Episode Summary
In this very first episode of RecChat our host Zach Malloch is joined by Product Owner Bryan Gillilan, and UI/UX Designer Chris O'Connell to discuss the Next Gen UI for RecTrac 3.1. The group shows off the new menus, new workflows, and various changes throughout the web application, then spends some time answering a pethora of questions from the audience.
Video
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:00
And so we're gonna go ahead and start this up right now. And that'll give time for people to join. So we'll just kind of talk a little bit to start out with. The Skype webinar is now broadcasting to all attendees, attendees at the moment, less than 2333 3542. We have people watching us on RecChat, we're just starting it up, we're letting people kind of join in, and we will be starting the actual conversation in just a moment. So while everybody's joining, we have our representatives from development here, we have Bryan Gillilan, who's from product ownership, product management, product management, he is a product owner, that's where I was going with that. This is our first RecChat, it'll probably be apparent. Now we have Chris O'Connell. He's our UI UX designer, and he is responsible for a lot of or he's largely responsible for a lot of the changes that you'll see to our UI today. And I am Zach Malloch, I am manager of education and LMS. So that's not going to be a main feature of the conversation today. But it's kind of how we facilitate the whole RecChat thing, and all of that. So it is now two o'clock, I still have some people joining in, but we're going to go ahead and get started. So very soon, if not already, I don't have my email open. So I'm not positive, but we're going to be releasing RecTrac 3.1 point 10. And I know there's a lot of excitement about that. But there's also maybe a little bit of anxiety that people have about that release. Because change, while exciting can also be a little bit nerve wracking at times. Bryan, can you show people what they can expect to see after they load 3.1 10?
Bryan Gillilan 1:49
I can
Zach Malloch 1:59
But that doesn't look all that much different. Honestly, Bryan.
Bryan Gillilan 2:03
So when customers go to three 110, they won't see anything different out of the box. So the whole idea behind this new UI and how we're implementing it is that it's not a change that you have to embrace day one, it's something you can try out in the leisure of your Demo or one user at a time, but you're not forced into it through the three 110 update. So it should give you some time to familiarize yourself with the new UI before you necessarily have to put it directly into production for all your users.
Zach Malloch 2:34
Okay, so I guess, first right off the bat, don't panic. So you're going to have basically the same environment, it's really an opt in like they get to choose when and who gets in and starts to take a look and play around with it
Bryan Gillilan 2:48
correct.
Zach Malloch 2:49
I did forget to mention that I do want to right now that we do have chat and we have q&a, we are going to try to cover a lot of questions in the presentation. So if you have a chance to kind of sit back and relax and just see what we have and see what questions are still there towards the end. We're just gonna do this for half an hour. And we want to respect everybody's time, but we will stick around a little bit longer if we need to go longer with questions. So hopefully that also puts people a little bit at ease. So I guess there's a there's a big change here. And we didn't just decide to change because we wanted to Chris, could you talk a little bit about why we decided to change the UI?
Chris O'Connell 3:26
Yeah, so RecTrac 3.1 has been out for a number of years now. And design has largely stayed the same. And so actually, we spoke to a lot of our customers and patrons. And one of the common things that we saw was just that it didn't look quite like a lot of the other software that they use on a day to day and we really wanted to modernize it and kind of get people a bit more comfortable with RecTrac, especially for people who are maybe using it for the first time or people that are just looking for something that feels a bit more owl.
Zach Malloch 3:55
Okay, well, if everybody feels teased enough, Bryan, could you show us what the new UI is gonna look like?
Bryan Gillilan 4:02
So when you do enable the UI for user for your Demo, however, you decided to enable it upfront, here's kind of a look at exactly what users are gonna see for their first time upon login.
Zach Malloch 4:15
Okay, so I mean, just right off the bat, to me, it feels nicer. I mean, I think that's probably almost friendlier. Chris, is that kind of the intention for this?
Chris O'Connell 4:26
Yeah, I definitely think that one thing that we really wanted to make very apparent on the new UI, was that it's a bit softer on the eyes and a bit simpler to kind of get your initial grasp on. So you're not overwhelmed by menu items or anything right when you first log in, but instead, it's kind of a bit more welcoming.
Zach Malloch 4:46
And so actually the menu, I don't actually see it initially. So I mean, we're here now when we do
Bryan Gillilan 4:55
Yep. So just kind of to give a little perspective. So in our older version of three, one or the current version three, one, the menu was very graphical in nature. So you could set up your Menus and have different groupings. And there was really a lot of design elements or interaction elements you had to deal with from Tabs, to buttons to buttons that really just show additional groups of items that you can select, there are more buttons. So there was really a lot of different design elements that were all part of the menu. So one of things we really wanted to do with the menu in the new UI is simplify it and make it a more streamlined, straightforward, the menu is the menu, and there's not a whole bunch of different elements involved. So what you'll find in the new UI is that you've got a menu icon in your sidebar, and that menu icon will just pull out your total menu in a sidebar fashion. So we still have all the same management, activity management, system management, the whole same menu structure we had, in your old look that was more graphical in nature, it's just now put into a more like structured menu system.
Zach Malloch 6:05
So basically, every one of those buttons or groups is now just part of this kind of expandable list sort of thing. So if I remember that system codes and management, system management, system code management, I love saying management, I think everybody does, that's not going to break that you can still use that same knowledge to navigate things
Bryan Gillilan 6:22
you absolutely can. That being said, I think we're going to find that we've added some other design elements to the menu that are going to make finding things like system code management that much faster, and that much easier for the end user. So for example, to your point, I could go management, and system management, and miscellaneous management or wherever the program I want is, for example, comment management, I could go through that whole breadcrumb of the menu to find it, or now in the new UI, I could just Type comment. And it'll filter right to comment management and my menu, and I can select and I don't have to, I don't have to know the breadcrumb path. If I know what I'm trying to access from the system, I can just search for it and it'll immediately operate up for me,
Zach Malloch 7:07
that almost seems easier.
Bryan Gillilan 7:09
Maybe a bit?
Zach Malloch 7:12
Well, that's really nice. So now I see you still have your favorites there. So I know, we kind of want to talk about that. Because in the past to change favorites for somebody, you really would have to go into menu design, and you'd have to start editing things a little bit more of a coded sort of way.
Bryan Gillilan 7:27
Yep.
Zach Malloch 7:28
What would we what are we trying to do here with favorites now,
Bryan Gillilan 7:32
so your old favorites haven't gone anywhere. So if you had a menu that had a home Button with some favorites in the ribbon, those favorites haven't gone anywhere, those favorites are right here in your menu. So they none, nothing you made for your end users in the past is gone. It's all still there. What we've added onto that is the ability for a user to for themselves to find kind of their favorites, like what are the programs within their menu that they use all the time every day. So you'll see in the menu, we now have the ability to take a particular menu item and favorite it. And it'll get added directly to the user's home Screen. And that's by user. So if Zack and I we shared the same menu, you could have a different set of favorites than I have on your home Screen, if you like or if you're commonly using a different item from the menu than I am. So you can kind of add favorites away. If you want them directly on your home Screen and to not have to go to the menu all the time to access them.
Zach Malloch 8:31
Very nice. Now I noticed that we have the favorites. And I'll just easy buttons right in the center of the Screen. But I also noticed on the very far side, so we're calling out the sidebar. Right?
Bryan Gillilan 8:42
Correct.
Zach Malloch 8:42
So the very far side now we have some icons. Now, Chris, I know that part of your whole visual design thing is trying to make things easy to find easy to recognize and see. So I mean, I could definitely see activity in there. And I guess with the paper, I can understand that it's maintenance. But while we're getting used to those icons, what sorts of things would we be? How could we get a little bit more information about
Chris O'Connell 9:04
Yeah, absolutely. So as it's on your sidebar, there's a couple of different ways that you can kind of see what the application is. I'm sure over time, a lot of people will get used to the icons themselves. But as you're kind of learning the icons and then your navigation, there's a couple ways to see those full titles. One simply mousing over the icon. The other if you want to be able to see everything in the sidebar, quickly, at a glance, we actually have a little icon to expand the menu to be able to see everything right in front of you.
