Composite list navigator - New UX

Alessio_Pagliano

We would like to provide our end users with a mechanism that allows them to navigate through the various levels of a composite list to “drill into” the data they need to analyse.

 

For example, we’d like our users to first select a country, and then select a region from a list of regions that belong to the selected country. This could then be repeated by selecting a retailer within the region and then a product category stocked by that retailer.

 

Sample wireframe diagram

It is important that a user can navigate flexibly through this hierarchy, especially when changing a selection such as reviewing a retailer in one region and then changing to another region where a new collection of retailers are available.

 

We’d also like to ensure that only the relevant levels of the list are provided to the user and may want to choose to allow them to navigate between levels 2 and 5 of an 8 level hierarchy.

 

In classic we would publish a series of grids to a dashboard (that have no content visible other than row labels) and each would be dimensioned by a different level within our overall list. Using sync we would allow for selection of a country in the first grid, region in the second, retailers in the third and finally product categories in the fourth - the dashboard would then update based on this selection.

 

There are also other more elaborated technical solutions to achieve this which require more complex technical developments and that could have performance issues.

 

I think the user experience could be improved significantly if there was an out of the box object in the New UX that we could use and customise for this purpose.

Also, it would be very helpful if there was an option to select multiple specific list items under a specific parent (but not necessarily all). I would suggest to find inspiration through one of the leading visualization products such as Qlik. Here is an example.

 

  

 

PhilippErkinger

I agree, it would be fantastic to have additional native features to navigate through composite lists - like simple collapse & expand would be already amazing.

However, you can already get very close to this experience through line item filters which don't require any performance.

I can recommend to watch this training video: https://community.anaplan.com/t5/On-Demand-Courses/End-User-Filtering-with-Published-Line-Items/ta-p/63730

Alessio_Pagliano

Thanks @PhilippErkinger ,

 

I have been pestering Anaplan on the expand and collapse for years ! Much much needed, even more in the New UX. 

It seems we would eventually get it as they are working on it, but it's understandably a more complex requirement.

Micro lessons from L3 eh ?  You just reminded me that I'm well beyond with my re-certification !

While this is one of the nice little workarounds performances are to be tested/accounted for (with very large lists and if the parents are to be included within the logic as well).

What I like the most about this one in particular is that it doesn't require Line Items to be dimensioned by Users. What I like the least is the UX/result for invalid selections.

I feel this is more suitable simpler use cases eg a couple of lists. However in real life we tend to see composite lists with many more levels and many members. Having said that I might apply this method to the current project and check performances and usability. Thanks again for pointing it out : always easier when you have a documented working example!  

 

Alessio