GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 699271
Confusing initial Custom Report window: Shows no options for adding a new custom report
Last modified: 2018-06-29 23:15:23 UTC
Created attachment 242858 [details] screen shot of the custom report window Opening Custom Report from the Reports menu A window opens which shows no options to run It shows the delete, cancel, and run buttons
Right, that's the initial state when no custom reports were defined. This is a confusing part of the user interface. To add a new custom report, first open an existing report and change its options a bit (such as, changing the title). Then, the button "Save report" becomes active. Press this button. From then on, this new report will appear in the custom report window.
I would like to suggest following changes: 1. If there are no saved reports then, instead of showing the empty saved report list, create an information window which explains the situation according to Christian's Comment 1. 2. In the File menu, change the entry "Add Report..." to "Save Report..." to be aligned with the now available Save buttons in the Report window. 3. In the Reports menu, change the entry "Custom Reports" to "Saved Reports" so the user can easily associate this entry with the action "Save Report". What do you think?
From GnuCash 2.5.4 I can see that point 2 has already been considered. Good :-)
Created attachment 254513 [details] [review] patch to be appled on report-gnome.scm (GnuCash 2.5.4) This patch deals with point 3: In the Report menu rename the menu item "Custom Reports" to "Saved Reports".
Created attachment 254514 [details] [review] patch to be appled on dialog-custom-report.c (GnuCash 2.5.4) This is proposal for point 1 in comment 2: Instead of providing an extra information window do the following: Avoid an empty list of custom/saved reports dialog. If no reports have been saved, create a dummy entry that says "no reports saved". All actions will lead to no further result than this dummy list entry which will be experienced be the user as if they were ignored. Even renaming of the entry will result in the same line being restored. If one or more reports have been saved, this dummy entry will not appear. If the last saved report is deleted from the list, the dummy entry will appear again.
Comment on attachment 254514 [details] [review] patch to be appled on dialog-custom-report.c (GnuCash 2.5.4) Carsten, thank you for your patches. They represent nice improvements over the current situation. There is an issue with the second patch however: if I double-click the "no reports saved" line, GnuCash crashes. This is because the row-activation signal is not blocked and GnuCash tries to open a non-existing report. While playing with your patch, I found a few things that could improve the user experience even more: - when there are no saved reports, hide the per-row buttons completely by hiding the relevant columns in the tree-view widget. This will make it even more clear there are no useful actions except for closing the dialog again. - together with the fix for the row-activation, that would be a good user interface. - Even better would be to completely replace the Treeview widget with a simple label widget. That gives us the opportunity to give the user some more detailed guidance on the spot. Something along these lines: "You currently have no saved reports Saved reports are created by first opening a report from the Reports menu, altering the report's options to your taste and the choosing "Save Report" from the File menu or tool bar" (Text may be improved) Replacing the treeview widget with a label is easier than it may sound. This is done by altering the glade file for this dialog and defining a label and treeview in one vertical box. The label is set to hidden by default (or perhaps better even the other way around - the treeview hidden by default). In code you then only have to switch the visibility of both widgets based on the availability of saved reports.
Hi, thanks for checking out the patches. I like your last idea very much and will go for that. The text is absolutely fine with me. I will be back with new patches, but it may take a couple of weeks (currently working on the multi-national tax declaration).
Created attachment 270579 [details] [review] Patch to be applied on GnuCash 2.6.1 or later ... took a bit longer than expected ... I have combined the - naming change from "Preconfigured" to "Saved" Reports - adding labels to the dialog, one conditionally shown dependent on the fact whether there exist saved reports or not into one patch. Hope it is fine that way.
Comment on attachment 270579 [details] [review] Patch to be applied on GnuCash 2.6.1 or later Thank you for your patch. I will look at the technical side of it later. The immediate remark I have now is that reverting "preconfigured report" back to "saved report" is a bit unfortunate. I am aware that the previous comments suggest this. But meanwhile there was a request to harmonize the menu name with the names used in the dialog. In response to that report I chose to normalize on "Preconfigured report" specifically because both "custom report" and "saved report" carry double meaning. - "Custom report" was used for what I am now calling "Preconfigured report". That is in gnucash you open a report, modify some options and the save that preset configuration for later use. This name was also used for complete report written in scheme that is not part of GnuCash but can be loaded by storing it in the .gnucash directory and adding a line in config.user. - Similarly "Saved report" is sometimes used to refer to a preconfigured report. And at the same time this name is used in the context of saving an html representation of a report for use outside of gnucash. So to give us a vocabulary to unambiguously refer to each of these 3 cases I prefer not to use "Saved reports" for the reports you can modify inside gnucash. My current preference is "Preconfigured report" but I'm open to other unambiguous names.