Zach Malloch 9:33
Right so those on the sidebar, it basically follows whatever favorites you have in the center. Right, right. I guess one of the quick questions Is there a limit to the number of favorites you can have? There are people I mean, I think you every wants to tailor it to their day to day process and you have a lot of things you do during the day these are restriction
Bryan Gillilan 9:53
there is not a restriction to the number of favorites you can have as a user, there is a restriction and how many will actually put in a sidebar. And that's really just due to Screen real estate and what we can do for various resolutions. So you can favorite up to five menu items directly in the sidebar, additional favorites after that will still land on your home Screen, they just won't be in your sidebar directly. So, for example, if I wanted to take my existing legacy favorite kind of structure, and I wanted to say, make all these particular icons favorites, I can do that really quickly and easily from my existing menu if that's really what I wanted. And as you can see, all of these get added to my favorites area, but only my first five are actually ending up in my sidebar.
Zach Malloch 10:40
Okay, so if I noticed that kind of added in the order that you added them if you wanted to change that. So we want to keep like some more prominent in that sidebar, it's not an easy thing,
Bryan Gillilan 10:50
it is an easy thing to do. So. And again, this is all user specific. So if you want to have different favorites in your sidebar compared to me, that's fine. But once you have your favorites on your home Screen, you can edit your favorites. And this is a completely drag and drop editor. So right within RecTrac No management program to go to you can just edit your favorites. And if I wanted to say make global sales, my first favorite, and then I use household management and household inquiry all the time. And really like my InteliTrac to be up there somewhere and maybe Touch POS, I can drag and drop, everything just shifts to the right from where I drop. And now as you can see, as I'm doing that real time, all of my favorites in my sidebar are now updated. And I didn't lose anything from my favorite set. I just changed what what's in my sidebar. All right, and actually, I'm watching the stream here as we go. And there's just a little bit of lag in it. I was watching Bryan's computer and it actually it moves like you can see the whole thing happened as it's going you don't have to worry about like a kind of just looked like you clicked on one thing and then changed places. It's actually much smoother than that. And I apologize for the lag of the internet. Also, I think trumaine might mention that this is chroma key with green, this is just a really nice view we have from our office. So I don't know what you're talking about.
Zach Malloch 12:07
And yeah, any flickering stuff, we're still kind of working through the tech piece of RecChat. But let's not interrupt from what we're going through here. So, I mean, the sidebar seems like it's kind of replacing a lot of other elements that we're having. So Chris, what are some of the the other things that we've got in there for people?
Chris O'Connell 12:26
Yeah, so kind of the idea of the sidebar is kind of to make it your central place to find the basic information of navigating throughout the application. So in the sidebar, you'll also see the top left, you'll have a little home Button that will always bring you back to this Screen that we're currently at,
Zach Malloch 12:42
and still access to your favorites,
Chris O'Connell 12:44
right. So not just the favorites that are in your sidebar, but you'll be able to quickly navigate back to the home Screen where you have your extended list of favorites as well. We also moved a couple of things you're going to be used to seeing at the top of the old interface, such as your notifications, your support information, and your user information. As well as your logout are now all in that sidebar as well. So your menu and general navigation are now all in the same area.
Zach Malloch 13:15
And actually the support piece of it looks like it's have a little bit more than we had in the previous versions here.
Chris O'Connell 13:23
Yes, so definitely one thing that we wanted to do was help users find the information that they need as quickly as possible to not just have as little interruption to their daily workflows and processes as possible. And that includes access to our in app help. The new RecTrac lab,
Zach Malloch 13:42
those guys are really good, by the way.
Chris O'Connell 13:44
And then just direct access to our customer, customer support portal as well.
Zach Malloch 13:50
And that's that's all great stuff. So it looks like the the navigation and the movement through the program has had a lot of I mean, I see it as improvement, it's obviously going to be change. And change always takes a little bit of adaptation. I I can speak for myself when I started testing this that it. I mean, it took maybe three clicks to figure out that this was much easier than basically anything else we had to navigate through with the other stuff. We did have a real quick question that the VIC hardware indicator that is actually still going to be in the top right. Right. So it's still kind of in that area just so it's, it has that balance between things that designed rather than having it in the sidebar. Correct.
Chris O'Connell 14:31
So VIC is something that will always be there and it's kind of something that will be a bit more passive that you're not generally going to interact with that icon on a regular basis. So we decided to keep it in that top what we're calling the headerand it's actually directly across from the Home Button. So you'll have that nice balance when it is active. But when it's not active, you still have everything alive with nav bar there.
Zach Malloch 14:56
Okay, so Bryan's actually switching and I'm not
a few guys picked up on that because it happened pretty quickly. But all he did to change from the old UI to the new UI, this is the exact same database was he changed that interface parameter at the top, which is going to be one of those easy ways to test it out to try it out. You don't have to turn it on for everybody that uses a particular interface, we're creating that interface automatically as part of the Build, right? Correct. So somebody, you download it, potentially, as soon as the session is over, once again, don't know when that email is going to come out exactly. But maybe we'll know for sure by the end of this, and you load it immediately, you could potentially Type in Next Gen for that interface parameter equals and get into and don't worry, we've got plenty of documentation that comes along with it, the email that's going to go out that I keep referencing has links to a lot of this extra information for you. So yeah, it's really easy to switch back and forth and try it out. And it's non damaging, you don't, you can always go back to the original UI. So I mean, the sidebar, the menu, all that sort of stuff looks great. Is there anything we've missed in that element before we kind of take a look at
Bryan Gillilan 16:04
so there are a couple of navigation elements from the the our previous UI that did also move so everybody's accustomed to seeing their documents center and their my events up in the kind of header of the program, those programs have actually been moved directly into the menu in the new UI. So in the new UI, you will actually see your Document Center and your my events directly in your menu. So and in as a result of that post update, all of your custom Menus in your database will have been updated so that that first group that auto opens in your menu will contain documents that are in my events, so folks won't have to go searching for those things post update, they'll be there right there in front of them in the new UI.
Zach Malloch 16:49
And actually, that is nearly a perfect segue. Now, let me practice this, to talk about what the impact is. If you do decide you really love this, and you really want to implement the new UI, how much impact is that going to have on what you've already done as far as Screen design or menu design
Bryan Gillilan 17:08
shouldn't have any impact at all. So all your custom screens that you've designed and spent a lot of hard work and effort, tailoring just to what you love you want, all of those custom screens will go untouched. So we haven't affected anyone's custom Screen layouts, customizations on their buttons, etc. Those are all still intact. What has changed on some of the screens is some of the default VSI designs. And some of those changes apply to both the new UI and the old UI. So but if you have a custom Screen, no reason to worry, there, we haven't made any changes for you.
Zach Malloch 17:43
Okay, and actually, I want to highlight one point from that. So there are a couple of screens that even in the old UI, if you're using just the pure, blank VSI default for they will affect the old UI, these are called out in the email that will go out with the Build release information. And they were also in a VSI Connect from last week. VSI Connect is probably how you heard about RecChat. If anybody in your organization isn't getting that and you think that they should you can email help@Vermontsystems.com Or talk to support and have them add them to your account. And then they can get all of those updates as well. So we identify those screens pretty easily. Chris, part of this, I think is sort of the distinction between UI versus UX. Yeah. And can you talk about that just a little bit?
Chris O'Connell 18:30
Sure. So we've made a few changes that just helped update how you navigate through the application itself. So a lot of things that you'll find are in the old UI, we had a lot of buttons that were kind of spread across the entire interface. And a lot of times it made it difficult to find what specifically you're trying to do on your Screen. So what we actually did is we kind of reordered some of these buttons, we group them together for similar actions matrix are always alphabetical in nature. And that way, as you're going around the application, it's much quicker to figure out exactly what you want to do, and how to do that. And those kind of things that the UI and the change itself will kind of naturally lends itself to creating a better experience throughout the entire application, while allowing largely the look and feel that you're comfortable with and you've always known to stay the same.
