Octopus 4.1.4 new UI feedback

Hi guys, although the new UI has a much cooler feeling, I can’t say we like it very much here. This may have to do with the way we use Octopus but most operations take a lot of extra clicks now.

Deployment screen:

  • Re-deploying to an environment:
    It is not possible to re-deploy from a deployment status page.
    If you go back to the release page itself you will find a redeploy BUT the new deployment woon’t pick-up any of the previous settings.
    => That doesn’t feel like a re-deploy to me. Why not just list all environments of the current cycle on the deploy button like before?
    We had much hopes on the Re-Deploy button, but as it is it a downgrade.
  • Environment selection:
    If you open the associated drop-down, all settings will be clear even if you did not change the target environment
  • Tenant selection
    At best it is 1 click to open the drop-down, one click to select the drop-down and make the popup menu appear, one click to pick your selection, [if you did not manually select a tenant => an extra click to apply filter], then a final click to close the drop down since it’s got all the screen space used.
    Seriously, for people who deploy several time an hour this is just boring.

Environment management

  • Filter and action don’t match
    After selecting a subset of machines (for example pick Healthy machines), the “triple dot” button on the right top of the list of machines will provide a set of actions. These actions DOT NOT apply to the machines FILTERED but to all machines

Tenant edition

  • when you open the Edit Tags popup of a tenant it will always display the content of the first drop-down (list of tags from the first tag-set)

Project overview page

  • Filters are hidden
    Although the advanced filters and group by are awesome, why not provide quick filters for the the tenant name? There is way enough space on the column name or right of the 2 quick filters
  • Quick filter “by Release” is not intuitive
    This can be just a naming thing, but the name “Filter by release” means I don’t expect to still see tenants with “no release” deployed after filtering. The purpose of that is to support a “quick” deploy button, but it doesn’t feel quite right as it is now. I would rather expect a “deploy” butting with a drop down of the releases (like the quick filter) or a different portion of the screen letting me “quick deploy” after selecting a release. Tenants being picked on a second stage.

Create a duplicate “Problems” since no feedback here.

Hi,

Thanks for getting in touch and providing such a detailed feedback. We do appreciate it. Let me address each point individually.

- Re-deploying to an environment:

It is not possible to re-deploy from a deployment status page.

It looks like we’ve forgot to port this action. I created an issue to bring it back.

If you go back to the release page itself you will find a redeploy BUT the new deployment woon’t pick-up any of the previous settings.

This is a good idea and I created an issue that will make this action much more useful.

=> That doesn’t feel like a re-deploy to me. Why not just list all environments of the current cycle on the deploy button like before?

We had much hopes on the Re-Deploy button, but as it is it a downgrade.

I can’t find Redploy button in v3 on the release details page. Can you attach a screenshot with it? We are still shipping v3 UI with Octopus v4. There are no guarantees it will work but it comes handy in cases like this one. You can access it by adding /oldportal to the end of the url, e.g. https://demo.octopus.com/oldportal. Note, you need to authenticate with the new portal first.

Environment selection:

If you open the associated drop-down, all settings will be clear even if you did not change the target environment

I couldn’t reproduce this one. What browser do you use? Can you record the bug using this approach? I made the conversation private so you can safely attach files.

Tenant selection

At best it is 1 click to open the drop-down, one click to select the drop-down and make the popup menu appear, one click to pick your selection, [if you did not manually select a tenant => an extra click to apply filter], then a final click to close the drop down since it’s got all the screen space used.

Seriously, for people who deploy several time an hour this is just boring.

The deployment page has been re-written and we’ve missed a few key scenarios that we are already working on adding back. Would these changes make your life easier here?

Environment management

- Filter and action don’t match

After selecting a subset of machines (for example pick Healthy machines), the “triple dot” button on the right top of the list of machines will provide a set of actions. These actions DOT NOT apply to the machines FILTERED but to all machines

We are inconsistent here. I created an issue to fix that.

Tenant edition

- when you open the Edit Tags popup of a tenant it will always display the content of the first drop-down (list of tags from the first tag-set)

That’s a bug and I created an issue for it.

Project overview page

  • Filters are hidden

Although the advanced filters and group by are awesome, why not provide quick filters for the the tenant name? There is way enough space on the column name or right of the 2 quick filters

Can you add this idea here so we can see how much interest it generates?

Quick filter “by Release” is not intuitive

This can be just a naming thing, but the name “Filter by release” means I don’t expect to still see tenants with “no release” deployed after filtering. The purpose of that is to support a “quick” deploy button, but it doesn’t feel quite right as it is now. I would rather expect a “deploy” butting with a drop down of the releases (like the quick filter) or a different portion of the screen letting me “quick deploy” after selecting a release. Tenants being picked on a second stage.

The idea behind the release filter is to show where a given release has and hasn’t been deployed and this is why we also show tenants that don’t have it yet.

Once again, thanks for the feedback and let me know if there is anything else I can help with.

Regards,

Pawel

Hi, thanks for the feedback and issues created already. Much appreciated.

For your remarks:

  • I can’t find Redeploy button in v3 on the release details page.
    Well there was no such option on V3, but you had a quick “Deploy To” link. Seing how difficult it was to find the new “Redeploy” button on V4 I was hoping that the new inconvenience would be balanced by picking previous settings.