Talking for myself: - "Preconfigured" is too close to "Preset", implying that these configurations are part of the shipment - "Saved" is a hint that this belongs to the Save button that you can use for the reports, hinting at the fact that you have to do something before they are available - we should not invent new words because some users mix up the meaning for "Save" and "Export". The meaning is defined by the functions that the corresponding buttons have. "Export" means "save the report result to HTML", "Save" means "save the report configuration to disc". Having said that: -> How about calling them "Saved Report Configurations"?
Comment on attachment 270579 [details] [review] Patch to be applied on GnuCash 2.6.1 or later I have looked into the patch. It looks good from a technical point of view so I have committed it (https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/commit/cebe4ed9). Thank you very much. And since we are working in git now this patch is the first to go into the git history as authored by you. Congratulations :) (I'm well aware it's not your first patch but now we can formally attribute patches to their authors, which is great.) From a ux point of view I have some remarks still. - I see you have added two labels. One visible only when there are no saved report configurations and one visible all the time with an explanation on how to save a report configuration. I really think that's a bridge too far. It is good to provide help with this sometimes non-obvious feature. However this should not be displayed permanently. Firstly it takes up valuable screen real estate that is better used to list more report configurations. Secondly it doesn't make sense to have this help information visible at all times. Users need help the first time they want to use a feature. Once they understand how it works, the message just gets in the way. This is what the "Help" buttons are for in various other dialogs. Help should not be there permanently, only when asked. The help text displayed when there are no saved report configurations at all can be considered an exception to this rule. Why: because this situation is most likely to occur when the user never used this feature before. So we are in a first-time use situation and then some guidance is often appreciated. - Showing/hiding the first label/treeview is only evaluated when the dialog is created. So when a user deletes all saved configurations she ends up with an empty tree. It would be nicer if this would switch the treeview for the label as well dynamically. This is just a cosmetic though.
(In reply to comment #10) > Talking for myself: > > - "Preconfigured" is too close to "Preset", implying that these configurations > are part of the shipment > Except that we don't have such configurations that come as part of the shipment. We do have users creating their own reports though as well as the feature to save a report as html. > - "Saved" is a hint that this belongs to the Save button that you can use for > the reports, hinting at the fact that you have to do something before they are > available To be honest, I don't like the save button icon for this process, but I didn't have anything else available nor the time/skills to create something. > > - we should not invent new words because some users mix up the meaning for > "Save" and "Export". The meaning is defined by the functions that the > corresponding buttons have. "Export" means "save the report result to HTML", > "Save" means "save the report configuration to disc". > This is not wrong per se. However I tend to take user confusion as an indicator for bad UI. If the user confuses "Save" and "Export" then that means those names were poorly chosen. I keep in mind here as well that there are users that already have trouble with the notion of saving something. For an experienced computer user this poses no problems, but gnucash also has users that are good at accounting but poor at computer specifics. For such users the difference between "Save" and "Export" can be too subtle. Add to that that our process of saving a report configuration is not exactly like your typical file saving metaphor. You don't get to explain where you want to save a configuration using the familiar "Save As" dialog. It's a totally different interface adding more confusion by sticking with the "Save metaphor" > Having said that: > > -> How about calling them "Saved Report Configurations"? Having said all that as well :) I concede that "Saved Report Configurations" is good enough for now. I have made the necessary changes in a follow-up commit. In it I have also moved the two save menu items to the Report menu, grouping all "Saved report configuration" actions together. I believe that makes it easier for the user to understand how this feature works.
This problem has been fixed in our software repository. The fix is in the last software release. Thank you for your bug report.
Reassign version to 2.4.x so that individual 2.4 versions can be retired.
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