Zach Malloch 19:22
So that's kind of what lets us use the same Screen designs from the old UI to the new one without too much translation. And just so everybody has that I didn't know this necessarily to begin with. But UI is the user interface. So that's what it looks like the colors and the placement of everything. And UX is kind of more the workflow of how easy can we make it to get to what you're doing and to complete the thing, right? You're trying to
Chris O'Connell 19:44
essentially it's the outcome of what the the interface does for you.
Zach Malloch 19:49
Okay, so UI is the interface and then experiences what you do with that interface.
Chris O'Connell 19:54
Right.
Zach Malloch 19:54
Okay. Thanks. And I think that this was kind of an intentional choice to start with UI kind of do what we could to improve the look of it, and then starting to really focus on the Field and the process and what you can do with it correct.
Bryan Gillilan 20:07
So we've made a bunch of changes to some of the kind of core everyday use screens to really, hopefully make things more efficient for the end user. And in doing that, we're just starting on that path towards trying to relook at the whole application, and how can we make workflows and processes simpler for the end user to complete. So if we take, for example, this household inquiry Screen that you're seeing right now, our old household inquiry Screen had potentially eight or nine look up buttons on the Screen, that kind of called out at your eyes, the second you watch the Screen, it also had as many as 25 buttons on the bottom of the Screen for all the various things you could do. So this is a really simple example of, we've taken the lookup options that were all about on the Screen and kind of put them into a more organized list of lookup options to execute. At the same time, we've taken kind of the huge number of buttons that you would have to scan to find what you're looking for on the bottom of the Screen and kind of organize them a little more logically for what the end user might be looking to do. So if I'm in household inquiry, and I wanted to see somebody's activity registrations, I can look at their transaction history and easy jumps, usually jump to activities, or the full transaction history for the household. But I'm looking for some financial information, such as their billing or scholarships, I can find that really easily without having all of these different options being individual buttons on the Screen, like was kind of our past, you know, design pattern.
Zach Malloch 21:36
Alright, so we had a question, if you could just re, maybe scale down your Screen just a little bit. So you can move that a little bit more central, some of them are having a little bit of a tough time seeing those, just the browser Window, so you can look it up just a little bit to see those buttons a little bit better. I think that I mean, so it's kind of taking it. So you only have to do one step of figuring out what you want to do at a time. So before you would have had those 25 buttons, you know, like, Okay, that's a Button for this particular thing that's been for this particular thing. Now you say, Well, I'm interested in transaction history, and then it's, well, which module so kind of walks you through that a little bit.
Bryan Gillilan 22:13
Yep. And that's kind of a design pattern we're following in more places than just household inquiry. So you know, for example, another place where we're doing a similar changes, activity section management. So you've got your standard add change, clone, those are your kind of every day, when I'm in activity section management, I'm either adding something changing something or, or cloning an existing section. And those are the primary things I'm going to do all the time and activity section management. But this program does offer a lot of additional functionality on top of that, which previously, again, a whole bunch of buttons on the Screen. So it makes finding the Add change clone that you use all the time a little more difficult. Now, those additional options are kind of placed in a list, that's alphabetize, to make them easier to find, I don't have to scan to look for change, or look for clone, the ones that I use all the time are right there. And the ones that I don't use all the time, or that I maybe want to put behind an extra Click, like delete, for example, are now in a list that are a little more explicit. And I have to specifically go get to those kinds of lesser used things, as opposed to them cluttering my my everyday workflow.
Chris O'Connell 23:21
And one of the things that we did with the buttons is previously in the old interface, you would notice that all of the buttons are actually the same color and style. And with a new interface, you'll actually see that we have different types of buttons for your primary actions or secondary actions. And things like delete, for example, will be red in color, so you know that it is going to be a destructive action. So it may have negative impacts on to your data. And so we definitely wanted to be able to call that out for users to stop any accidental, you know, Button clicks your mistakes that you may make with your database.
Zach Malloch 23:56
Now, I also noticed that the Button like so save, for example, it kind of stands out because it's darker. And sorry, if anybody's having trouble seeing the bottom, when we get into the q&a session a little bit, we can try to focus on that a little bit more. But it's on the lower right. And I assume that that has some intention behind that as well.
Chris O'Connell 24:12
Yeah, so one pattern that we definitely wanted to follow was make sure that if you're going through a flow within RecTrac, that leads you through many different steps, that you always have a consistent area to move forward in your workflow. And so those will be what we're calling primary buttons, such as, you know, next checkout, save, so your primary action that'll bring you forward and so just be very apparent as to what is the next step in your workflow.
Zach Malloch 24:40
Okay, so we are just blowing through our time here. I think that, to me, global sales is actually a good Screen to take a look at, and potentially maybe even seeing what the changes were talking about in the new UI and the old UI because we did mention a global sales is one of those screens that will change a little bit If you do apply the 10 update, and you haven't made custom Screen designs, so if we can maybe look at that in the new UI and look at the old one, sure, because maybe, I think it's actually a nice benefit like that the whole consolidation of buttons and Menus or filter groups is kind of nicer.
Bryan Gillilan 25:17
Absolutely. Yeah. So again, another example, global sales lookup to start. I mean, this is another place where we have kind of, okay, when you're here, you're probably not looking to delete households, or do some of those other functions that you would be in household management. And previously, you had a lot of buttons still here, though, you had buttons for choosing daily, internal etc. So we've kind of taken this as this is the household selection for global sales, I am either going to pick a household here and select it, or I'm going to skip that selection and use a daily guest or, or do one of these other options. So we've kind of taken that decision. And the primary action there is selecting a household, the secondary action is moving to a daily guest or moving to your internal household. So we've kind of made that delineation there. So then once you get into global sales, again, if you have a custom Screen design for global sales, nothing's going to change for you, your Global Sales Screen is going to look exactly as it did prior to the
Zach Malloch 26:16
With the new UI?
Bryan Gillilan 26:17
with the new UI, new color scheme, new layouts, but your design itself, as far as Button placement, size of groups, orientation of groups, nothing will change. If you had a customer Global Sales Screen, the new default Screen, one of the biggest changes we made is taking the items selection area. So you're you're kind of thing you're trying to purchase and global sales and taking it out of a very short, but wide area where you only see a few, you know, items that you might be looking for, kind of gave that a lot more real estate. So you'll see a lot more activity sections. For example, if you're searching for a specific section in the section, data grid, or if you have a Touch POS menu, you'll have a lot more vertical real estate for that touch Menu, versus a whole lot of horizontal real estate, which allows us to kind of lay things out a little bit better. And it allows functions like the SuperGrid and global sales to exist in and a little more refined way. Because you really will have access to more items in your SuperGrid at that point. So this is kind of one of the core changes was making this move to this really being the first thing you're going to do in global sales is pick your item. And giving giving that kind of the focus when you land on the Screen, it's pretty apparent, I'm here, I'm going to pick something I want to sell or search for to sell to a patron. And doing that, obviously, we had to move some of the other things on the Screen around so that you'll see that the Screen has really laid out in a pretty logical way where I am going to pick an item, pick the family member, I want to associate with that item if applicable. And then once I add it to the cart, I'll have everything here in my cart. One big change that you probably see on this global sales Screen compared to what you have today is what you have today, you have a lot of buttons in these group headers to do various functions. So that was kind of a design element, we wanted to rethink and reshape to make it a little more standard throughout the application in to kind of limit the number of buttons we needed on the Screen. So in doing that we've taken what was several buttons, put it into fewer buttons, remove from cart, empty cart, all these cart options, kind of consolidating them to make it a little more straightforward. All of your additional cart options of things you can do with something in the cart, consolidating those, then these aren't things you're probably doing every day all day on a regular basis. They're things you're doing significantly less frequently. Your frequent action here is add to cart and payment.
Zach Malloch 28:54
And if you do tend to do something like that, it's it's just Screen design, once again, to break it out of that group and make it its own unique Button again,
Bryan Gillilan 29:02
correct.
Zach Malloch 29:03
So it is already time to start to conclude. So were there any other there's one I had in mind. But were there any other super amazing things that we wanted to show about this are things we wanted to share?
Bryan Gillilan 29:16
Happy to hear what you have in mind Zach!
