Context Specific Left Hand Menu

In my view, this is an absurd change. Is it deliberately designed to annoy users? (I can see that you’re choosing to close the topic after 24 hours, so clearly you don’t want a broad discussion too.)

Let’s face it, the Quickfile layout is nowhere near mobile friendly, I don’t see evidence of the sort of framework needed to support this. More to the point, who needs the full accounts package on a 5" screen?

Why, oh why did you not reproduce the current (previous) left menu using the customiser and make that the default? That way you don’t annoy existing customers yet add to the functionality.

Please, please, please have a mini u-turn and come up with a better and less clumsy solution.

I appreciate your feedback although I’m really struggling to see the argument for having a menu in the left hand column that duplicates options in the top menu? Also as @QFMathew mentions there is a lengthy discussion about these changes here, where we discuss the rationale and attempt to reach some sort of consensus.

Right now you have a system that gives you 100% flexibility over what links you have in your left hand menu. If you wanted the menu to resemble what was there before it can be achieved. if you wish we can even create a template menu for you that resembled the original menu? You can then edit/extend this as you wish.

it won’t be context sensitive to the screen shown, or are you saying it will… if so, great, can I have all the menus back how they were, I can give you all the 4 premium accounts this would have to be done to.

John

Any new support post defaults to a 24 hour close, that’s just how the forum is configured. If it’s a feature request it won’t have an auto close. I will switch to a feature request so it remains open.

@simonmaddox what exactly are you having difficulty accessing since the change? For those pages that you frequently accessed via the left hand menu have you considered adding them into the new customisable menu?

it will be different shortcuts for different users, Glen, so I can’t be specific.

Is there any reason why you can’t make the default left menus the same as the previous version? Is it, as John mentions, that the context (page) sensitive feature has been dropped?

It will not be context sensitive, we can only create a single menu for the account. Any imported template would be based on the dashboard, which does cover most of the context specific options. You can always add additional links to the menu for specific routines.

@simonmaddox

It was an option to develop a context specific feature but it really makes the menu system more complicated to manage. Right now you simply navigate to the page you want to add to the menu and click the “Add link” button. For context specific menus you’d need an entirely separate interface to manage all the sub-menus. Also the QuickFile system isn’t so huge that you really need content specific options. You can easily add all key areas to the single menu that would put you one click away from almost any page.

I understand what you’re saying, Glen, but don’t agree with it. In most apps the likely next steps change depending on where you are, what you are doing. If you thought it was acceptable to just have a single list of shortcuts surely you would have done that in the first place. It’s about guiding people to the likely next actions or related actions, which by nature is context sensitive. I appreciate customisable shortcuts, but not at the cost of losing the context related links.

Hi @simonmaddox

Are you able to provide some examples of links that you feel would be useful on other pages please? We may be able to suggest other ways of trying to achieve what you’re doing.

Also, we do support keyboard shortcuts which could help. There’s a list of shortcuts here

From the example you have given me I think you are missing the point. Keyboard shortcuts don’t point you to related actions (and they don’t even work for all users, only paid accounts). If you are using the system a lot they may speed things up, but I would suggest they are aimed at a more “power user” than an occasional user. I just want context sensitive links back - customisable if you like!

Apologies if you think I’m missing the point - I’m just trying to help find an alternative method.

What links do you feel are missing? What do you feel that you used to use a lot but are no longer there?

As I said above, I’m happy to suggest alternative ways to make this easier for you.

All we can do now is gauge feedback, if this is something users are overwhelming in favour of we can look at a solution.

I personally am against context-specific menus for the previously mentioned reasons. Most accounting systems I’ve used don’t even have a left hand menu so I’m not 100% clear how much of a problem this would be if you’d had no prior experience with the old menu layout. I do appreciate that moving things around that people have become accustomed to does cause some frustration, but I still believe this was a worthwhile change given that now you can add any internal or external link you like to the menu. We have received positive feedback about this change too.

