[Vtigercrm-developers] Invitation : Tabs & Modules Grouping

[Brian Devendorf]

I took this concept and decided to design my ideal CRM application. A  
couple of ideas for existing modules first:
Mail: Currently, Webmail is personal mail, and Mail is CRM mail. CRM  
mail should support two separate mail accounts: sales & support.  
These accounts would be setup separately and viewed separately. Email  
should be the current webmail with send functionality very similar to  
the current implementation.
Contacts: There should be filtering support based on a few criteria.  
Public contact (meaning public to the company), personal (to the  
individual), and employee (to maintain an enterprise directory).
Notes: Should support categories including personal notes for each  
individual on the system.
Tabs: Should be fully configurable as to which modules appear under  
which tabs, though I have a default recommendation from my "card-sort".
Home: The items that appear on the default page should be  
configurable by the individuals... this is likely a lot of extra  
work, but should be a future feature.
Overall GUI: The system already is designed with two levels of menus.  
This should be leveraged to provide every module necessary. Any  
additional tabs or selectors should only be to change the data view,  
or filter applied. The more items are buried, the harder they are to  
find.

Initial results from Card Sort: My initial results had many items  
under each tab (as they would be beneficial to everyone). After  
thinking about it for a while, I came up with a new layout that I  
thought better fit my ideas (mock-up below). It includes a new area  
along the left column which is always visible with My Home items. As  
these are likely the most frequently used by users.

The My Home area contains: Dashboard, Email, Calendar, Meetings,  
Calls, To Do, Contacts, and Notes.
The tabs across the top would be: Sales, Support, Marketing, Reports,  
Inventory, and Settings (for admin).
Sales: Accounts, Pricebooks, Quotes, Sales Order, Purchase Order,  
Invoice
Support: Help Desk, FAQ, Products, Accounts, Support Email
Marketing: Leads, Potentials, Accounts, Pricebooks, Quotes, Sales Email
Reports: Dashboard, Reports
Inventory: Products, Vendors, Accounts, Sales Order

In the mock-up below, the Meetings, Calls, and To Do items could  
easily be replaced with a single Activities item. Sometimes, though,  
it is easier to have these items separated, as it is easier to  
associate a phone call with Calls then it is as a Calls filter under  
Activities. Also, Ideally there should be icons for the My Home items  
to make them more easily identifiable.




On Jan 21, 2006, at 6:56 AM, saint wrote:

> Team,
>
> We would like to understand better, the order of tabs/modules that  
> you would like to see in vtiger. We are planning to use the Card- 
> Sorting method to find out the groups/order of tabs that most users  
> wishes to have.  We request all in this list to spend a few minutes  
> for this.
>
> What you need to do?
> Just spend a few minutes of your leisure time. Get a coffee or grab  
> a coke and do this sorting method.
>
>
> What is this Card sorting method?
> Refer this image, and read below.
> <cardsorting.jpg>
>
>
>
> According to this method, the names of the modules are written on  
> paper cards and shuffled, collectively the "Unsorted cards" in the  
> image. Then the users need to pick up the modules (cards) and group/ 
> sort them with some relation. Say for ex. Leads, Contact, Quotes  
> and Potentials can be grouped under Sales. Helpdesk and FAQ can be  
> grouped under Support. Sometimes, you may feel a particular module  
> needs to appear on other groups too. No problem, just add a new  
> card with the same module name in that group. Once you are sure  
> that you have grouped all modules, send us the Group names and  
> modules under each group.
>
> What will you get in return?
> The Names of those who give feedback, will be given credits in the  
> vtiger About page. :-)
>
> What will we do with this data?
> With this help, we will identify the most common pattern of module  
> grouping and implement in the GA release.
>
> vtiger Modules
> Activities
> FAQ
> Contacts
> Potentials
> Quotes
> Calendar
> Email
> Purchase Order
> Leads
> Accounts
> Helpdesk
> Sales Order
> Pricebooks
> Notes
> Dashboard
> Products
> Reports
> Invoice
> Vendors
> If i have left any module (!!) please add that to the list and  
> sort. :-)
>
> Have a great Weekend!
>
> - Saint
>
>
>
>
>
> <cardsorting.jpg>
> _______________________________________________
> vtigercrm-developers mailing list
> vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com
> http://lists.vtigercrm.com/mailman/listinfo/vtigercrm-developers


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