Zach Malloch 29:18
okay, I was wondering if you could Click on that RecTrac lab Button just real quick. So this will hopefully end up taking a little bit of the anxiety away from people. So we're very happy to announce RecTrac edu that's kind of my department. And we have these five main chapters. We have four right now where there's actually five but I think Bryan might have already started to look at one or somebody using his database login. Everybody that is a current RecTrac user when you update to three 110 If you use the new UI, you can get to that support page and you have a shared access to this content. We have An overview of the changes or how to use global sales, we have an overview of the navigation, we have an overview, graph data grids and purchase history, and one over other that I'll definitely remember. I'll remember it in about five minutes, I'm sure. But they're, they're kind of walkthroughs, they have the video element to kind of introduce it and to, hopefully through with some nerves, and then we do some basic step by step. It's really good for new users. But hopefully, it helps people get pretty oriented into this. And you can everybody has access to it just built right into the update. So I think then, to conclude, the, this update should be very, very soon. Let me just check my magic chat Window and see if anybody has mentioned anything. Somebody is wanting just to really quickly look at household management, historically, because that's another one of those screens that has some changes going on.
Bryan Gillilan 30:55
Yep. So one of the things you'll see is if you use the default VSI design for household management, you'll see that the default Screen that looks, I won't say radically different, but much are much better organized, I should say much more better. Yeah, exactly. So we've kind of taken each member in the household update Screen and trying to really, you know, standardize the way a members data is related on that Screen and the way a members data is entered on that Screen. So there is one kind of logical path to adding a member, what order you fill out their information and in what order you retrieve their information. And if you're just going to look for information. So if you see on this example, our primary Guardian layout for the member, is identical to the secondary Guardian layout for the member. So if I know I'm going to look for an email address for a specific member, it's going to be in the same place in that members group all the time. And we've kind of taken and split out the primary guardians information from the kind of more core just basic household information. So things like address, household category, those types of things are all now really isolated into, those are specifically household information. But all of the family member information for every family member in the household is going to look exactly the same. As far as layout goes.
Zach Malloch 32:19
That's awesome. So we're going to go ahead and say that that is what we are trying to show you for the most part, we are going to stick around, we'll answer some more questions. And also just to finish this up, we are going to this has been recorded, we're going to post this, you'll receive an email tomorrow with instructions on how to get to that recording, we're also going to try to take any questions that we don't end up getting to on the air and make a document out of that and kind of a Frequently Asked Questions thing. And the same email will have information for how to retrieve that as well. So hopefully, that'll be useful. And if anybody wasn't able to attend this one, we had a lot of people participating. But if if you know somebody in your office that would have liked to see this, you can share the that information with them afterwards. So thank you so much for joining us on this inaugural RecChat and suffering through our awkward back and forth and technological problem solving on Screen. But thank you so much.
Bryan Gillilan 33:23
Thanks.
Chris O'Connell 33:24
Thank you.
Zach Malloch 33:25
And now we'll just go into some question and answer sort of stuff. So I know that we've got a few people in chat already who have been replying to other things. So what I'd like to ask our panelists RecTrac, Pat, and RecTrac, Leigha and RecTrac, Colin and RecTrac. Bret, to maybe share some stuff if there's anything particularly interesting that you've kind of parsed from, from the session here. Can you remove support and lab from users? Is that something we can do with menu design?
Bryan Gillilan 34:06
today? We cannot. So we're the idea, hopefully, is that support and lab are both kind of core functions that we're offering to all users that are accessing the product. If it's something that down the line, we saw a great deal of demand for across our customer base. It's something we would certainly consider adding some functionality to be able to remove those things. But as it stands today, with the the initial rollout of the new UI, those things are our kind of fixed sidebar elements for users.
Zach Malloch 34:33
Excellent. And let's see, what's the next question you guys can feed to us here? I can answer this one real quick. I just saw can we hide fields that are not used by organization? Same as old 3.1?
Bryan Gillilan 34:49
Yeah, so your hide show fields. All the custom Screen design you used to be able to do is all done the exact same way and in the new UI.
Zach Malloch 34:58
So so some cases Come soon capabilities and same process,
Bryan Gillilan 35:02
same capabilities, same process, same Screen management program, nothing there has changed. So there's not going to be any kind of learning curve to Oh, hey, the new household update Screen, we want to hide the phone number Field. It's all done the same way it was done in the past.
Zach Malloch 35:17
Okay. And I think maybe we can talk just a little bit more about that part of it about the impact of this update has, it really is focused on UI, there has been some experience improvements because of the new interface. But for things like reports, nobody's going to lose reports or see reports change, nobody's going to see their Screen designs change, besides the display elements there that are looking at the color kind of pieces. Are there any other I mean, are there any areas that people should look out for that we're not really design related, or kind of using that sidebar for navigation,
Bryan Gillilan 35:53
the one area that customers will want to keep an eye on is in global sales, if you use the touchscreen, specifically in global sales, because we've changed the overall layout of the Global Sales Screen, if you are using the default VSI design, and taking advantage of touch, your touchscreen layout that you had was very likely, obviously designed for the full width of the Screen, and a shorter panel. So post update, if you do heavily use touch, and you do use the default VSI Screen design, you will probably want to get into touch Screen management and rearrange your touchscreen elements. However, if you have a custom Global Sales Screen, no need to worry, everything will be as it was.
Zach Malloch 36:39
And actually, just looking at this, it looks more like the dedicated touch Point Of Sale Screen. I can imagine this making it so you don't have to design different screens based on whether you're going directly into Touch POS or if you're accessing it through global sales. So that could be an easy way.
Chris O'Connell 36:52
And some of that will depend on your Screen resolution. So if you're not running a widescreen display, and you have an older touchscreen display that's maybe 1024. By 768. Things will be a bit more swish kind of in this specific global sales Touch POS, but your dedicated Touch POS will be just like it always was.
Zach Malloch 37:14
And that's another thing to point out maybe is that by default, the every touch Point Of Sale Button that's ever been created is or once again, by default is really percentage base. So they shift as your Screen changes. So they might look compressed or stretched out potentially, but they'll still function, they'll still work,
Chris O'Connell 37:32
right? You may just have words wrapped that were previously a single line.
Zach Malloch 37:40
Okay. So we've had a couple of requests, if we could see the SuperGrid and visit processing, can we just see what those look like and this new orientation of
Bryan Gillilan 37:51
so visit processing, again, there were some design changes here to this Screen. Obviously, the one that's probably most apparent is kind of the lookup options that you saw the separate buttons, we kind of followed the same model of the global sales, lookup screens, and household management lookup screens, that those lookups now are kind of, again, put under one Button, not multiple buttons on the Screen. You'll also notice that some of the other buttons associated with your visit data grid are also adjusted or moved to a different location to help them be more contextual. So you know all of the buttons that you can do with an existing visit in the data grid are all now down below that visit data grid and all the buttons you can do to kind of do generic swipe outs, etc. Those, again, are right there with that data grid and they're really contextual. And it kind of flows directly into quick Rental processing has some of the same kind of design changes, if you're a customer that takes advantage of quick rentals has the same pattern of design as far as lookup daily visit. But then you'll also notice that we've kind of taken all the buttons and made and put them with their kind of parent data grid. Whereas before they were all kind of generally grouped together. So you'll see in the Rental returns, you'll have your return Rental option and your visits, you'll have again all your complete, visit canceled, visit all the things that are specifically related to that tab you're on that you can do something within that tab.
Zach Malloch 39:22
Okay. So we've got a couple of questions about WebTrac. So Chris, when we see the new WebTrac UI,
Chris O'Connell 39:30
yes, we're actually working on a lot of changes for WebTrac as we speak. So those will actually be coming pretty soon, relatively soon. To everybody or for everybody to see. We don't have exact dates on that yet, but keeping a lookout for our roadmap, and we'll definitely have more information about this.
