Hey everyone! We’re looking for feedback on the focus feature — please let us know if you use it or not and why. All feedback is welcome! Thanks for your help.

I often do focus in on things, but I prefer the static positioning of the focus button/icon more like it is in the legacy UI. I will often misclick on it when trying to select something from the resource tree which throws off my workflow.If we don’t want to do a fixed position, like the old UI, and we really want to go with an on-hover icon that follows the cursor, then my suggestion is to have it show all the way on the left-hand side:This serves the same function, but is more out of the way.

One reason I use it, as an MSP, is when I share my screen with a customer. I can focus it only on their specific folders without potentially showing other customers we have in the same portal.

I would use the focus button all the time in UIv3 (mostly because that was the only way to get access to certain functions), but the new UIv4 layout makes me intuit that this focus function may be outmoded.If the button remains, I will echo @Michael Raymond ‘s feedback, that ensuring that this button is always in the same place in a given column would be far more attractive.

I use it regularly in UIv3, but often mis-click in UIv4 and focus when I don’t want to. It’s not something I need to do often enough to feel it needs as much attention as it has in the new UI.Honestly, I use it 1 out of every 2 times simply to force a refresh on the screen, as it allows me to click the top group to reload the modules beneath it in UIv3.

99.9% of the time no. The automatic zoom in or “focusing” is extremely distracting overall and I lose my place in my work when it happens every time

Do you use the focus function in the UIv4 resources tree? Why or why not?

16 Replies

Mike_Moniz
Professor
2 months ago

I can see why this is useful for MSP use cases, is there a way to meet in the middle on this though? My biggest issue is the way it zooms in automatically as I am working on something when I don’t want it to and I’ve also run into the accidentally clicking on things a lot as well. Can there be some settings added to customize this feature?

Thinking about autozoom, I don’t think, for me, it would cause much issue if it didn’t autozoom and just offered the option to manually apply a zoom. I especially think it would be reasonable if LM didn’t autozoom when editing/tuning a device specifically. Perhaps that would even stop LM from autozooming into a completely different section of the tree from where I was, just because the device is in multiple places (that is really annoying, atleast in v3).
Stuart_Weenig
Legend
2 months ago
Yes, zooming to a group that’s not the device’s “home group” is annoying, but that’s a different problem that should be solved.
I wouldn’t mind if, when clicking on a search result, it didn’t auto zoom. Whenever i use the focus feature, it’s because i intentionally click on it because i want to clear away the clutter of the resource tree for a minute.
Matt_Whitney
Advisor
14 days ago
The focus feature in general is very useful for MSPs like others have mentioned. But its really only needed at the folder-level, or sometimes the resource-level.
The new UI has the focus feature available at the instance-level, device-datasource-level, etc. The new UI also auto-focuses on things which causes lots of confusion for our users which are brave enough to use UIv4. There's really no reason to have auto-focus enabled at all.
So my feedback would be to modify the focus feature to work like it does in the legacy UI. Remove the auto-focus ability completely as it only serves to cause confusion, and make the placement consistent like it is in the legacy UI.
- Stuart_Weenig
  Legend
  14 days ago
  Agreed. Instead of spending time trying to fix something that wasn't broken, how about home groups for resources for consistent breadcrumbing?
  - Joe_Williams
    Expert
    14 days ago
    Or fix that annoying hover, wait, then click to get back to resources.