First thing we are going to change in v.3.0 is navigation. First discussion was quite general and first solution most likely is not ideal. We rightly identified two major different areas: inside and outside of a project. Initially we wanted to separate navigation outside of a project and inside of a project, thus having two completely different menus. But what if we can unite these areas?

Indeed, there are lot of similarities. We may just create global filter by project. If you select a specific project, you will be inside the project and, for example, Help Desk will show requests from this project. But if you select All Projects value then Help Desk will contain all requests from all your projects. This approach has several nice advantages:

1. Main menu does not change, only sub-menu is different inside and outside of a project. It gives better perception and better learning curve.
2. Global project filter is an easy-to-adopt concept. You always know where you are.
3. When you switch project, you will remain in the same area. For example, now you are in the backlog of project Alpha. You change project and appeared in the backlog of project Beta.

It may look like this:

Option 1. Tabs

We've received several requests to add left panel with a tree navigation. I never thought it was a good idea, but you never know till try.

Option 2. Tree

The question is do you like tabs or tree? It seems both approaches has own advantages and it is really hard to select the best one. We are looking for your opinion!

Let's finalize new Help Desk Portal concept. We are starting development next week, so you have a little time to provide valuable feedback :)

Issues List

Contains all issues with filtering option. State of the each issue is highly visible. It shows whether bug created from the issue and when it will be fixed. Also if someone knows solution, he may attach solution to the issue right away.

Post Issue

When someone post an issue, Help Desk Portal checks on the fly whether similar issues already exist and display the list on the right. Moreover, it displays possible solutions (nothing special, just keyword search with results ranking). It will help to avoid issues duplication and in some cases will save people time.

Continue posting mock-ups of the upcoming Help Desk Portal. Definitely there should be a place where people may see all posted ideas, issues and questions. In this list user should focus on what is going on and get quick answers to the questions like:

• "Should I reply to something to help with problem resolution?"
• "When will the bug for the request XXX be fixed?"
• "Are there any interesting discussions around my ideas?"

The My Requests list has nice right column that shows exact state of the each idea and issue. Think support forgot about you and your problem? Just click nudge link :)

We are thinking about Issues and Ideas separation. They are quite different and needs separate lists, views, etc. based on our analysis. People have different goals when working with ideas and issues, and this should be reflected in the dHelp Desk Portal design.

What is important for person who looks at idea? And what is important for person who looks at issue?

Idea	Issue
Discuss idea Add attachments When it will be implemented? Is this idea important? How can I vote for it? Tag the idea	Discuss issue Add attachments to the issue When it will be resolved? Do I need to provide more info? Are there any ready solutions to my issue?

Here is what we have so far.

Issue View

Idea View

Finally, I may share ideas/stories/requests that will be implemented in the new release of Help Desk Portal.

We have selected about 20 customers' requests and improvements (all are reasonable and most of them improve usability). Here is the list that includes the most interesting requests.

• Search by ID
• View Help Desk Request Number (#) in Requests Lists
• Add a "Vote" mechanism to the request detail in the help desk.
• Filter by Project/Product
• Better Notifications (new comment added)
• Improve Help Desk User experience (Tag Cloud)
• Disable state change
• Filter by Request state (open/closed)
• Attach file when posting a request
• User profile management
• Customer should see all related user stories, features and bugs created from requests in one place
• Sorts: by last-updated, by last-comment, by votes
• Easy customization (promoted in the latest blog post)

As you may expect, we have own ideas as well:

• Separate ideas and issues
• Dashboard with recent requests, top requests, etc.
• Solutions (a part of self-service)

Some mockups should help you to get the new Help Desk portal look and feel.

Help Desk Portal Dashboard

Dashboard is a first page for the new users and it should be crystal clear what can be done in Help Desk Portal. Also it includes latest ideas and request as well as top ideas.

Ideas List

Ideas list obviously shows ideas. It is possible to filter ideas by state ad by tags, sort ideas.

This is a work and progress and your comments are welcome!