Zach Malloch 39:49
And actually, if one of the panelists could maybe share the link to maybe a couple of VSI pages. The we've we've updated our home sight quite a bit. And we're gonna keep doing that we have a new area for services, we have a new area for a brand springing up right now. So under development, okay, so Bryan's actually going to bring up the roadmap. So this is something that's kind of showing you when we're anticipating, broadly speaking, new features to come out and show up for us. So we will go ahead and let him bring that up. On the main vermont systems website you now have a couple more headers at the top. One of them I wanted to talk about becuase there has been al ot of people asking about. I just completely lost the thought in my head. Oh future topics, SMS, SMS is going to be a topic we are going to be dedicating an entire Recchat session to. The EDU portion of the website, the very bottom of the page now, we have RecChat schedule for the next couple of months coming up. And I also want to mention real quick that we will be sending a survey as part of the follow up so if there are particular items that you want to see on the schedule or see sooner then they are scheduled for we can certainly adjust that if there is a demand for it. So Bryan, I think you did you bring up the roadmap, did you find it? Alright, so roughly here is the the development roadmap. And so you can see kind of the third quarter, which iswhere we're in kind of caught up on that
Bryan Gillilan 41:26
closing the third quarter, entering the fourth quarter.
Zach Malloch 41:29
Right. So WebTrac is basically just looking right in that center line, there's so we're,
Bryan Gillilan 41:34
it's a current kind of initiative we're working on and hoping that are definitely will have something out here before the end of the year. So look forward to that.
Zach Malloch 41:43
Okay. They there's a question about global search, pretty fancy thing now that we thought that maybe the filter would be enough, but people want a little bit more than that.
Bryan Gillilan 41:57
So we can kind of start here. So under your support sidebar, under the Help, there is a search feature built right into the sidebar for the help. So let's take as an example, if you are can't remember what Screen, that particular setting you are looking for is on the hiding rock or something like the add the the hiding Toggle is a good example. This is one of those things where you can come to this search, this goes and does a direct search of the full Screen help of all of RecTrac. So it'll kind of guide you to the Screen that that Toggle you're looking for is on give you all the help for that Screen. But really the important part is it gives you where that thing really resides. So you can access it directly. This is kind of a stepping stone into where we want to go with the application, which is a really more robust and global search throughout the application where where we can kind of start getting away from a bunch of the individual kind of look up filter design elements and really go to one more centralized search throughout the application. So single search for household for facility for an activity for whatever the case is, you'll be able to Type into one search and get all the, you know, potentially applicable results. So that's something that again, we're looking to start designing here in the near future, going into end of 2019, early 2020.
Zach Malloch 43:19
Great, that's awesome.
Chris O'Connell 43:23
I think this is actually a good point, or part to point out that this isn't the end of the RecTrac UI modernization or changes that we're going to have will continuously be making updates and adding features on a regular basis to add things like the global search, improved lookup and all of these new features just to make it a bit simpler to navigate around and making it a bit more modern.
Bryan Gillilan 43:47
Okay, definitely not a short term thing. This is going to be an ongoing initiative for our entire development team, product team throughout the eternity, you know, we we won't sit on little changes forever, I guess is the important thing to note that we're always going to be looking to improve the end user experience.
Zach Malloch 44:07
All right, that sounds great. There was a question about oh, Leah, thank you so much household management. household management was the fifth course in the RecTrac. Lab. We didn't need to show that Screen. Nobody cares about seeing the household management Screen. Actually, probably a lot of people did. That's our course. And then we had a question if Favorites can be shared with users. And I think we actually kind of talked about that before. So like the the menu design portion of that if you wanted all users to have access to that, that you still can do that.
Bryan Gillilan 44:40
Right. So the menu design portions of this favorites here you can kind of prescribe in your menu, what your users get for their kind of menu favorites or this whole menu design structure. That being said, the Favorites themselves once you're logged into the application and what's going in your home Screen and going in your side Are 100% user defined? So as an admin, I'm not able to prescribe favorites to my staff, I can prescribe what they get in their menu. But we really left that kind of interaction and that element up to be a user defined feature to where? Yes, I everyone that is a clerk at my rec center or front desk staff person that my rec center might all have the same eight items directly in their menu when they open, but two of them might primarily use visit processing. And two of them might primarily run reports or rosters for instructor so they can really define which ones they want to favorite into their sidebar for themselves. One important note is because what you can favorite is based on what's in your menu, you don't have to worry about a user being able to favorite a program they don't have access to they can only favorite what they have access to on their menu.
Zach Malloch 45:52
So that's actually a question and I'll just ask one for myself now. If somebody has a favorite venue, change their menu to remove an option from them. Does that also get rid of a favorite shortcut?
Bryan Gillilan 46:03
is a very good question. And I don't know that we have actually taken that run a test on that yet. So I don't know how to answer that question immediately. But that's certainly something we can get back on.
Zach Malloch 46:16
Well just follow up with me.
Chris O'Connell 46:18
While we're on this topic as well, a lot of the confusion may actually be because this is actually a menu that we brought directly from the old interface with the old interface in mind. So the idea of calling that first Menu Group on your home favorites is something that users may not do with this new interface as you're setting up your new Menus. And that may just be your home group. And then the difference really is that we had a menu group called Favorites versus now we have a feature called Favorites. And so that might be a bit of an easier way to think about the differences between them.
Zach Malloch 46:51
Great. Bryan?
Bryan Gillilan 46:53
Yes.
Zach Malloch 46:54
Could you show us the SuperGrid?
Bryan Gillilan 46:56
I Can I need to get into my
Zach Malloch 47:02
something that you probably know about Vermont systems, people as we generally have about eight databases at any given time to show anything new to and it's so much more frequent with our development staff.
Bryan Gillilan 47:19
So our SuperGrid really hasn't, I'm just gonna go full Screen here for a moment. So SuperGrid, really nothing about the SuperGrid has really changed other than just the general styling of the grid itself. So all the functionality remains the same, all the features remain the same. It's really just the styling that we had to take into account to adjust what you're able to do. So you still have all the same functionality of switching your profiles that you're looking at, in the SuperGrid firewall, the same drag drop capabilities or move capabilities you did previously, all the processes going to remain the same. Just kind of you know, it goes to show that this this UI, you know, update wasn't really just about, you know, touching a couple of main screens or workflows, we really dug into every Screen without throughout the application, and made sure that these design changes were a positive everywhere and not just for some certain workflows,
Zach Malloch 48:13
right. And we had a question about the inline help. So that's kind of that Toggle is moved a little bit. Yes, most of it was running across the top.
Bryan Gillilan 48:24
Correct. So in the legacy or in the in our older UI, you had kind of a bar across the top that we had a place to put your help into, etc. That's all kind of gone now within the UI. So to enable in app help, so if we were to go to a Screen like activity section management, for example.
If I want to enable inline help on this particular Screen, I access my sidebar and we have this enable in app help always available there in the sidebar to enable toggling that on enables all this kind of hover effect in line help. The other thing you'll notice is that when I enable in app help, I also get the help icon in my tab directly. And that's how do I can access the full Screen help for the Screen I'm on as opposed to an individual Field level help. So that that icon in the tab is really my my means to do that. While we're discussing Tabs a little bit, and one of the things users will notice. And this is for the legacy UI and the new UI if you're using the default VSI Screen designs is that we've removed next and previous buttons from a lot of the or all of the kind of bottom groups on screens. One of the things we really wanted to focus on in the new UI is that a design element should really have a kind of single navigation path or navigation method. So we have Tabs within an activity for managing those Tabs. We really wanted the interaction of, of interacting with us cific tab to be a Click on the tab versus a previous next, you know, activity management isn't really a workflow, it's really a data entry point or a data gathering point. So to not have next previous, which kind of indicates a workflow, but to have okay, I know I need to go set up an instructor. Now I explicitly go to my instructors, or whatever that case may be. So you'll notice Previous and Next buttons on the default VSI design are gone. When we say they're gone. They're really just hidden in the UI. So if you can't live without your previous and next buttons, you can make a custom Screen design and re enable those previous and next buttons. But know that going forward and the new UI at some point, those buttons will be getting retired from from the UI altogether.