Looking at the HTML of the menus, it’s something like this:

<ul>
  <li class="m-header" id="item_400">Bank accounts</li>
  <li class="m-item" id="item_401">...</li>
  <li class="m-item" id="item_402">...</li>
  <li class="m-header" id="item_403">Purchase invoices</li>
  <li class="m-item" id="item_404">...</li>
  <li class="m-item" id="item_405">...</li>
</ul>

Each heading and item gets a unique ID, and since the body has a different class on each page it would be possible to hide particular items on particular pages with custom CSS rules like:

.page-bank-index #item_403,
.page-bank-index #item_404,
.page-bank-index #item_405
{
  display: none;
}

@Glenn, if the HTML could be enhanced to use nested lists for the sub-sections, e.g.:

<ul>
  <li class="m-header" id="item_400">...
    <ul>
      <li class="m-item" id="item_401">...</li>
      <li class="m-item" id="item_402">...</li>
    </ul></li>
  <li class="m-header" id="item_403">...
    <ul>
      <li class="m-item" id="item_404">...</li>
      <li class="m-item" id="item_405">...</li>
    </ul></li>
</ul>

then you could hide a whole section with a single CSS selector.

1 Like

Hi Glen,
I can’t find ‘Document Manager’ from the drop down menus - can you help please?
thanks
Sue

Hi Sue,

It’s in Account Settings >> Tools >> Document Manager

Or if you have keyboard shortcuts enabled you can just press m

Before I go into detail, let me first just say that this is a technical workaround and would require some understanding of HTML and CSS. However if you’d like to show/hide certain menu blocks on specific pages, this is the way to do it.

@ian_roberts we were unable to use nested <ul> tags as per your suggestion due to it mucking up the sorting functionality. However you can now target a header and it’s sub-items with a single class selector.

Each block can now be referenced using the class .m-h-b{unique_id}. The unique_id can be revealed by inspecting the HTML and identifying the unique class IDs attributed to each block.

Now using the above example, to hide the first block we can use:

.m-h-b4903 {
    display:none;
}

You can then use the body class for the page to reveal the menu block only on certain pages. The following will show the 1st menu block only on the sales list screen:

.page-sales-index .m-h-b4903{
    display: list-item !important;
}

If you want to show the menu on all pages within /sales the following should work fine:

body[class^='page-sales'] .m-h-b4903 {
   display: list-item !important;
}
1 Like

hi Glenn,
I saw and understood that the left hand column was going to be customizable, so that is clear. However at no time did anyone say it was going to disappear altogether. I like, I’am assuming many others were that the column would stay as is and you could customize it from there to suit yourself. I think Simon Maddox has an extremely valid point can the default setting be the left column as it was and then have people customize it from there. I have now been waiting over 2 weeks to have my left hand side returned as well as wanting to have it LOCKED as I do not want staff being able to add what ever external link they like to this accounting system. This wasn’t thought through nor was it implemented well.

Regards Damian.

Hi @damndit

Sorry to hear that you’re not happy with the menu.

We originally announced back in April that the menu was going to be removed (see here), but due to user feedback it was kept to an extent but made customisable to suit individual businesses.

As I explained in my message to you, (and as per @Glenn’s post above), we can import a default menu which reflects what used to be in place on the dashboard, but we do need your account number to do this.

As for ‘locking’ the menu, it may be possible to remove the option for external links using CSS if you have a Power User Subscription (required for L and XL accounts). If you need any help with this part, please let me know and I’ll try my best to help.

[Edit]
You can hide the external link option by adding the following to your CSS file (Account Settings >> Design Customisation >> Advanced CSS & HTML Customisation >> Global CSS):

.customizable tr:nth-child(2) {
    display: none;
}

However, a power user subscription would be required to add this.

Each team member has their own customisable menu. One of your users adding a link to a 3rd party website is no different from them adding a bookmark in their browser.

Glenn,

I did provide details for my 4 premium accounts with you to put the menus back but nothing has happened.

John

Hi @jvanhoof

Can you send me the account numbers in a private message please and I’ll take a look for you?

If it’s easier, you can invite me to be part of the message with @Glenn.

Please ensure that the menus for all users on the account are empty.