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Reading a response by Arie I saw the mention of “Start empty with filter” option that on can use on Subject. Excited that this is seemingly working in Universal, I tried the feature. The result is however different than what I was expecting.

Windows GUI:
When opening a screen from the menu, you will have it load without results and a Filter Form popup will happen.

You can choose to straight away filter or click “OK” without entering filter data. In the last situation all the data will load as if you had never chosen to enable the option “Start empty with filter”.

Universal GUI:
When opening a screen from the menu, you will have it load without results and it will show a text in the grid “Use find or filter to view data”.

I have to open the Filter Form myself if I want to use it or start using the Combined Filter.

So far this is acceptable even though it works a bit different. The part where it does not actually do what I would like, is that I can never get the full data show anymore. After I have filtered and cleared that filter, it will show the result as the screenshot again and not the complete data.

Is this intentional?

The purpose to want to use this feature is speed up the initial loading of the screen and most people need/want to filter, but would still like the option to see data when the filter is cleared.

​@Mark_Plaggenborg I get your point. Let me discuss internally next week, afterwards I will provide an update in this topic.

​@Mark_Plaggenborg Have discussed internally and tested a bit myself. The current behavior is somewhat intentional, but we're open to change it. Please know that we're working on a redesign of the User Experience for Search/Filter/Pre-filter/Sort capabilities in the Universal GUI.

  • For one, an important thing to note is the following: if the Windows GUI does have a Search bar in the Screen Type, it actually doesn't open the Filter pop-up. Instead it will also open the empty grid and set the cursor in the Search. Since the Universal GUI by default shows a Search when you have set at least one Column in Subject > Data > Search to ‘Include in search’ = true, the behavior is more or less similar between both GUIs. Universal doesn't set the cursor in the Search though (a small usability improvement that we should definitely make).
     
  • It is currently not possible to have the Filter screen automatically pop-up in the Universal GUI. Even if you have no Column set to true for ‘Include in search’ it doesn't trigger the Filter pop-up. I do get why you want to be able to do so, and the same might go for actions like Import / Export.
    How would you feel about having Process actions available for ‘Activate filter’ / ‘Activate import’ / ‘Activate export’ as a more flexible, configurable solution instead of the current implicit Windows GUI behavior?
     
  • It is currently indeed not possible to have the Universal GUI return all records unfiltered, I also get that this might in some cases be more useful. However, initially this ‘Start empty with filter’ setting was introduced to prevent users from having to wait long before being able to interact with the page on loading screens/data in the Windows GUI. In the Universal GUI we apply Lazy loading (allowing you to already interact with a screen before all loading is done) and Pagination (reducing the load/improving performance). For our understanding, could you clarify why you still need the ‘Start empty with filter’ in your case?

If you do indeed need a better solution here, please raise a ticket in TCP accordingly.

​@Arie V can we expect some sort of a blog post soon about the redesign of the User Experience for Search/Filter/Pre-filter/Sort capabilities in the Universal GUI?

​@Arie V  You are right about bullet point 1. I had indeed not added a Search in this test scenario and it seems it is no longer required to apply an Extended Property to have the cursor start in the Search in the Windows GUI. (My experience with this is from years ago, so had not experiences it current day)

About bullet point 2 I find your suggestion a good one. I can see future cases where I might actually like to introduce flows to enable such activities.

With bullet point 3 I initially tried it to benefit from the quick load where especially customers with large data sets benefit (even with paging). The downside how U-GUI works now, is that I can never ever use this enabled to get data to show unless a person knows what they need to search for. If new data is introduced, you can never find it, as you have no idea what to search for. Perhaps the current checkbox is the wrong one to use for what it does now, as the current functionality is more like “Always require filter” instead of “Start empty with filter”.

I can see a need for an always filtering screen for certain cases, but I would also like an option to speed the initial loading, but still have it an option to get data when I clear a filter or choose an option to show it.

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