Zach Malloch 50:48
So it's real quick, I'd like to talk about that. So at some point, the new UI is just going to be the UI, what sort of rough timeline just so people have an idea about,
Bryan Gillilan 51:02
don't worry, it's not going to be the next release. So I guess that's the most important thing, we're certainly going to give the new UI some time to marinate with customers and let customers get accustomed to it and used to it. And kind of one of the tenants of that is there may be custom screens where, oh, with the new UI design, I kind of want to rework this, or we lay this out or maybe change some of this stuff. Or maybe as a customer, you have some curated content of your own for training materials that you've created with screenshots and things of that nature, we're certainly going to leave the old UI out there long enough so that those customers will have time to kind of make that change to the new UI. As far as a rough timeline, we could be talking, you know, anywhere from four to six to eight months from from today that we would potentially be kind of going away with the old UI and only supporting the new UI going forward. So that would be a, you know, some some rough estimate there.
Zach Malloch 52:01
Patrick is saying with an exclamation point quarter, one of 2024 to
Bryan Gillilan 52:06
six months.
Zach Malloch 52:09
So I was wondering, could you bring up the Vermont systems.com website, I just want to there's some questions about the upcoming RecChats. And if you go to services, and then go down to edu. Sorry, yeah, we've actually got right in the menu now. Oh, and actually assist the the point you made about Screen design. And just real quick to call this out, we have a new service that's just getting off the ground, called VSI assist. And that's kind of anytime you need extra help that you really want to VSI experts to do for you like data entry, custom screening, Design, Report, design, any sorts of those things, go check out that part of the website for some more information. But now we're on the edu page. If we go all the way down to the bottom of that, we've got our RecChat schedule, even below that roadmap. And so you can see the next one we've got on the on the docket is InteliTrac. And we're currently thinking, eventually, we might be doing this twice a month. But if there's demand, hey, we're not doing much else on Thursday afternoons. So maybe we'll do a listen week for yourself. All right. We'll spread it out a little bit, although you need to be here next week. So we'll, we'll be kicking Chris out and forcing Patrick into his chair. And we'll be talking about InteliTrac. So same time, two o'clock next Thursday, October 10. You'll see an invite coming out of that also with VSI. Connect. And we'll probably even include a link in the follow up email to this webinar if you're interested there. But we also might be doing a special Halloween session. We don't know right now it's kind of been blocked off because it's right after the symposium. But hey, we'll do that. So that's that's some stuff coming up down here. Let's see. Any other questions people want us to highlight? Yeah, so that's actually a good point, Paul. So we have a little typo we need to fix. It's, it's Eastern time. So whatever the current time in the east is, it's daylight savings time right now. So I think we have standard time on that list. Thank you for that piece. We'll we'll update that. All right, panelists. What else do we have? Actually, I don't know if if anybody's there, but could you go back to that household inquiry Screen and just maybe make your Window half as tall so we can really see that bottom row?
Bryan Gillilan 54:37
See if maybe it's currently I'm sharing my just my windows.
Zach Malloch 54:42
Okay, it's Jamie again, Bryan's gonna come back with RecTrac. But RecTrac tried to say those words really quickly together.
Bryan Gillilan 54:50
Is that any better?
Zach Malloch 54:54
Is that any better term? Anybody to see that bottom? All right. So, we do have a question about, can we change the colors of the UI? I think some of that's coming from a contrast question, maybe like a dark mode Type of thing, but also kind of a custom control, sort of like we do with Demo when we change the headers. Borders? Yes, it's
Chris O'Connell 55:17
not something that is currently implemented. It's something that has been discussed a little bit internally. But it's not something that is currently on the roadmap.
Zach Malloch 55:29
Okay. All right. So we can probably get to some of that. All right. So yes, it is better to see the buttons. Thank you very much for that, Bryan, and maybe just Click on one of those to show the expanded list. And then, so people have a little bit of question between the filter versus the global search. So maybe we can go back to that. To me, it's kind of just so my rough understanding is, if it's the filter, it's only looking at the title of what the menu items are correct, it's just really quickly getting,
Bryan Gillilan 56:01
and it's a little beyond that. So one of the things you'll notice is in your menu, for example, I have management and system management as a menu layer. But system management is really just a group of additional management programs that can access. So you'll notice if I go to the filter, and just Type in system management, I'm not actually going to find anything, because this filter is really just looking at like the lowest level, what are the items, I can actually launch from the menu. It's not looking for groups within the menu, it's just one of the programs that can launch an access. And you're right, it is just filtering down what's in your menu. So it's not looking at screens, or, you know, program titles, per se, it's just what's in the menu. So if you, for example, if you changed a label on a menu item and menu design, it would be looking for your label of that. And then custom your custom label. Yes.
Zach Malloch 57:00
Okay. So it's looking just through the label. And so the universal search for it. So let's use activity just for an example, if you Type in activity in that filter, we can expect that imagine activity management activity, look at that pass fail, posting reports, upload section reports, what I don't see is maybe help articles about activities, or what else would we potentially see if we did this with universal.
Bryan Gillilan 57:24
So we did this with the with the support, search, the help, and did activity, we're gonna see a lot and one of the things you'll notice, when you launch your search from the help search, is we're really actually launching the full application help in a new tab. So you can see I've got a lot of content here that I just accidentally scrolled past. So as you can imagine, there's a lot of fields in RecTrac that reference the term activity. So this is a full on help search of all of the help and RecTrac just for activity for that term activity. So within here, you'll be able to find individual Field level help, you'll be able to find topic docs that reference activity, all of that information can be found directly from here.
Zach Malloch 58:13
And then the global search would just unify those two things, you take an activity you'd see maybe the program, also a topic doc about something. The idea, right?
Chris O'Connell 58:22
So the idea of a global search would be to unify all the search functionality in the application that's currently separated into their own lookup applications and things like that. Basically, we all have a lot of data and all of our databases. And so to implement a global search, we just want to make sure that we do the best possible permutation of it for everybody.
Zach Malloch 58:43
Okay, so a couple of more specific things. So just emphasize the filter, it's only looking through the menu items you have access to, if the menu design assigned to you has been restricted, your filter will not show something that you shouldn't see.
Bryan Gillilan 59:00
Correct.
Zach Malloch 59:01
So that control is still in place for everybody. Hopefully that helps. There is a question a lot of questions about WebTrac. What I'd like to say about that is we are definitely going to have a RecChat all about WebTrac. With this Build, are there any changes to the WebTrac experience at the moment,
Bryan Gillilan 59:17
there's no UI changes directly implemented for WebTrac and the three 110 Build that were targeted UI modernization attempts, that is all currently in the works and in the process. So that's not part of this three 110 release, but that is something users should expect to see before the end of 2019.
Zach Malloch 59:37
Okay, so you do not have to worry about warning patrons, retraining patrons with any of this WebTrac experience should not be changed at this point. Two questions about one is about design. Is there a way through Screen design or other methods that if you go to global sales, could those Tabs be made more prominent? That's a question that came up like couple of times in there, and then the last question that I seen right now is if we can jump into a report Screen just real quick to see what those look like.
Bryan Gillilan 1:00:12
So the Tabs, folks were referring to are these Tabs here? Yes, currently in Screen design, we don't have a function to enable you to change kind of like, the height or the color of the label of those Tabs. That's kind of a standard design element we have. I mean, that's something we'll certainly be looking to take additional feedback on with the new UI. If that's something that's a common theme across customers that they'd like to see a way for those to be broken out a little more easily or more easily identifiable between Tabs, that's certainly something we're all ears, and I'm looking to obtain feedback on so we can continue to improve that experience. I guess the one thing I'll say on that is, that's probably something we'd be looking to improve the experience for everyone on if it's a common theme across customers, as opposed to putting in some additional layer of customization we'd really be looking to try to make that improvement across. Yeah.
Chris O'Connell 1:01:07
And this kind of speaks towards the idea that one of the reasons is that we're not forcing everybody onto the new UI is that it is brand new. And of course, we want to gather as much feedback as possible and make those incremental updates and changes based on the feedback of all of our customers, and not just the few that we've spoken to. So definitely any feedback that our customers have, we definitely want to hear from you.
Zach Malloch 1:01:30
Okay, that's great. Can we take a look at the record Screen?
