List of Usability Issues

[DBowsky]

Hi,

Just a short list of things that my teams have noticed on their first morning running Cerberus 4.

1. Search terminology. Strictly semantic, but the use of "matches" versus "equals" is confusing as the terms are somewhat interchangeable. I understand that "matches" really means "contains," but as "contains" is more standard terminology, it would make things less confusing. I have fielded this question for just about each user that I have on Cerberus.

2. Access to Actions on Custom Fields from List Views or Bulk Update. Totally missing. We can assign a bucket using Bulk Update or the buttons at the end of a list, but we cannot do ANYTHING with custom fields unless we are within the ticket view, on the custom fields tab. Perhaps an expansion of paradigm is needed here? Internal support teams need to be able to categorize their work (for reporting later) AND have those categories accessible quickly and viewable in a meaningful way.

3. Merge Into Ticket Number is totally gone. Please restore the 3.x functionality of selecting 1 ticket and then merging it into an existing ticket by entering that ticket's number. Annoying to have to get both tickets on the same list so that they can be checked and merged with no control over which one is the master and which one is dropped.

4. Please divorce SLAs from the address book. Alternatively: Please establish a priority structure which can be tied to problem type, not requester or organization.

5. Address book: Special characters are mangled in name display. For example, an accented e (e') or an n-ya (latin n character with the marker over it) and other similar extended ASCII characters have been mangled by the address book. They work fine in LDAP (import source).

6. Within a ticket view, dropdown list to assign Next Worker or take a ticket without going back out to list view to do so.


That should be good for now. :)

[DBowsky]

63 views, high rating, and no replies. :) Silly thread.

I'd like to add another usability item:

Access to ticket controls from within ticket views. Would be a vast improvement if we could take, release, assign to another person, set waiting, set not waiting, etc while viewing a ticket without having to go back out to a list view to perform those actions.

[joegeck]

For the record I'm going to answer these questions assuming you're on the latest stable build 662. Just in case I happen to mention that so-and-so is located under such-and-such and you say "It's not there". If that's the case please upgrade to the newest Cerb4 available.

Let us begin.


1. Search terminology. Strictly semantic, but the use of "matches" versus "equals" is confusing as the terms are somewhat interchangeable. I understand that "matches" really means "contains," but as "contains" is more standard terminology, it would make things less confusing. I have fielded this question for just about each user that I have on Cerberus.


Yeah that's a valid point but if you've noticed we tend to adopt quite a bit of unconventional terminology to describe our unique features. But hey if it's really a snag for you and your customers there's a good chance it's going to be an issue for a lot of people. I'm going to file this as a suggestion into our tracking portal, but note this is kind of subjective so who knows what the developers like. They'll have to give it some thought in any case.

http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-764


2. Access to Actions on Custom Fields from List Views or Bulk Update. Totally missing. We can assign a bucket using Bulk Update or the buttons at the end of a list, but we cannot do ANYTHING with custom fields unless we are within the ticket view, on the custom fields tab. Perhaps an expansion of paradigm is needed here? Internal support teams need to be able to categorize their work (for reporting later) AND have those categories accessible quickly and viewable in a meaningful way.


This sounds like a great idea all around, just for usability at the least. I went ahead and requested this as a new feature. Track it here:

http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-765


3. Merge Into Ticket Number is totally gone. Please restore the 3.x functionality of selecting 1 ticket and then merging it into an existing ticket by entering that ticket's number. Annoying to have to get both tickets on the same list so that they can be checked and merged with no control over which one is the master and which one is dropped.


You've complained about this in a separate thread as well:
http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5482#post5482

and as I noted there, I added a comment to the ongoing "merge ticket" issue:
http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-174


4. Please divorce SLAs from the address book. Alternatively: Please establish a priority structure which can be tied to problem type, not requester or organization.


You've made your opinions on SLAs heard in another thread as well, along with many other people who are unhappy with the current implemenation:
http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showthread.php?t=908

I haven't got around to this yet, but I'm going to eventually consolidate that entire thread into a new "improvement request". You guys did a good job of explaining everything so I may just copy it all verbatim.

I'll edit this post when I do that with a link to the request...


5. Address book: Special characters are mangled in name display. For example, an accented e (e') or an n-ya (latin n character with the marker over it) and other similar extended ASCII characters have been mangled by the address book. They work fine in LDAP (import source).


Looks like you got us there! Filed over at:
http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-766


6. Within a ticket view, dropdown list to assign Next Worker or take a ticket without going back out to list view to do so.


Access to ticket controls from within ticket views. Would be a vast improvement if we could take, release, assign to another person, set waiting, set not waiting, etc while viewing a ticket without having to go back out to a list view to perform those actions.

I take it you haven't looked into the 'Properties' tab available from the ticket view. Every action you mention is right there. Check it out :)

[euriska]

7. When completing a task from within a ticket it blows you back to the main screen instead of leaving me where I'm at. At which point I must go find the ticket again to finish making entries in the comments or sticky notes.

8. Time tracking plugin - I find it completely useless. Did I say completely

[Hildy]

7) New issue: http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-781

8) It's a) only in the dev trunk, not in stable, and b) marked "Experimental". It's not done yet. :-)

[michaelc]

Don't know whether to pass this on here or on jira. From the half dozen users we have using it we found that there are some issues. One of them is tasks/next action.
These are 2 very similar concepts that possibly should be merged down into one, tasks. Next action allows a round-robin approach, tasks is good for multitasking, but could also be used.
This could be extended further by creating dependant tasks I guess.

The user is initially presented with the mail panel as an overview, they can see a list of jobs they have assigned, one click away, but there is no indication as to which tasks they have assigned, thats 2 clicks away. Once they are in tasks they need to preform another action to see their own tasks. Sounds like little effort, when you do the same action 100 times a day, it becomes annoying.
It would be nice and more efficient if, when the user logs in, they could see, in one panel their assigned jobs and their assigned tasks (possibly indented). If they have an assigned task, but havent been assigned the parent job, grey the job and include the task as well.

[joegeck]

The Next Action vs. Tasks is definitely debatable as we've heard this come up before. As you know next action was designed first and tasks were added much later, so there's a natural overlap. One day this distinction may be reconciled but for now I think the developers are keen on keeping the ideas separate (partly because of the differences in use you mentioned).

On the other hand, the feedback regarding "tasks as part of the overview", probably belongs with JIRA issue CHD-793:

[Overview/My Workspaces] One place to see tasks and mail together
http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-793

I'm going to copy your comment verbatim so we have a record of ways to possibly implement this.