Make it easy

Coming in AppsAnywhere 3.2

We have a few different things written on the chalkboards above the bar in our UK office: the development team’s current sprint goal, a big chalk drawing of the AppsAnywhere logo, a silhouette of Lego Batman (because Lego Batman is the best) and then also a reminder in big letters to “make it easy”. With that in mind I thought I’d share a few usability improvements that will be coming in our 3.2 release in early 2024.

Making it easy is continuation of the simplification theme that I shared more details of in the summer. So let’s start this list of changes with an improvement we have made to the admin dashboard that came straight out of AppsAnywhere Fest 2023 (our hackathon event).

Connection Tests for DB and API Connections

AppsAnywhere can connect to a lot of external services and we wanted to give admin users as much confidence as possible in what is happening. This is especially important in reviewing connections and integrations because they’re not always made use of immediately. A good example is that you might not realise that an integration isn’t set-up correctly until you try to add a delivery method that makes use of the integration.

The original premise from the development team was to have a 'test' button for use when configuring a database or connector integration. The team took this further to give a red/green light indicator in an admin dashboard panel.          

In-App Provisioning

Another user experience change for administrators is one that we’ve had requested at both User Days and on the feedback forum: the ability to add the application that you are creating/editing to an existing provision without having to take some extra steps to go to the manage provision screen. I know that this is a pain point for admins having witnessed it first hand in some of my customer visits. I also remember it being one of the first notes I made in my product feedback breakout session at the Toronto User Day at George Brown College in 2022 so it's great to be able to address it now.

Speaking of notes I have made whilst at Toronto User Days, at this year’s event at Seneca Polytechnic I scribbled down a reminder to make sure that every feature or range of settings in the admin pages has its own link to the relevant documentation in the User Manual. It was an observation I made at the event - during Marcus Paul’s excellent training presentation - that we might have some gaps. And I’m pleased to say that we’ve plugged said gaps in AppsAnywhere 3.2.        

Quick wins

On the theme of providing links to useful resources, the quickest of quick wins was for us to link to the brand new Student Hub providing useful training videos for students to get the most out of AppsAnywhere.

Almost as quick a win was for us to put categories in alphabetical order (by default) on both the filters in the grid view sidebar in the portal, as well as in the admin pages. This is another request that came via the feedback forum.

Last on this list of improvements coming in 3.2 is a better experience when adding apps to App Lists. Up until now we’ve provided a search option for finding and selecting apps to include in an App List. The problem is that this assumes the list creator has some knowledge of all the apps in the system and therefore exactly what to search for. Search works well as the primary way to find apps in the homepage as there are alternative methods to use as well; such as favorites, recent, the grid view, categories etc. Unfortunately they don’t help someone building an App List.

We’re enhancing the ways to add apps to an App List by providing the option of picking apps from a grid like list and also by revamping the More Details screen for an app to give a direct option of adding the current app to a list: existing or new.

These changes are not groundbreaking in isolation, but together they certainly add up to a lot of time savings for people and make AppsAnywhere even easier to use. As we continue our journey to make things easy, I can't wait to show you some of the bigger changes that we've got planned for 2024. Keep checking back to the Product Development blog every month to stay informed of what's new and what's coming up.