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This is the first time we share a design as a standalone blog, to give you an impression of the things yet to come. 
This gives us the means to register feedback about a new feature in a natural way, which helps us to improve our product in the process. Our goal is to give our end-users a prominent place in our design process and to listen to their feedback in an earlier stage, so that we can work together to make the best product possible for all involved.
Therefore, we welcome your opinion and are curious about your thoughts.

Now, for the design at hand. We already support the immediate export functionality in the overflow menu of a subject. Using this action immediately starts the download of all visible rows without any further action needed.
But what if you want to download a specific number of rows or want to download the data as untranslated ID’s?
We are going to add an ‘Export…’ action in the overflow menu, which opens a wizard. This wizard lets you adjust your export settings, step by step.

 

Step 1

The first step lets you choose whether you want to export the selected row(s) or all visible rows.

In this first step the user can choose to export 1 row from the Hours table, or all 25 visible rows

Step 2

Going to the second step, you will be able to choose to export the headers and data translated or not, (de)select the columns you want to include in your export and adjust the order of the columns in the exported file.

In this image, all data is left translated

If you opt to export the data untranslated, this is emphasized by the wizard, by showing the column headers as the (untranslated) data ID’s:

The column headers confirm the user action when opted to export the data untranslated,

Step 3

Then, you can navigate to the final step of the wizard, where the file type can be defined.

By default, the export is offered as an XLSX file, but it is possible to change the export file to download as an XLS or a CSV file.

The last step shows a dropdown box to select the desired export filetype

Now, you can start the export. After clicking on ‘Export’, the wizard will close, and the download of the file will start.

This concludes the full process of exporting data from a subject.

Now, it is important to understand that this design is not yet implemented in the Universal GUI. This gives us the time to listen to your feedback and process what we discover together. Of course, at the end of the process when this feature becomes available in the Universal GUI, we will inform you in the release notes.

We are curious about your opinion and invite you to add your feedback about this design in the comment section below. Let’s make things work, together, and let us know what you think!

 

Hi @Bart Metselaar,

Great idea to share your design like this, it looks great! A few thoughts and questions, however:

  • 1. Size of export
    • When naming step 1 ‘Size of export’ I would expect settings that have something to do with kb's and mb's. That is not the case. Perhaps ‘Rows to export’ would be a good name, since step 2 is named ‘Columns to export’.
    • Would it be interesting to be able to also make a distinction between ‘Export all rows’ and ‘Export all visible rows’, making exporting easier in screens where not all data is shown (e.g. top-statement)?
  • 2. Columns to export:
    • How about a select all columns (and deselect all?) option? Especially select all columns is a feature I would love to have. Or can that be done with this button? In that case, that was not very intuitive for me. 

       

    • I see you designed an option to restore the column order. Would such an option also be beneficial for the selection of the checkboxes, to be able to go back to the default selection when you messed up your selection?
  • 3. Export
    • When you are in step 3 and click on ‘Previous’, do you see all values again as set in step 2? And vice versa, when returning to step 3 again, has it remembered when you already switched to CSV instead of XLSX? I think this would be ideal.

Thank you Jeroen!

Great to hear and see that sharing our ideas generates more ideas and additions!

Regarding your thoughts and questions:

  1. Size of export
    • Your suggestion about the name is something we’ll take into consideration, thank you for that idea!
    • When we delve into your idea about a different button for ‘all rows’ and ‘all visible rows’, we believe we would make it harder for the user to understand the difference of what each button does.
      Could you tell me why you would need such a specific function? Because the user would need to be very aware of our definition of ‘visible’ and ‘all’, which is not directly intrinsic recognizable, and also, we think, not necessary, because a user can select all visible rows of a page of a subject with the use of multi select and export those selected rows, or directly export all rows of the subject.
  2. Columns to export
    • The multi select function is already included, indeed with the button you refer to. In the header we added a checkbox which toggles between all and non rows selected (and gaining an ‘indecisive state’ when some rows are selected). This feature is used in many other applications (even including Universal, on touch) with which we try to maintain a consistent experience and recognizable function to (de)select all records. Can you tell us why this button makes it not intuitive for you?
    • At this point, we don’t think a kind of ‘reset selection’ function would add value to the export function. When is a selection ‘messed up’ and why would a user go back to a default selection? How many times will this situation occur and is it a necessity to add this function? Most of the times we know of, a user has a set of about 20 columns to choose out of. Searching/reaching for the reset button and restarting any further selection (and revising the users ‘default’ setup) would take more time than adjusting the selection.
  3. Export
    • Yes, the settings are stored during your use of the wizard. This makes it possible for the user to return to previous steps to (re)check settings. These settings are not stored for a next use of the wizard (i.e. setting up a selection of columns will not define a ‘default selection’ for a next time the wizard is used)

Again, thanks for your questions and ideas! Keep them coming!

 

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