Self-Help Desk Feature: Transparency and Usability

Traditional Architecture

Users with basic Notes experience will quickly recognize the application architecture and not have to relearn the user interface. The layout is the same as the R5 mail, discussion, and address book applications, and even uses some of the same action button graphics.

Conditional Display

The entire application is role sensitive, and only displays options that make sense for that particular role to perform.

Sticky Fields

There are two places where field values are "sticky", meaning that the default values are stored in the NOTES.INI so that users don't have to rekey information. The first place is on the Contact tab in the Problem Report/Service Request forms. The second place is in the sort options on the Search Wizard. These settings also are used in the quick search on the Home Page.

Minimal Required Fields

We have limited the number of required fields to allow for quick data entry without annoying error messages. Only the fields that are absolutely required are trapped.

Comprehensive Help System

All forms and views have a action button, which opens a context-sensitive help page (which also has links to general help information):



All editable fields are defined in a text pop-up when the user clicks the field name, for example:



We left F1 to open the standard Notes help database, which is consistent with the standard Notes application behavior.