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.
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.
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.
@girish3 both CRM and Desk are evolving separately. We are not sure where this will end up. For v16 and the next 2-3 years, we will continue to evolve desk while CRM and even Frappe Studio start becoming more mature and achieve parity.
Personally I don’t have an answer to this. We’ll see
@rmehta - what should we, as partners, focus on selling then? Frappe UI based apps which are not customziable or standard ERPNext (Desk-based) modules?
Thanks for the feedback. We have heard the same feedback since 2023 when we launched new apps like FrappeCRM. The new apps do lack the flexibility of the DeskUI, however the UI is more modern and opinionated, which the Desk lacks. Based on the feedback from users, FrappeCRM’s roadmap has many features planned that will make it even more customisable than what it currently is. The new UI will have flexibility, however it may not be as high as desk UI.However, I’ll request @michelle to take up your specific queries.
To your question about consistency across different UIs, most of the Frappe apps share many UI and UX components, example permissions manager, integrations, automations (IFTTT). Additionally, all apps will be continue to be built using Frappe UI components.
I understand the confusion. But we need a direction.
Having two UIs at the same time will be troublesome for end users. Since, Frappe UI is the future, I think the Frappe Team should consider replacing desk. This will be a very very large project.
