In the beginning of July, two of my coworkers and I spent a week in Lisbon to join our local team there, not to bet on the French or Portuguese victory in the Euro Cup, but to sprint for the release of the new web UI of the Nuxeo Platform! The seven of us were solely focused on adding new features (sprint style ;-)) and fixing critical bugs. It sure was a crazy week!
Our latest Fast Track release, Nuxeo Platform 8.3, which includes a new package called “Web UI” will give you a sneak-peek of the new Web UI. This UI package is still a preview edition and the beta version will be released with our upcoming long-term support version (LTS 2016).
The New Web UI
So what’s so special about this new web UI? If I have to sum it up in a single sentence, I would say it’s:
A completely rebooted user experience of the Nuxeo Platform, on a completely rebooted technical stack.
We will talk about the technical aspects in future blogs, but today let’s focus on the functional evolution!
A New Browsing Paradigm Adapted to Content Applications
Browsing options are on the first left column, content to browse on the second, and content to view on the main area or the third column - that’s the new and very efficient logic. Among the available browsing options are trees, search screens, queues, tasks, collections, last visited documents, favorites. This new pattern also allows you to start browsing without changing your context of work. For instance, you could be completing a case form at the same time while checking which new tasks you were just assigned!
A Powerful Table Component
The table component of this new application provides a great user experience: - Infinite scroll - Faceted filters in the header - Easy columns selection with persistence of user’s choice - Great visibility of selected elements
A Great Task Resolution Flow
User’s tasks can now be completed all in a row with a nice user interface that shows preview of the content bound to the workflow. As soon as one task is completed, the user easily goes to the next or the previous one.
Queues
The queues are an easy way to list documents in the same states, such as, cases to validate, etc. Queues can be added to the left menu. The user can review all content of a queue very easily just by browsing with the keyboard from one document to the other. Queues are great typically for Case Management projects.
A New Analytics Section
The analytics section for an admin shows a large set of analytics widgets: repository, search, and workflow. We improved the elements we had, in terms of presentation and behaviour, and added new ones.
Lots of UX Improvements
We added some simple but useful UX improvements, such as…
- The ability to browse last viewed documents
- The ability to browse quickly between documents with arrows
- Content preview on the document view
- Material Design components
- Shortcut for searching documents
…and a Kawaii Theme! Users can choose which themes they want to use for their Nuxeo Platform experience, and the configurations will be persisted locally.
There are still some major topics that need to be completed, among which are document creation flow, port of many add-ons (such as Live Connect), versioning features, etc. So, summer is going to be very busy! We will be glad to get your feedback.