On Mar 11, 2011, at 9:27 AM, Dimitris Andreadis wrote:

I think the task oriented approach is good but what's missing from the current layout is
some form for visual clue of where you are within the management information tree that the
domain model imposes, or a way to use that to navigate quickly to the particular
Profile/Group/Host

I agree, that it's not very obvious where you are.

But regarding the tree vs pull down suggestion:

I did actually begin with a tree on the left hand side, but then quickly realized on problem:

The "related tasks" sometimes require a selection first. I.e. you need to chose a host, before you get to see

it's server configurations and server instances. It's similar with profiles and subsystems.

Now if you want to reflect this using a tree, you would need to put tasks, that refer to a prior selection

in that tree structure. For hosts it would look like this:

HostA

+ Server Configurations

- Server 1

- Server 2

+ Server Instances

- Instance 2.1

HostB

+ Server Configurations

- Server 3

- Server 4

+ Server Instances

- Instance 3.1

What's happening is that you replicate elements for each root node.

Not sure if we want to do this. As the number of hosts increases, the tree becomes bigger

and thus the redundant information increases until it might become unusable.

The best thing would be to create a UI prototype for this case.

And then take a decision. It's hard to picture these things until you actually get your hand on it.

Ike