2022-11-07 Meeting notes: UX patterns for common cross-app tasks II

Date

Nov 7, 2022

Housekeeping

• Convener and notes: @Martina Schildt

• Next meeting: Nov 16, 2022 

Discussion items

1. Continuation: UX patterns for common cross-app tasks (e.g. would it be useful to have a UX for a 'quick add' task that could be used in different contexts when you need to create something in another app). I think it would be good to have UX specialists (Kimie, Gill) present for this, and possibly also some Stripes devs (e.g. John C/Zak)

   • Owen will demo linking eusage to agreements

   • Martina will demo organisations related interfaces and contact person

   • Possible actions to take (Owen)

Minutes

Continuation of 2022-10-24 Meeting notes: UX patterns for common cross-app tasks

• Martina S. demos the process of creating an organization record, creating and linking to a contact person and interface

  • process is quite cumbersome

  • person and interface can only be linked from edit mode

  • a fast-add functionality for creating contact person and interface while creating organization would be helpful

  • Laura: additionally, it is confusing that after creating and linking the person or interface, the user does not need to save the organization record - that does not seem consistent to other apps

  • Dung-Lan in chat: Agree with Martina, this creating contact process in Organization is weird and not making much sense?!

  • Same for users and adding permissions; user record needs to be saved first

  • Marc: that is because permissions are a separate app from users | when saving, different issues can occur - how would a user know whether the issue is with users or permissions

  • Jana: Why do the contact people not live in the users app?

  • Maura: contacts for vendors in users is contrary to what is intended with users app - would be expanding the scope

  • Marc: there might often be a relationship between people and users, but not always - users do not need to be people

  • Owen: problem is the workflow of while creating one record allowing the user to create and add another record 

    • that does not apply in the checkout situation in the same way

  • Charlotte: often you need one record created before you should be able to link another

  • Maura: workflows would need better documentation to make needed steps clearer

  • Martina S: in organizations it would be clearer if you either

    • can link from view mode instead of edit mode

    • or can create and link interfaces/person only after saving the record (same as for users and permissions)

  • Laura in chat: I would definitely prefer being able to assign the permissions as part of the creation of the user.

• Owen: agreement with usage data provider added

  • usage data is stored on agreements

  • eUsage reports accordion is not created by mod-agreements | mod-agreements provides a placeholder 

  • information is displayed from other modules such as eUsage | generated by module that is not part of agreements

  • invoice line relates to a POL number

  • OA is an OA charge without a POL

  • invoice lines could display data from another application | e.g. from OA requests

• Laura in chat: Are we hoping to define and documents patterns for future use?
  *document

• Owen in chat: I think that’s definitely one option Laura
  We haven’t got any of the UX team on the call I don’t think ? I think we need their input

• Spike that was created a while ago by @John Coburn : https://folio-org.atlassian.net/browse/FOLIO-2088

• Dung-Lan in chat: Link PO line implies a POL already exists.
  That one can choose to make the link.
  If the POL didn't exist, then it should say something like create a POL instead Link PO line?!

• Owen: yes, we would need relabelling | result is the same

• Laura: big fan of fast-add | clear where you have gone and where you go back to | if it is possible to use the fast as a model, that would be good

• Dung-Lan in chat: +1 to make "fast add" widely available wherever applicable and possible. Too many clicking in order to accomplish certain tasks in FOLIO seems to be a common and top complaint among staff here.

• Charlotte in chat: yup :-)

• Maura: would be helpfuf to see how fast-add touches the modules

• Marc in chat: One of the reasons why there are lots of clicks to achieve a task in the FOLIO UI I’d because the UI (mostly) isn’t designed around archiving specific tasks, it’s designed around creating and editing records

• Charlotte in chat: I just tested the functionality to create Orders directly from an instance in Inventory

• Dung-Lan: this functionality is new to Morning Glory

• Owen: this workflow does not return you to the original record | that is a little bit different

Next steps | Next call:

• put together list of cases where fast-add is a useful thing to do 

• we need members of the UX team | learn what the practical aspects are to make something happen here

• we need Dennis Bridges

• define and document patterns for future use | Martina S will create a page to do so → Fast-add | UX patterns for common cross-app tasks

• continuation tentatively on Nov 21

Chat

Future topics

• Topic proposal by @Owen Stephens for October:

  • Use of shortcut keys and macros for more effective cross-app working  - it also be good to have UX and Stripes/dev knowledge for this discussion I think. I know @Laura (she/they) uses macros so might have insights into the potential for cross-app working

  • Potential for external 'workflow' solutions for cross-app interactions

    • I think 'workflow' is a dangerous term here - in this context it's more about automation than user workflows, although I think there is overlap

    • I was particularly struck by the solution in production at TAMU (Jeremy Huff and Sebastian Hammer presented, the recording is at https://prod-zoom-recordings-openlibraryfoundation-org.s3.amazonaws.com/50dc6c87-3912-43fa-8287-56ec73b12bbb%2Fshared_screen_with_speaker_view%28CC%29.mp4 starting at 3 hrs, 14 min) - I think getting someone from TAMU to talk about how this is used would be v interesting

    • There was also a presentation on the use of a tool called Airflow at Stanford for "bibliographic workflow" but I've not watched that yet so not 100% sure if it is completely applicable - I think the core use case there was systems migration but it may go beyond that

• UX/UI and implementers topics

  • should be Wednesdays

Attendees

Action items