Form Customization in New UI (Frappe CRM / Helpdesk) vs. Desk UI

[girish3]

Hi Frappe Team,

We’re one of the Frappe Partners. So far, we’ve relied on the Desk UI for customisation. It gives us a lot of control when building and modifying forms to suit specific business needs.

On the other hand, Frappe CRM and Helpdesk have their own frontend UI. While they look great and offer a modern user experience, the form customisation capabilities (e.g., layout, conditional visibility, scripts, automation, etc.) are more limited compared to what we can achieve in Desk UI. This sometimes makes it tricky when we demonstrate solutions to clients who expect a similar level of flexibility across all apps.

(PFA screenshots)

Frappe HR, however, stands out as a great example since it’s built on top of ERPNext and leverages Desk UI.

With the upcoming Frappe and ERPNext v16 release planned for December, that promises significant improvements to the Desk UI user experience, I’m curious how UI consistency across products will evolve. Will each product continue to have its own frontend direction, or is there a broader design vision that ties them together?

Could you help clarify:

• What is the current scope of form customisability in the new UI?

• Is there a roadmap to bring these customisation capabilities on par with Desk UI?

• How does the team envision maintaining consistency across different UIs as the ecosystem grows

We’d love to align our approach with Frappe’s vision so we can better guide our clients and plan implementations accordingly.

Thanks in advance!
– Girish (Frappe Partner)

[YogiYang]

I also have the same question but was hesitant to ask here.

Currently Desk UI is highly mature and it is generally easy for one to customize it. But in case of new UI that may not be possible.

For example if I want to add a field in an existing DocType all that I need to do is just add it where I want that filed to appear but in case of the new UI that will not be possible unless they come up with some kind of rendering engine that handles this.

Here one will have to use a traditional approach of adding the field in DocType and then manually adding the same in the new UI and linking it to the field in the DocType. I think one will also have to edit the query to fetch data from the DocType.

It is still not clear how will they handle these features of Desk UI.

Sorry @rmehta @shariquerik but personally the New UI approach feels like going a step backward.

[yogeshvachhani]

I have been thinking of adopting the New UI, but for some unknown reasons I have not got around to adopt it as I fee the amount of work required is way more than can be justified.

But I have never through about the points you have raised. I don’t know how may of these are valid but you have definitely got me thinking.