Show action name for "Display overlay" on hover by mouse

[Koichi_Tsuji]

We deveployed new apps recently to new clients (the end users are new to appsheet as always), and getting the feedbacks. Among others, majorities of new app users are claming they are now sure what Action icon/button will do, so they are bit scared to hit the action icon as they are not expecting what will happen to him/her.

The action icon placed in Display prominently position, the action name below the icon is a good indication what the action action will do for the app users, while the action icon for the display overlay position not necessarily telling app user what the action will do and why they are there.

Ideally, app need to be “intuitive”, better to avoid the prepartion of “guide to app” or any other documentation so that the app user use app. App need to be intitive enough.

Lack of capability to show, present and display the name of action for overlay is making app user to difficult to navigate across the apps.

Just simple solution shold solve the problem.

We wish to have “On hover by mouse” event and then tooltips will show up, upon hovering the icon by mouse. On the mobile phone, there is no on hover mouse event is available, but we could utilize the “on holding down icon” event to display the icon names for soltion across different type of devices.

[Aleksi]

So you think that the confirmation popup is not enough?

[Koichi_Tsuji]

No, not enough.

[MultiTech]

Yes yes yes… “on hover” has been a thing for-ev-er - I’m surprised this already isn’t a thing with actions.

---

Riddle me this:

• What does this action do?

• Could be to navigate to a chart view???
• Maybe… run an analysis process??
• Spit out a report?
  • I even included the whole screen so you could gather some context from what other data was around, what actions were available for them, etc. - but even with that it’s still ambiguous.

If I could hover over the icon with my mouse and the Display name of that action would appear, it would help users out a lot.

There is a similar functionality already in place with map pins…

---

---

Aleksi:

So you think that the confirmation popup is not enough?

Just to figure out what the action does?

What if you don’t know what the action does, or don’t remember?

• Just press it and see what happens?
  • And if there’s no confirmation, and you really didn’t want to do that?
    • No undo in appsheet (unless you build it in)

An on-hover tooltip would go miles.

[WillowMobileSys]

Looks like they are working on it! At least for the Overlay Actions.

[Koichi_Tsuji]

Thanks you for sharing the screenshot.
Are you seeing this on the free account?

[MultiTech]

[WillowMobileSys]

tsuji_koichi:

Are you seeing this on the free account?

This is an app that I am a co-author on. Not sure if the account has licenses on it or not for other apps but I do know that this app is not yet deployed.

[Kirk_Masden]

I just noticed this today. I have a problem, however. Sometimes the action names are not meaningful to users. When I made my app, I didn’t expect that the stupid names I made for some of the actions would be revealed. Can I turn this off?

[Kirk_Masden]

tsuji_koichi:

Are you seeing this on the free account?

Yes. My account is free.

[Kirk_Masden]

@tsuji_koichi and @WillowMobileSystems , @MultiTech_Visions I have some thoughts about this important topic that I’d like to get your feedback on.

In regard to user experience

I agree that we should be able to provide a sort of “help” text for users in the manner that Koichi has proposed here. However, I’m concerned about this being automatic. Here are my reasons:

1. I have actions that do different things in different contexts. Of course, the action only has one name so I think that we would need to be able to determine what appears in the pop up with “if” expressions in the way that we can use expressions to determine the “Display name” of a column in a table. Currently, I’m disappointed that the action name has to be displayed in the same way regardless of context.
2. We have made apps assuming that action names are what we refer to as creators – not for the benefit of users. So, suddenly making those names that we assumed to be internal appear to users strikes me as problematic. Again, we need the equivalent of a “Display name” feature. An alternative might be to change the name of an action but this may be very complicated in some contexts. I’m not sure if the platform will automatically correct all expressions, etc. that invoke actions so changing action names may require a lot of debugging.

In regard to action names for creators

Just yesterday I was trying to edit an app with many, many actions that I have been working on for a long time. I found it difficult to identify the names of the actions that I was seeing displayed in my app. So, as a creator, I would love for the names of all visible actions to be displayed with an overlay. For the reasons I explained above, however, what I need when I edit my app is not the same as what my users need. So, I would like to see some kind of function that is unique to the editing environment. Or, come to think of it, if we were given a “Display name” feature, it might be possible for creators to use a variable to display the actually name when editing and a different name (or no name at all) to the user the app is not being edited.

In regard to Feature Release Notes

I don’t believe the current display of the names of overlay actions has been announced in Feature Release Notes. Did I miss it? If not, why would a rather important change be made without an announcement that serves both as a heads up and also as an opportunity to voice our opinions and concerns? Could you comment, please, @Will_Witman ?

[Koichi_Tsuji]

First , did you see this post?

Currently, display for aciton is not rendered as tooltips, this is confirmed as bug.

Display name is reflected in the tooltips of floating action buttons Questions

Currently, the tooltips for floating action buttons during rollout only use ActionName. [2021-04-01_15h12_20] As with Display prominentry, if Displayname is set, we’d like it to take precedence.

[Koichi_Tsuji]

For your first question, you still have option to describe the contexts for action you geneated, like own reference and memo using descriptions, I believe.

We can use expression for display name for action, so you can dynamically change the name / label for action which appear to each appropriate place and position you prefer For instance, using context(View)=xxx and then we can change the display name per view name

[Koichi_Tsuji]

For your second question, this should not necessarily have direct correlation with tooltips features, rather new feature to the appsheet editor.
Yes, for some of the complex apps with use, we have hundreds of actions just for single app. When we work on such an app, viewing certain view on the emulator, we are not sure which action is actually displayed down there.

We have short cut to view, table under the emulator to quickly jump to the target view.table/slice setting by single click. For app creators, I wish to have the same sort of functionality in some way, to click somewhere beside the app emulator, which is clickable, and then jump to action edit to make our life easier to find out what action we actually need to work on to do a bit and piece to change rather than try and error unnecessarily.

[Koichi_Tsuji]

For third point, yes, I agree.
Current daily release note is indeed helpful. But for some part, it is just few words, not descriptive.
We ask bunch of questions down that post, but we never get answers as well,which makes the release note less useful for me.

もったいないです。せっかく多くの時間を割いて毎日報告していただいているのに。

[Kirk_Masden]

tsuji_koichi:

First , did you see this post?

Thanks for your very helpful posts, @tsuji_koichi ! No, I had not seen @Takuya_Miyai 's post. Once the issue he has pointed out is resolved, my concerns will have been solved too.