  • Environment selection: > If you open the associated drop-down, all settings will be clear even if you did not change the target environment
    I can’t reproduce this anymore without actually selecting another environment, and going back to the original. Could be I mistakenly did this previously.
    It is still annoying that all settings are cleared while the only selection that should always be cleared is the target machines (if there was anything special set there) but I can understand the logic.

  • Tenant selection
    Well the proposed approach will only make the screen more difficult to read and won’t help much for my use case.
    In my scenario, a few simple UI tweaks could help a lot. For example, when you open the “Tenants” line, if the “Select Tenant” drop down was aligned to the parent line and not under the plain text “Select one or many tenants” as it is now, I would be able to click twice in a row to at least pick this box.
    Then for all the drop down in this section, why don’t they popup on click? I have to click once to select, then a second time to select.
    And finally, if you made the “Add all applicable tenants” ‘button’ which is at the bottom of the tenant selection a vertical button on the left/right of the tenant selection screen I could use it from anywhere here.
    Writing all this I realize that the difficulty of my use case may come from our current 12 different tenant tag sets. Meaning a lot of scrolling in that section.
    It could also help to be able to set which tag-set is relevant to a project or not, but that’s a complete different user-story

  • The idea behind the release filter is to show where a given release has and hasn’t been deployed and this is why we also show tenants that don’t have it yet.
    This sounds very reasonable if you don’t have too many tenants that don’t have that release. But on second though it is a very strange a use case: If you filter for a specific release there is no point deploying on tenants that have it already so why show them? Then why would you not show those that don’t have the selected release if the purpose is to allow easy selection of tenants that need a deployment?
    Actually, I think that a few enhancements here allowing to pick things like ‘not deployed’, ‘at release XYZ’, ‘not at release XYZ’, … would solve that git issue 4112

Hi,

Thanks for providing more details.

I can’t find Redeploy button in v3 on the release details page.

Well there was no such option on V3, but you had a quick “Deploy To” link. Seing how difficult it was to find the new “Redeploy” button on V4 I was hoping that the new inconvenience would be balanced by picking previous settings.

The Deploy To option is still on the Release details page but it has been moved to the overflow menu (triple vertical dots). Screenshot attached.

\ Environment selection: > If you open the associated drop-down, all settings will be clear even if you did not change the target environment

I can’t reproduce this anymore without actually selecting another environment, and going back to the original. Could be I mistakenly did this previously.

It is still annoying that all settings are cleared while the only selection that should always be cleared is the target machines (if there was anything special set there) but I can understand the logic.

Agreed. I created an issue for that.

Then for all the drop down in this section, why don’t they popup on click? I have to click once to select, then a second time to select.

It should pop up on click and it does work like that for me in multiple different browsers. What browser are you using?

And finally, if you made the “Add all applicable tenants” ‘button’ which is at the bottom of the tenant selection a vertical button on the left/right of the tenant selection screen I could use it from anywhere here

This will be moved to the top.

Writing all this I realize that the difficulty of my use case may come from our current 12 different tenant tag sets. Meaning a lot of scrolling in that section.

It could also help to be able to set which tag-set is relevant to a project or not, but that’s a complete different user-story

I agree. User Voice will be a perfect place for you to describe your ideal solution.

- The idea behind the release filter is to show where a given release has and hasn’t been deployed and this is why we also show tenants that don’t have it yet.

This sounds very reasonable if you don’t have too many tenants that don’t have that release. But on second though it is a very strange a use case: If you filter for a specific release there is no point deploying on tenants that have it already so why show them? Then why would you not show those that don’t have the selected release if the purpose is to allow easy selection of tenants that need a deployment?

Actually, I think that a few enhancements here allowing to pick things like ‘not deployed’, ‘at release XYZ’, ‘not at release XYZ’, … would solve that git issue 4112

This is an overview/dashboard screen so it shows the current state of the system. We show tenants that already have a given release deployed as a confirmation that that’s the case.

The problem with dashboards is that nearly every user expects to behave differently. We have recognised that and there is an issue where we track the feedback we are getting. I added your idea re filtering there. Feel free to add more.

Regards,

Pawel

Hi, thanks for bearing with all my remarks.

  • The “Deploy to” inside the tripple dot button seems a bit overkill to me since you already have the re-deploy options on the list in the main screen, but it’s nice to know it’s there. TY.

  • For me, no drop down shows directly. I am running on latest FireFox (57.0.3 32bit). Using Chrome, you are right that popups show directly. This is consistent in all screens I checked.

  • “Add all applicable tenants” => moving it on the top won’t solve my problem, I have 3 screen worth of scroll on the tenant selection filter so top or bottom it will still be out of reach 66+% of the time

  • User voice created: https://octopusdeploy.uservoice.com/forums/170787-general/suggestions/32813518-link-tenants-tags-to-project

  • Dashboards issues => awesome. There is not much I want to add on this as the issue already refer to this post. I’ll take what comes in regard to this as you are right, everyone will have his own idea of what it should be.

Beside the drop-down display I think we can consider all these solved.

Hi,

It was my pleasure. I’m always happy to respond to well structured feedback. Thank you.

Also, I finally managed to reproduce your problem with selects and created an issue for it.

Regards,

Pawel

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Thanks I’ll wait for resolution of those issues.