Unknown Speaker 1:01:35
Yes, you can.
Zach Malloch 1:01:46
Activity enrollment, where nobody cares about rosters.
Bryan Gillilan 1:01:50
So we can actually go ahead and you know, again, similar to global sales, nothing really here with the experience for the customer has changed as far as what's on the Screen, how it's laid out. At this point in time. This is again, certainly something we're continually looking at how can we make the reporting process easier for for customers. So you'll see, nothing really has changed here on the report running side. So this, again, all is the same process it has been throughout time. So this is the same function to run a report. Same concept goes for report output management and the report output listing. So those functions, again, are more or less unchanged in the new UI. So if I was looking for activity, roster reports to customize, etc, that process is all still the same. So all the screens are the same, the process to update an output is very much the same process.
Zach Malloch 1:02:51
And the output itself is unchanged,
Bryan Gillilan 1:02:54
output itself is unchanged as well. So you see the kind of same look and feel you're used to here just with a new style, as far as that goes.
Zach Malloch 1:03:05
Okay. And we had a request for a tee sheet if you happen to have that. Well, Bryan is switching, I did want to touch on SMS. Again, it's something that's keeping are still coming up in the in the comments in the questions. It it's kind of its own thing. It will be available fairly soon. But can we we are going to be doing our own RecChat on that. That's this thing here. And sales also has some more information about that as we're getting closer to finding out the pricing and stuff. I don't want to steal any thunder from that session, we have another product owner who's kind of running that and I want to give him his chance to to explain it some cool stuff coming up. That will be coming up soon.
And once again, while Bryan is working on that, I'll address this next one. So bulk changes is something that people have asked about and once again, that process is the same new look the same process,
Chris O'Connell 1:04:17
the only difference is essentially to get to that bulk change rather than it being the Bulk Change Button on the bottom. It's now in a button grouping.
Zach Malloch 1:04:26
Okay,
Chris O'Connell 1:04:26
but the actual process of going through your bulk change is unchanged.
Zach Malloch 1:04:30
Okay. So there is SuperGrid inside of global sales with the new changes
and I guess maybe we can SuperGrid accessible outside of global sales. Yeah. Oh, is there still a standalone touch Point Of Sale still a standard loan SuperGrid still standalone touch Point Of Sale? I just said that same thing visit processing? Yes. So that's one of those other things, it's still certainly able to be done anywhere you used to be able to find them. But you know, steam changes, like the shopping cart, the Button groups, those elements, and I noticed that it is not only the the primary Button, so in this case payment is that kind of darker blue. So it stands out, it's still in that lower right hand corner. And I think I've noticed also, whenever you get a pop up of any sort, it's also in the lower right hand corner of those pop ups, whatever would be the thing that takes you to the next step and says, continue this process. So yeah, that also disoriented me briefly, but it was maybe four times that happened. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, no, that's where that is. had a question about upcoming RecChat chat sessions, keep an eye on VSI Connect, we will be announcing each session as that goes. And we are certainly completely okay with updates on Hey, look at that SMS text messages from RecTrac. Right? In the new UI, you have an option to learn some more things about it. And you can contact sales and see what's going on with that. But there's a little blurb about what is going to be these messages are just something that come from us during the builds. Correct?
Bryan Gillilan 1:06:16
Correct. So currently, these are coming with each release, you'll have kind of a new set of kind of VSI announcements of upcoming things or things that are currently available. Um, as we Progress and Build this functionality, functionality out, this is likely something where we'll be introducing new messages into you know, Interim Release. So no Build no process for you to do but will potentially be able to kind of curate some information for you, that's, that's ideally tailored to you as a customer. So we're not necessarily talking about marketing information, but more like, you know, things like critical alerts and things of that nature, we'd be able to kind of present to you right through the product without having to have an external email necessarily be able to kind of curate that information to you based on, you know, the products you own and the functions you use in the application.
Zach Malloch 1:07:05
Okay, so just right there. All right. Personal trainers and private swimming trainers. So, yeah, personal training is still in SuperGrid. That's one of those things, it's processed. That process hasn't changed, Chris, just Yeah, so definitely. So there. Oh, here's an interesting idea for favorites. Can you link a specific roster output to a favorite Button, so get activity route enrollment report, or maybe already have a roster or make it as close as possible to a one Click process, then
Bryan Gillilan 1:07:40
you can so in menu management, and this has been a functionality that's existed for quite a long time on your menu itself. And menu management, which again, no change here to what menu management actually looks like? Got You Here, I can look at
Zach Malloch 1:08:00
while you're looking for that, Chris, you even by the comments, what's the best method for people to provide that feedback to us?
Chris O'Connell 1:08:06
Yeah, so actually, if you reach out either through support directly through the email, that will definitely reach out during get over to us as well. And otherwise, we actually have ongoing customer interviews that we're doing. And so definitely reach out to really any of your standard contact channels that you've had in the past, and that'll send you right up to get a hold of us.
Zach Malloch 1:08:34
So we will we'll make an announcement or we'll ask support to kind of keep interest in that. Or maybe we could even create an email kind of specifically for the sort of feedback and we'll distribute that. Or we'll tell you guys the best way to do this, when we send the follow up email tomorrow. And that'll give us
Bryan Gillilan 1:08:55
a little follow up on that report Button question. So in menu management, and again, this is a functionality that's been there for quite some time. There is a Create Report Button option directly in menu management. So in here, you can go directly to create report, it's going to tell you if you're not on a level in your menu that supports that. So if I wanted to add a report Button directly to my favorites group, I can select my favorites group, create a report Button, it's going to ask me what my what I want my label to be so I could say something like orienteering roster, or whatever the case may be. It's going to ask me for what Screen that is. In this case, I know that's a activity sa Detail Report, and then it's going to ask me what report output I want that to default to when I launch it from the menu. So I would be able to potentially say I want to use the VSI default report or I can use some custom report I had set up on the sides specifically for that Button. When you create that, it'll add that Button directly into your menu. So now I've got my orienteering roster Button. Mmm, that's all there is to it. And then your users that are using that menu will see that menu item right there in their menu. So for example, if I log out and log back in with a user that has that menu
Zach Malloch 1:10:25
while we're getting back in there, quick question for our panelists, are any of you aware of the email for the three 110? Update has gone out yet? We'll go back to you, Bryan while they answer
Bryan Gillilan 1:10:36
Yep. So now you can see I've got my orienteering roster right there in my menu with the label that I specified, I could then favorite that we are currently working on for those kinds of buttons, kind of pre defining an icon for them going forward, that they will get added to the menu with as it stands today, they don't get added with any kind of an icon for the new UI in the menu. But that's certainly something we're looking at. Essentially, we should be able to take the module for that report that you added to the menu and kind of use that same module icon with the the report sub icon with it.
Zach Malloch 1:11:14
And then, so the reason I asked about the email, while you were doing that look up is the question came in about instructions on trying out the new UI. So that email is going to include links to topic Doc's, the the, the update, documentation is going to talk about that it's going to call out specifically the screens that have changed that, that you might see changes in both the old UI as well as the new UI. So that you know it was going to be all of your function. And Patrick says that he will get to it, he's just busy answering questions from this RecChat thing. So probably once this is done, that you follow up pretty quickly. Here we go. We're into the old UI to see what some of those juices
Bryan Gillilan 1:11:56
just want to give an example of for, you know, for examples sake, the household inquiry Screen, I guess, is a good point, I just kind of glossed over there, you are able to in the UI go from, you know, exiting a session. And when I say exit, not logging out, you know, just closing your browser tab, leaving the session, you can leave a session from, say that our current existing UI that you're seeing here, I can leave this session from this UI with panels open, or Tabs open, etc, I can resume that session in the new UI, and all of those same Tabs will be opened in the new UI, the only thing you can't currently do is bounce between old UI and new UI in a single login, logout and explicitly call out that other interface.
Zach Malloch 1:12:48
But then you get basically the direct side by side comparison of this is what my session look like in the old UI. This is what it will look like in the new UI.
