[18.4.57] Added breadcrumbs to streamline navigation

The latest version is adding breadcrumbs to most screens in Manager. A breadcrumb or breadcrumb trail is a user interface element typically used as a navigational aid to answer “Where am I” or “How did I got here”. It also helps to get level or two higher if required.

Consider an example when drilling into sub-subsidiary ledger within a balance sheet.

You click Reports tab

Then Balance Sheet

Then View button on specific balance sheet

Then amount in control account (e.g. Accounts receivable)

Then clicking on amount of specific sub-account (e.g. customer)

Then clicking View button a transaction (e.g. invoice).

By the time you get to level 6, you see a transaction but have no trail how did you get there and if you want to go back to view original list of sub-accounts, you have to repeat steps above up to step 4. Too cumbersome.

So how does breadcrumb trail solves this issue?

When you drill-down into reports (or any screen for that matter), you will see a trail in the upper part of the screen.

This will answer two basic questions:

  • Where am I
  • How did I get here

Clicking on the links will take you levels above.

The trail should work on most screens and the goal is to make it work on all screens. Also there are quite a few screens which don’t put good text into breadcrumb trail. The goal is that every level in breadcrumb trail should have text which describes it the best. So this is something to be improved too.

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This is a very good idea. I don’t have time to test it now, because i am going to bed. But when I get up tomorrow morning, I will check and see if it fixes one of my biggest irritations with viewing quotes/invoices filtered by either customer or open status etc when I want to edit them.

For example, when I go to sales invoice, then filter by customer name then I click on invoice and edit the invoice and update, it would be nice to click back to sales invoice using the same customer name filter and select another invoice and do whatever with that. At the moment, I either have to back, back, back, back until I get back to the sales invoice with custom filter or I just find it quicker to click on sales invoice again and retype the filter view.

Hopefully the breadcrumb view will solve that. Thank you.

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@dalacor yes, the context will be preserved so it’s easy to click a level or two above on breadcrumb trail and your search term, page or even sorting will be preserved.

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This is fantastic news and a very welcome feature. I also have had the issue of clicking back after making an edit to a bank entry, only to be returned to the edit screen, and not the list of entries as expected. Many thanks!

Can confirm that the breadcrumb works. This will be very useful when I am using filters thank you.

is it working now, i mean can i upgrade to new version or in testing yet?

It was working from the time it was released. @dalacor’s comments were about his particular workflow and how the feature would work in his context. There was never a question about whether the breadcrumbs feature worked.

Definitely a worthwhile improvement.

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breadcrumbs :slight_smile: - i learnt the term now. Thanks and Beautiful feature.

I’ve used this several times already now. This is a very welcome addition, thanks @lubos

Now can we have the previous/next buttons too? :wink:

I’m using the desktop version and right click gives Back & Forward.

That is operating system specific.

Previous/Next implies jumping between records in the same tab/module… which is not the same as going backwards or forwards in your browser history. Clicking ‘Next’ or ‘Previous’ would take you to a page you might not have visited recently.

So I believe that @d3mad is referring to something different, @VACUUMDOG.

No use replying to anything on this forum is there?

It’s difficult to tell the difference due to this being text-only, but I get the impression that I have caused a problem or misunderstanding.

You raised a good point, and it is something that would be valuable for some users to see (they may not be aware of it until they see your post).

I was just trying to point out that it might not be the same thing d3mad is referring to. Apologies for any misunderstanding.

@ShaneAU, EXACTLY, I was merely pointing out something that may or may not of been addressing the issue. A 'suggestion". The big point is that I did not say it WOULD address it.
Maybe right click and open in new window would help.
The statement

is merely supposition!

Just like the statement

I don’t know of a browser under any operating system that doesn’t have ‘Next/Back’ or ‘Previous/Next’

Agreed that my comment could be interpreted that way - it is an assumption, after all.

In software, Next/Previous usually refers to jumping from one item to another in a list - whilst Forward/Back usually refers to navigating through history (often in a web browser).

Since you use the terms interchangeably, it is entirely possible that d3mad does also, and therefore I could be completely incorrect. I’ll leave the conversation here, as I can’t think of anything else worthwhile to add :slight_smile:

@ShaneAU and @VACUUMDOG, I am talking about traversing the database (previous/next) as opposed to pages (forward and backwards). I use the web based server version and forward and back works quite nicely, but oftentimes when I need the next or previous document, going back one page and scrolling down to the previous location and finding the record is cumbersome.

I merged a few requests into one post here about it some time ago and lubos was waiting to implement breadcrumbs first. I was just being a bit cheeky by bringing it up here after the breadcrumb announcement. :slight_smile:

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