Dashboard reorganization and faster navigation
January 8th, 2009Armed to the teeth with user research and statistics we’ve again modified the Cashboard UI in an evolutionary manner.
Dashboard evolution
From now on when you login to Cashboard as an administrator you will again see Projects to Invoice and Outstanding Invoices as the first screen that greets you.
We’ve moved the Quick Reports to the second tab under the Home screen, as those numbers are great to have – but not relevant to the majority of our customers upon each and every login.
Faster navigation
Cashboard has grown to be a very deep system. There’s lots of information here, and some of it was getting buried. Today we’ve also introduced a new menu system for the top-level tabs which should make navigating Cashboard a lot faster.
Each section at the top now allows one-click navigation to any sub-section below it.
We’ve also made it extremely simple to get at any of your active projects or estimates, with one click. In the screenshot above you can see we’re viewing all active projects for our account.
Future changes
Subimage LLC is dedicated to making Cashboard the best software for your business. We’ve got a ton of great updates planned for this year and are very excited to bring them all to you.
Thanks again for being a customer of our service!
January 8th, 2009 at 01:51 AM
I’ve been using Cashboard for almost a year now, granted as a smaller user, but all the same, its my sole work time management app. In all that time, I’ve never thought I’d benifit from having drop downs in the app, the whole thing was laid out nicely. I gotta say, now that they’re added, I still feel the same. Maybe I’ll get used to it and it will make more sense to me, who knows. Just thought I’d mention it.
Two things I’d like to suggest though, from a usability standpoint. Currently the active page’s menu item doesnt display its drop down menu. I find that a bit counterintuitive. “The button had a drop down, but now it doesnt…”. The other thing is most menu’s disappear when you mouse out of a drop down, its the expected behaviour, but I have to click to hide a drop down in Cashboard. But then if I hover over one menu, then hover over another, it switches the drop down that is visible.
That’s my initial thoughts of using it anyway. I love Cashboard and want to see it grow bigger and better too. Im probably a bit picky being a web designer though.
January 8th, 2009 at 07:17 AM
Nice changes. I can work in Cashboard faster now, definitely a plus!
January 8th, 2009 at 07:57 AM
I logged in today and saw this update.
WOW!!
Before long, Cashboard will probably be able to just look at what I am typing on the keyboard and just bill accordingly.
Very nice update guys.
Mark Howard Elexient LLC
January 8th, 2009 at 08:11 AM
@Adam we’re sure you’ll get used to it. All of the decisions you bring up were carefully thought through and we believe they’re implemented the proper way.
The menus disappear after time-out or click. There’s not a set-standard of usability of web drop-down menus. We believe the way it’s implemented works the best for our particular application.
The reason menus aren’t shown for the active tab is that unless you’re on Projects or Estimates, all of the sub-items are already shown on screen in the secondary tab bar.
January 8th, 2009 at 04:50 PM
@Seth “The reason menus aren’t shown for the active tab is that unless you’re on Projects or Estimates, all of the sub-items are already shown on screen in the secondary tab bar.”
Even so, it’s expected behaviour that if there was a dropdown menu on that button on the last page, it’s going to be there on the next page too, otherwise it gets confusing. Yeah those links might be on the page, but what’s stopping a user from using the dropdown for navigation too?
That said, I see from your twitter that you have addressed both my concerns. Thanks for that Seth!
January 9th, 2009 at 01:08 AM
@AdamJ
Everything can use a revision from time to time ;)
January 9th, 2009 at 03:39 PM
@Seth
Much better with the changes you made. A small bug for you, the settings menu sticks out the side of the app a little bit. The active dropdown’s menu is a different colour from the actual tab, dunno if it needs to be matched or not…
It is a smoother experience now in my opinion though. Cheers mate
January 23rd, 2009 at 08:00 AM
I just wanted to say I love the new menus. Has saved me so much time and makes working through the project > Task > Invoice path so much easier.
Good stuff.