Developments in New UI for STEP

Summary

As part of our ongoing commitment to deliver a simplified user experience in our interfaces, Stibo Systems continues to enhance and extend the functionality of our UIs by adding new capabilities to Stibo Systems' new UI for STEP (also referred to as Instrument)—expanding efficiency and applicability.

Objects can now be created and initiated into workflows directly from either a Tasks perspective or a Browse perspective.
It is now possible to sort and filter within the reference table of the details page.
It is now possible to control which filters display on the Instrument search screen.
Admin users can now control which tabs display in specific perspectives.
Orphan attributes are now clearly indicated in the interface.
Errors in New UI configurations now include guidance to better enable admins to fix them.
New Approve button for quick approvals in search screen.

Important: The STEP Instrument Documentation has been moved into STEP Documentation. This change streamlines documentation access for users so that they no longer have to go to two different documentation sets to get the full information they need to work within the new UI.

Details

New objects created and initiated into workflows

Users can now create and initiate objects into workflows using a new 'Create' button that can be enabled within the toolbar of a Tasks perspective. Previously, any new objects would need to first be created within a Browse perspective, be initiated into a workflow, and then the user would navigate to an appropriate Tasks perspective to continue to make changes to the object. The new 'Create' button allows for both the create and initiate operations to be completed at the same time and allows the newly created object to be accessed and enriched immediately.

For more information on using the new 'Create' button, review the Creating and Initiating a New Object within the Tasks Perspective topic in the Instrument User Interface documentation.

Alternatively, users can now both create objects and initiate objects into workflows directly from the Browse perspective using the new object creation action functionality. This functionality allows a new object to be automatically initiated into a workflow immediately after creation.

Explore further by clicking the video below. If it does not play as expected or you want to see more videos, you can explore all our Product Updates videos on YouTube or within our Product Updates page on our corporate website.

For more information, review the Creating New Objects within the Browse Perspective topic in the Instrument User Interface documentation.

Sorting and filtering in reference table of details page

Sorting and filtering options are now available within the reference table of the details page. This new functionality makes it easier to find specific items in a large reference table.

For more information, review the References topic within the Instrument documentation.

Search filters improved

The Instrument search screen can now be configured to only display filters relevant to the search results. To determine which filters can be applied, specify the relevant nodes as 'Default Facet' in the Data specifications step of the Elasticsearch configuration.

Previously, the available filters could not be controlled, and were only determined by the first 40 objects that appeared in the search results. Not only could irrelevant filters appear, but any important filters that only applied to objects beyond the first 40 would not display.

For more information on the Instrument search screen, review the Utilities topic.

For more information on Elasticsearch configurations, review the Creating and Maintaining an Elasticsearch Configuration topic.

Improved tab display

Instrument admin users can now control which tabs display for users. A new setting in the Configuration tool called 'Views' enables admins to determine whether a configured tab should display:

in all perspectives
in Tasks perspectives only
in non-Tasks perspectives only (i.e., Browse and Collections perspectives)

This level of control enables admins to configure interfaces to the exact needs of user groups. For example, when the tabs are properly configured, users working on tasks in workflows would not see Browse-specific tabs that are not relevant to their work. This change gives admins the ability to create a more streamlined, fit-for-purpose interface that allows users to complete their tasks more efficiently.

For more information on configuring tabs and their display in Instrument, review the Configuration Tool topic.

Improved orphan attribute display

Attributes in an orphaned state are now displayed to Instrument users with clear visual indicators. Orphaned attributes, which are attributes that have one or more values but are not linked to a product or classification, are now indicated in both the details and list views with warning indicators (). In the details view, the indicator displays beside the attribute, as well as in the side panel as shown in the screenshot below:

In the list view, an orphan attribute displays with a warning indicator beside the attribute value, as well as with a row indicator displaying vertically at the beginning of an affected row, as shown below:

Double-clicking on the warning indicator, or hovering over the vertical row header, displays an informational pop-up to further guide the user on the issue. Shown below is the information pop-up.

For more information on orphan attributes, review the Linking Orphan Attributes topic.

Inoperative configuration guidance

When admins build Instrument configurations using the Configuration tool, sometimes options are selected that can disable the configuration. With this update, inoperative configurations for work areas, perspectives, views, and tabs are now clearly displayed to the admin user, along with guidance on how to fix the issue.

As an example of a configuration-disabling selection, if an admin has assigned a perspective to a user group that has since been deleted, the affected perspective will display with a red vertical line.

To access the guidance on how to correct the configuration, the admin user can hover their cursor over the red line, and the guidance text will display in a small pop-up, as shown in the screenshot below.

If the configuration error is on a perspective and the admin collapses the work area in which the perspective resides, the work area will display with a red circle next to the work area name, as shown in the screenshot below:

If all work areas are collapsed in the hierarchy, the red circle displays next to the 'All work areas & perspectives' node, as depicted below:

If the work area, perspective, view, or tab configuration is determined by the system to be in error, the 'Duplicate' and 'Save' buttons will be inactive and cannot be clicked on until the misconfiguration is corrected.

For more information on creating Instrument configurations, review the Configuration Tool topic.

New Approve action button in the search screen toolbar

The search screen now includes a new action button called 'Approve' that allows users to directly approve the selected objects in the search screen.

For more information, refer to the topic Utilities in the Instrument User Interface documentation