Icon Tool Tip

It would be good to have tool tip on icons and this will make easy to use the software in compact mode.

5 Likes

Which icons are you referring to that you think are not self-explanatory?

He means when you compact the LHS side of Manager so instead of seeing the words Summary, Cash Accounts, Customers etc, when you hover over the picture which is all you see, you can get a tooltip to tell you which one is which. This is a very good idea (and should be elevated to an idea) as I find it impossible to remember which picture is for which with the result that I tend to leave Manager in non compact mode.

2 Likes

I agree, this would be a great improvement and is needed. It is entiely the reason i havenā€™t used the Tab collapse button (keep forgetting which one is which!).
This has been mentioned in the past but is not yet supported.
Good idea to revive this thought though.

3 Likes

Lately I saw a topic where Lubos made clear why, among others, the discount column has been invisible, till you want it to be visible.
This way ā€œunused spaceā€ is being reduced, which is perfect, well at least in my situation.
In order to reduce ā€œunused spaceā€ further more I wonder wether it would be possible to text-label the icons of the tabs on the left side, so that when hovering the icon a corresponding text will show up.
It will surely have to do with my age ;-), but although I am using this great program for several months now, I just cannot remember which function belongs to which icon. Is help on its way?

1 Like

+1

The latest version has this implemented.

tooltips

5 Likes

Thank you. I have been waiting for this one for a while.

I will upgrade to this version once all the issues with the three banking tabs are sorted out. I have not upgraded to that version yet as I think following the discussion on the other topic that a few kinks need to be ironed out.

Not aware of any outstanding ā€œissuesā€ which are impacting upon the usage of those tabs, but there continues to be improvements to their functioning.

Manager 17.9.81 reintroduced the ā€˜Receive moneyā€™ and ā€˜Spend moneyā€™ buttons under a bank account / cash account, when youā€™re viewing the transaction list. This makes manual reconciliation much easier, like it was before. Was there some other issue you feel is still outstanding?

One problem noted. Manager does not seem to remember the sidebar preference when restarted.
If we close Manager with the compact sidebar, when restarted it appears expanded.

Not a specific issue, but I have noticed with Manager any new release that comes out always requires adjustments, reverses or changes as users comment on the usability. The comments by Sabrina and Glider Manual reconciliation Issues are a perfect example of what I mean and ShaneAU just posted a comment with further issues.

For me the problem with the release cycle is that Lubos should have a beta testing team to use the latest release and provide feedback on what is missing, what is not working etc and then lubos can make the changes and then release the update in a public release instead of releasing what I see as the beta release to the public and expecting users to work around issues until the final release.

This is why I always wait a couple of months before upgrading so that all these things are in place when upgrading especially as I agree with the complaint by Sabrina - I feel that adding three new tabs introduces more problems than it solves personally.

Thatā€™s perfectly fine, and in fact, thatā€™s probably the best solution. There are multiple updates in a day, youā€™re not expected to keep up with them all.

If you update once every month or two, you can review the changelog beforehand so you know what to expect.

Personally, I update every few weeks. Even when I know thereā€™s a massive feature change that I want, I update when I get around to it. Thereā€™s no rush :slight_smile:

If youā€™re referring to my comment elsewhere about adding transaction buttons to another page, Iā€™d think thatā€™s a very minor request. The buttons themselves work perfectly fine, I only requested that they be added in an extra spot. But this is not the place to discuss it, since itā€™s not relevant to this conversation.

I would also say that @sharpdrivetek comment above is a feature request. As far as Iā€™m aware the sidebar already did not remember whether it was expanded or not, itā€™s not a feature that Manager has. He may agree with me that ā€œproblemā€ isnā€™t necessarily the best word in this case.


Summary:
I agree with you that there can be minor issues with some versions of the application, but in general itā€™s improving. I also agree that there isnā€™t any need to update frequently.

But I disagree with the need to have a separate beta testing release cycle - and the reason I disagree, is because none of the little issues Iā€™ve seen in the past few weeks have been major bugs. A major bug would be something that constitutes data loss, or data corruption. Has Manager ever faced that? Only long-term users can comment on that, but I havenā€™t seen any indications of it in my searching.