Help Desk Portal is quite important application. It allows our customers to interact with us. Also it allows customers of our customers to interact with our customers (weird assertion, but it's true :). We've collected quite many requests for Help Desk Portal improvements and finally decided to push it forward.

Here is the first mockup of the home page. It is still a work in progress, so comments/changes/advices are welcome.

There are some ideas behind the Help Desk Portal re-design:

• When someone has a problem, he should be able to find existing solution easily (if any). If there is no solution, it should be straightforward how to post a request
• Ideas and Issues should be separated. They have quite different flows and expectation. If someone post an issue it should be resolved quickly. Idea can live in the backlog for years.
• People may use search or tags to find relevant ideas and requests.

The next step may be to add more social networking into Help Desk Portal (self-service is a great thing if you can encourage other customers to provide solutions and answer the questions). However this is just an idea so far.

We are redesigning comments to make them more usable. Redesign includes clear formatting and some functional improvements. Current comments list has several problems as you see:

Here is the list of ideas:

• Currently to add a comment user should click add link and the form appears on the bottom of the list. The add link will be removed and comment form will be always visible.
• Currently when user clicks Edit, the comment content loaded into rich editor in the bottom of the list (frustrating!). In new design it will be almost like inline edit with no focus loss.
• It will be impossible to use custom styles in comments. In some cases comments list becomes a mess, so just clean HTML messages will be saved and all other stuff removed.
• Edit and Delete links should be there, but these actions are quite rare. To reduce quantity of visual elements, these links will be hidden by default and visible on mouse hover only.
• It is definitely better to see something like "comment added 2 days ago" than "comment added 12-12-2009"
• Comments from customers will be highlighted in the list to make them quickly identifiable.
• More space will be added between comments.

Lists in v.3.0 was a hot topic during today's meeting. It seems we will replace all lists in v.3.0 (such as User Stories, Bugs, Requests, etc) with lists based on the Custom Reports functionality. It will be possible to create custom lists (same way as a custom report) and to include these lists into the Main menu. For example, you may create Current Iteration Stories list or Open Stories list and include them into Planning section of the Project menu.

The other interesting idea discussed, was to provide List and Grid modes. You will be able to group by Iteration in the user stories list and see items as a grid, where each iteration is a column. It may be possible to change iteration using drag and drop. It can potentially replace Iteration Plan section completely. There are many useful applications of such Grid.

Current Custom Reports should be improved to provide great user experience.

• Filters. It should be easy to add and change filters in the list, so filters should be accessible in one click.
• Renderers and Colors. People should be able to set custom colors and maybe even styles to list items. For example, I want to mark all rows red for blocking bugs or gray for completed user stories. These will be a custom settings.
• Batch actions. It will be possible to change all properties for selected stories in several clicks. For example, I may select 10 stories, click Batch action, select new Iteration, new Priority, new Assignment and save all these changes.

Today we've discussed navigation problems in TargetProcess and all agreed that we have four major issues:

1. Similar labels in menu (for example, Reports inside a project area and Custom Reports in top menu).
2. Too many links in the header (for example, in Project -> Planning area there are 31 links to click).
3. Menu structure and how to get into required place (why Tags Board is in the Dashboard section?).
4. It is not clear whether we are inside a project or outside.

We've come up to several improvements that may resolve the problems.

First, we agreed that there were two major different areas: inside and outside of a project. If a user is inside the project, he focuses on project's tasks and will likely not go to Admin or Projects list. So we decided to separate global menu and project menu. It means that inside the project user will not see the top level menu, but just Back to Home link. Also there is no company logo and company name in the project area. It may look like that (just a mockup, not sure about final design):

Benefits? Sure, there are plenty!

1. 17 links instead of 31 and more air in the menu.
2. No frustration where to click.
3. Clear sign that we are in the project area (large gray project name).

There is only one downside - one extra click if you need to change settings in Admin, check custom reports, etc. if you are inside a project. Quite rare operations to sacrifice simplicity.