Bryan Gillilan 1:12:58
Yeah, I guess the one thing to call out there is when you do login to that session and the new UI, you will be taking over that session from the old UI. So
Zach Malloch 1:13:04
take a screenshot, switch over if you want to do that side by side.
Bryan Gillilan 1:13:09
But yeah, so an example of household inquiry. As you can see, same exact design pattern as the new UI, same lookup changes, same kind of Button grouping changes within the actual application, just styled for the older UI, so on everything provides the same functional benefits where we made design changes across both UIs.
Zach Malloch 1:13:38
So here's another question about sort of the Screen design the homescreen. So the Announcements area? Do they have any control over who sees that? Or which announcements maybe get pushed through out there?
Bryan Gillilan 1:13:51
Currently? They do not? Um, that's certainly something we've been kind of, you know, initially, we wanted to get the feature out there and see kind of what, you know what customers think about having that kind of information presented to them. And then one of the things we're going to be continually looking to gain feedback on is, you know, is that a vehicle for just VSI to give, give patrons or customers announcements within the application? Or is there a reason to have another vehicle for actual clients to give their own end users announcements through the application in a similar fashion? And where's the right place for those things? Is it in the application? Is it on the login Screen? That kind of thing. So those are certainly things we're looking into and looking to gain feedback on. As it stands today, those announcements will show for all users on that home Screen.
Zach Malloch 1:14:39
Okay. All right. So that's it. All right. So actually, this is
Bryan Gillilan 1:14:47
I guess, really quickly now that you mentioned that. So one of the things that we did have in the legacy or normal UI is we had this ability to log out and keep your session or logout and your session Customers will probably notice in the new UI, the Logout is just a single icon. So kind of to bring the new UI and more in line with how other modern web applications function and how they handle sessions in the new UI, if you want to keep your session active, you can simply close your browser tab, there's no need to log out and explicitly say, I want to keep my session, the act of hitting the logout Button will really terminate your session, it is a true logout going forward versus something that will maintain your session if you just close the browser tab.
Zach Malloch 1:15:36
So Chris, that goes back to your point, that part of this whole thing was kind of investigating what other common navigation functions were out there and trying to bring RecTrac A little bit more in line with it to provide you an intuitive sort of feel. If you know how to do this in this other product, you probably know how to do it in this product.
Chris O'Connell 1:15:55
Right? I think there's a few things that we had in the old UI that were kind of reminiscent from still having or behaving much more like a desktop application than the web application that 3.1 is. And so a few of those changes kind of made it feel more like a modern web app is really what we wanted to do with the new interface.
Zach Malloch 1:16:15
Okay. All right. So I guess there's a couple of questions about that. So just to confirm, right now, yes, we cannot hide those VSI comments. But it's something that we were definitely receive feedback on. Absolutely, and requests for. And so just another piece, so the email that's going to come out tomorrow will include a survey in that survey, there's going to be a place for extra comments and anything you want to put in there. If there's specific feedback on that, I will make sure that everybody here gets to see all of what you say, please be nice. We have some sort of feelings. But as far as the UI goes, any suggestions or improvements that you might have? We will, that's a good place to put them, I think to start with, and then we'll include other instructions and information as far as that goes. All right. I think questions are starting to die down a little bit, I see that we still have 181 people with us. So thanks, everybody, for sticking with us on this. This is pretty successful, I think thank you for your interest and engagement. We're just going to stall for time, just for a couple more moments. I think that okay, so somebody had asked about the old inquiry Screen and the old UI and the new inquiry Screen in the new UI. Can you put those in? Can you have both of those up into panels, and so we can kind of pop back between those two.
So yeah, old new is old UI. But with the 310 update. So buttons are grouped down at the bottom much more nicely than the off centered and sort of non graded, just kind of ramshackle, thrown together look that it used to have, and new UI.
Bryan Gillilan 1:18:07
So just to speak to this a little bit, one of the things that users may see a little bit of, in the new or in the old UI, if they're remaining in the old UI is there will be some screens where maybe will appear that some of your data grids have shrunk by a row or two, depending on the size of the data grid. And really one of the core tenants of the new UI was we wanted to still maintain that custom Screen designs would work, we wanted to still maintain that we could make a design change and have it applied to both the new UI and old UI. So it was really benefiting not just customers that wanted to jump on and take advantage of all the new UI to offer but even the incremental process changes. So one of the things that happened with the update to the new UI, as you can see, you know, the application itself tends to have more padding around text more just kind of, you know, less, less data, you know, in your face on the Screen cluttered all over the place, a little better layout a little more spacing, Chris can probably talk to that a little better. But in doing that, we found that just making those changes and not making any design changes, had some negative impacts on the legacy UI in terms of, okay, we changed a bunch of things. Now, in the new UI. If we didn't change the height of this data grid, you would get scroll bars on the Screen, because the data grid was pushing off the visible area. So we did have to make some small design adjustments that do impact a little bit of the old UI as far as vertical real estate in some spaces due to those padding changes, but nothing that's a functional change to the application,
Chris O'Connell 1:19:43
right? Because a lot of that reason was to maintain those custom Screen designs by basically allowing us to use the same framework to render all of the pages on both the old UI and the new UI to ensure that that experience and workflow is exactly as you've always experienced.
Zach Malloch 1:19:59
All right. So let's see, we've got a tough couple of last questions. And I think we are going to wrap it up. Once again, the follow up email is going to be a place that you can pose additional questions. We are planning on having another new UI RecChat chat in November, so actually almost exactly a month after this one. So in about four weeks or so I believe. There seems to be some confusion. And maybe this will be the last topic, some confusion about closing screens, versus logging off. And I think it's just whether your session is still there, right, if your the panels you had open,
Bryan Gillilan 1:20:38
yep. So if I have global sales open, and I have household management open, and I have household inquiry open, if I simply close my browser, and then come back to the My RecTrac shortcut and login again, I'm going to by default, have the option to resume that session. And that is kind of the default action is to resume that session. So when I resume that session, when my RecTrac Screen launches, I'm going to have all three of these Tabs already open and already available to us. So the act of closing one of these Tabs really does close that tab and enter that workflow that I was in. So if I was in household management on the update Screen for a specific household, and I close that tab, if I go to household management, again, in the menu, I am really going to get a new household management new workflow because I ended kind of that workflow I was doing in my RecTrac tab that I had open. One of the nice benefits of the new UI and some of the design elements that we've implemented is I can have household update open for one household. And then in my menu menu, there is a open application and new tab option that you can enable this function. And that'll allow you to launch a second household management. So you can really be in household management for two different households at the same time, if you want it to be that function in the menu applies to the next menu, item use returns. So it automatically turns itself off. So if I didn't want that interaction, and I wanted the kind of standard experience that users are accustomed to where I could be on global sales. And if I want it to household management, and I already have a household management tab open, it'll just redirect me to that existing household management tab.
Zach Malloch 1:22:27
And the last thing about those sessions, so this follows the user more than the workstation, so I close the tab at the front desk, I go back to my office, I log back in, it's gonna let me take that over,
Bryan Gillilan 1:22:39
correct. Yes.
Zach Malloch 1:22:40
All right. Perfect. So yes, different machines, different workstations, as long as the same user ID, if you did not log out, you just closed your tab, you can resume that within a certain number of hours. There are settings that control that input and RecTrac. Okay, well, I don't know about anybody else. But I have RecChatted a lot today.
I think that we're going to go ahead and wrap it up. Like we said, this session is is currently recording, we're just about to stop it. As soon as it's done doing that, we'll start doing the things we need to do to get it ready to post, it's going to go into the support portal. So to be behind that portal. If you're on the new UI, just use that support Button in the sidebar to get there. But it's also going to come with more instructions on the follow up email that we'll send out tomorrow. Thank you again, so much for joining us. This has been Bryan.
Bryan Gillilan 1:23:33
Thank you, everybody,
Zach Malloch 1:23:33
Chris.
Chris O'Connell 1:23:34
Thank you.
Zach Malloch 1:23:35
And I'm Zack, thanks for chatting with us. And now is the awkward part where I didn't have it really cued up to actually end the session as soon as I said that, and now ill end the session....
now