Yes I was referring to your last comment on the other thread. I only realised afterwards that it was you I was responding to in this topic!

Actually its not relevant whether its a bug - the fact of the matter is, updates do affect the end user especially when everything changes and having a focus group to iron out all the niggles does eliminate all the frustrations of end users in that you can present the finished article rather than a work in progress.

I can recall a number of occasions when updates were rolled out - two occasions when the updates had to be reversed as a result of feedback - for example the ability to name the business files and save them anywhere, not just application data and there was the issue of server users being forced to have only one business open at a time - this was reversed as well. These two examples would not have occured if there was a focus group providing feedback.

Also I will refer you to this topic - Feedback on New Summary Page Look

This change got a lot of complaints and it was purely down to the fact that it was released in beta mode and it took several weeks/months before all the issues with this was fixed. Again, the issues were not bug related, but were user friendly navigation issues as things that were easy to do yesterday, required more clicks and more navigation to do today. The problem was not the update, but that it was not released as a finished article but rather as a work in progress.

Another example is when the pdf printer button was introduced, Lubos removed the original print button - Could you please test new "Print" button? - see post 18 by Jon and this affected a lot of users who urgently needed to print, but could no longer do so because the new pdf button was not working correctly at the time.

Another example that I could provide is with the Managing inventory and tracking items to be invoiced and you could look at Sarikaā€™s posts in [17.6.10] More clarity under Inventory Items tab - we both have the same problem with electronic inventory and this again is because there is no focus group to provide feedback on the Delivery Notes update etc. I donā€™t see the logic of a delivery note for electronic inventory as I put the serial numbers on the invoice and download links in the email and there were a lot of issues with that update - I think that Lubos had some very good points in the release as it was about making the delivery note more useful than just emailing the client a delivery note - the problem I have is with the execution of the updates.

An update does not have to have a bug in it to cause problems. The purpose of a focus group is to provide feedback of how changes affect their usage of the program, because everyone uses the program for different types of businesses and different ways of doing things. I have listed some examples above, but the reality is that a lot of updates are released about 80%-90% complete and are tweaked after release.

I donā€™t want to derail this topic any further, but I just wanted to answer your post and highligh some examples (and these are not the only examples) of why a focus group is needed to review updates and provide feedback on how these changes affect end users. I just see the same mistake being made repeatedly - an update is released and a dozen users chime in with issues they are encountering and its very stressful for the developer and end users to get everything operational again etc and its so unecessary - this problem could be eliminated with a focus group that tests the changes and comes back with feedback on what they think. At the moment the focus group is everyone who upgrades immediately on a new release and then they end up getting frustrated as something that was simple to do yesterday is made ten times more difficult as illustrated in the example by Sabrina in the 3 banking tabs update.

I think that Lubos has a very good program, but I think that he keeps making the same mistake over and over again of releasing an update and then frantically fixing and tweaking the update in the new few weeks to address feedback and user complaints because he has made the public his focus group instead of limiting it to a small number of users who would be only to happy to help him improve the program - I certainly would be happy to help. These updates should not be released live, they are not production updates, they are beta updates and I would not be surprised if some people like Jon have left Manager for this precise reason.

I think the issue is that you donā€™t realise that the public is the focus group - I just propose making the focus group smaller and limited to people who would like to help improve the program by providing feedback on updates.

Having multiple branches of development - experimental, testing, stable etc. just makes development a lot more complicated, adds more friction and slows down everything.

There is always going to be certain amount of disruption when you upgrade. I mean was upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 10 smooth? And you bet Microsoft has an army of coders, testers, usability designers, QA analysts. They have experimental branches, testing branches, beta testing branches. They had years to iron out the new version and the launch was one of the most painful Microsoft has ever experienced.

Why? Because there is a big difference between early adopters (or self-selected beta testers) excited about new shiny things and conservative paying customers who will be upset about every little change you introduce into their workflow.

I need to work with both groups at the same time.

2 Likes

Really, awesome. I will update soon

This topic has been closed because it strayed too far from the original subject. The suggestion was incorporated into the program.