Other UX/UI Improvements...

This article shares details of the many smaller changes or improvements made to the user interface or experience, which all add up to improve the overall user experience (UX):

Accessibility Improvements

We have made many improvements, across the product, to handle High Contrast modes better for accessibility; see some examples below:

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Note: if you, or a user you know, has feedback on MooD's accessibility, please contact support so that we can improve your experience.

Excel Synchronizer Mapping Improvements

Link Tooltips

Currently, when linking between source and target, when you start the link, MooD Business Architect will helpfully grey out any incompatible fields.  This has now been made more helpful by providing tooltips, when hovering over the greyed out fields, to help the user understand why it is not compatible.  

The tooltip will provide the field and data type, the reason why it cannot be mapped to and a suggestion of how to make it compatible.

Removing Links

Currently when the user right clicks on a link from/to fields residing within a group, then the "Remove" option appears.  However, clicking this option does not remove the link, and instead the user is left confused when nothing happens. 

Instead the user would need to expand the group and click on the link between the fields themselves; this ensures the user knows exactly what they are deleting, but this workflow is not clear.

In this latest build the user is given the option to "Expand Group" when right clicking on the link, instead of "Remove", therefore reducing confusion to the end user.

To further improve the user experience, when the user selects or hovers over a link, the source and target nodes (as well as any parent group node they're contained within) are highlighted.

Issue Fixed: When deleting a Group on the mapping screen, all items to be deleted as part of that group, will now be displayed properly as part of the confirmation dialog.

An info icon will now appear when trying to map a name-compatible string type to a non-name target field, with the tooltip "recommended to use the 'String' type to prevent possible truncations".  This is to warn the user that any characters over 250 will be truncated, and therefore there is potential to lose data.

Improved Copy & Paste Consistency

In previous builds of MooD there were inconsistencies in copy and paste functionality; such as when right clicking on a control you would have the option to "Duplicate" instead of to "Copy" as you would if you were to right click on an element or an image.

In this latest build, all symbols on a canvas, whether they be an element, a picture or a control will have the "Copy" option on the right click menu.

The other improvement made is to ensure that after a user has selected the "Copy" option or has used Ctrl+c, when they then click/right click on the canvas the symbol becomes automatically unselected, allowing them to paste.  Previously a user would have to click twice to allow them to paste; the first click deselecting the symbol.

Start Page Thumbnail

In previous builds, if a Business Architect user was to close the Start page, there was no way to re-open the tab without closing all other tabs first, and then the "Start Page" button would appear as an option, within the Home ribbon.

In the latest version of MooD, we have added a "Start Page" thumbnail to the left of the explorer bar, so that the start page can be re-opened at any time.

Note: when using this option, the Start tab will open to the right other other open tabs.  The user can drag the tab to reposition it as preferred.

Synchronization Group Selection

Currently, when a user wants to configure a button to execute a set of synchronizers by group, they may struggle with how the options are laid out.  

When selecting "Synchronization (or group)":

They are met with a list of Synchronizers; first the individual Synchronizers, which have not been added to a group, then a list of Synchronizer Groups in alphabetical order. 

The option to select Synchronizers by Groups is hidden within this list, under Groups, which may make it hard to find, especially if there are a lot of Groups.

We have now changed the structure of the above, to make it easier for the user to find the Synchronizer or Synchronizer Group they wish to execute.

The first option allows the user to easily find a Group to execute, the second option allows the user to search Synchronizers which do not belong to a given Group, and then individual groups are listed alphabetically, to give the user the option to search that way:

Alternatively, the user can click on the expansion arrow at the top to see the full list of individual Synchronizers, allowing the user to search in one place: don't forget the search function at the bottom of the dialog.

Repository Management without a UI

Deployment Engineers can now execute various Repository Manager functions via an automated script; simplifying deployment and enabling it to be done remotely without running the user interface.

Using a command line or powershell script the user is able to Add and Remove server connections, Create, Rename and Delete repositories, and Show or Hide existing repositories.