface Pro devices to get some mobility out of the system. Modules like POS and Stock Transfers already do not translate well to mobile screens and a UI change like this further threatens the mobile market. That is really just not going to be sustainable in the near future when all of the competing products are already focused on elegant tablet and smartphone user interfaces.
That is just my opinion, ( and you know what they say about opinions ) but if ERPNext is going to play in the mobile market, then it is increasingly getting late to start focusing on that visual element of the system.
My less tech savvy users mainly use Sales Order, Sales Invoice, Purchase Order, Purchase Receipt, Purchase Invoice, Journal Entry, Payment entry most of the time. As soon as they login, they see all of them in that order in the first row of the desk. The second row has some of the reports they use very often. The third row has the module icons, which they can click and try to navigate to the page they are hoping to find. While I agree desk is a glorified bookmark, it certainly is very useful when configured properly as per your users need.
This is what needs to be fixed in my opinion. The side bar isn’t configurable, so it contains a lot of modules we don’t use and there doesn’t seem to be a way to re-configure their order. The ‘bookmark’ organization inside the module page isn’t also very intuitive. Having said that, after using it over some time, you will eventually get used to the layout.
While everyone thinks there is a real issue with the ERPNext navigation system, I don’t see consensus on how to fix it effectively. So I would really suggest brain-storming this further and resolving low hanging fruits first before trying to come up with major developments. We should also remember that any UI change will result in re-educating a lot of less tech-savvy people.
FWIW, I really like this conversation. I am not a user experience expert at all, but I can tell you that I am a technical person and I get lost sometimes in ERPNext. I am constantly working to help my users understand how to navigate around the tool to find what they need. Global search is not the panacea here. Good software should not require a complex procedure manual! Users should be able to intuitively find what they need. If this new desktop/navigation approach does that one thing it will be worth all the effort.
One thing that really bugs me in ERPNext around this topic is list pagination. The more button is horrible. We need true list pagination. I also want to be able to quickly move from record to record in a list. Once I set a filter on a list and open the first record, I should have a next record/previous record option on the page so I can just move from one to one if I want. In the list we need real pagination like what github has or other well designed applications. Keep the “number of records to show” on the left, but turn the right into pagination.
I also want to make it easier to hide things from users. For example everyone has “access” to read the company and fiscal year records, but they don’t need to see them in navigation! It just creates noise to the user. Based on roles or groups, as an admin I should be able to set what people see to minimize noise. Just cause you have read access to a doctype, does not mean it needs to show in navigation to the average user.
I absolutely agree with this but I also don’t think that the current approach of relying solely on mobile responsiveness is the way to go! This is an ERP with several different kinds of pages, layouts, reports, documents etc. We need to start looking into building native mobile applications with native elements that mobile users all over the world have become used to
This is why I’m particularly thankful for the foundational work being done by @revant_one and other members of his team in this area. I hope to see it grow to a point where it replaces the current ERPNext mobile app and becomes a community effort
This is one of the areas that really requires attention in the UI. The Desktop shouldn’t just be a collection of icons which easily becomes redundant as evidenced by all the feedback here and in other threads. It should be ‘Information Central’ where we can get critical metrics from different modules in the system. This is the kind of thing management likes to see and ERPNext needs a lot of improvement in the way it collates and presents information to management
Great point! It seems the separate mobile application has been sorely left behind in the upgrade process. A vibrant mobile community would be best served with an app appropriately scaled to their screens. I think the reliance on just using “any device with a browser” is becoming problematic, but mostly to the mobile user community.
So many good points here that I concur with. Getting from one thing to another is not as free flowing as it could be.
Something else I wanted to mention is that I regularly use two or more browser tabs for ERPNext which helps me navigate around different areas of the system more quickly. Ie one for CRM and one for Contacts. Also sometimes I use the back button which as you know is sometimes completely acceptable for one web application and not at all permitted in another. In ERPNext it seems to work fine most of the time but not all of the time.
I think sometimes the way you find workarounds like this point to deficiencies in using a system. So it’s worth considering that the methods you regularly use aren’t necessarily the best but the best for you
I agree that I have not personally thought all the way through ERPnext for mobile and feel like that is almost a completely separate set of problems all together. But I did consider it and how any change would also need to change mobile as well.
I do feel though that a few problems are solved by the proposed solution and how it would work for mobile as well. As you can see from the first set of screen shots combining selection of an app and menu into t one you can tap the menu select your new page/listview and the menu would close. If you need to change modules/apps tap the icon, the side menu changes, tap the menu item from the changed side menu and the menu closes. Although I am not claiming this will truly revolutionize the mobile app, I think the solution also improves mobile, but we will have to implement it well.
Well, simply making the default screen menu narrower on the left by using the icons will be an improvement. If the other menus are all “slide-out” from there, we might have a better chance of getting it to work.
So lets bear in mind here that usually a new solution looks really nice, but you don’t really understand its flaws until you start using it. I would strongly recommend getting small improvements merged first so you understand the scale and complexity and also get to move quickly.
A large PR at this stage would take a very long time to review, test and merge and there may be some parts that could go in very quickly and unfortunately held up due to the other parts which may have issues. Also any new contributor does take sometimes to understand the contribution standards.
Hello Joshreeder,
How much progress have you gone with this. Navigation would be a huge challenge for end users which is how I found this thread. Also the longest thread I have stubled upon which means something is missing in ERPNext.
I needed some context menu for a doctype which is where the search started. for instance, if i was in Selling, I should be able to see all the reports and custom reports in the side bar and not all the module lists which is of no importance to me. Surprisingly, the training video has that feature but the install does not. I did a post of this here Access to custom reports
So, how much work have you done on the UX? I would really like to know and hopefully contribute my one cent.
A mini update (I’m on Josh’s team):
We’ve been implementing non-UI pieces for the lead customer, which is a large pile of customizations and custom apps. This work has been in the back of our minds at all times and the Frappe team have had made a few changes that would help us build it more easily, which is awesome and makes me anxious. The core issue of Frappe/ERPNext (to me) is that it’s an odd mix of text input and mouse/touch(mobile) and navigation in particular should work better at both ends of the spectrum (desktop power users <<<>>> tiny mobile screens). This means both more keyboard bindings and better mobile views.
) but if ERPNext is going to play in the mobile market, then it is increasingly getting late to start focusing on that visual element of the system.