Issue:
When an access template is long, it is hard to visually recognize what is the parent of each level. There is no visual aid for this.
Suggestion:
To allow levels to collapse/expand.
How many levels, in total, does your custom access template have?
The deepest CAT has 6 levels (including the top level) but even for some templates that have 3 levels, the number of child databases included in each level can make the vertical length of the tree too long to easily identify its parent.
Sorry, I meant total number of levels, not the max depth
Total number of levels (vertically) in the CATs of my Team database are between 20 and 30 levels.
My screen resolution is 1707x1067
This allows in a browser window to see 17 CAT levels.
When a database only relates to one parent database, then users can likely remember that and visual aid is not necessary (e.g. when Task always has Milestone as parent level).
However, it would still be useful to collapse sections of the CAT tree to have better overview. For example, when collapsing at the Milestone depth, other branches of less depth become more visible without scrolling.
When a database relates to multiple parent databases and appears at multiple levels in the CAT, then it becomes confusing what is the parent database for a specific level, and a visual aid is necessary.
Example CAT branches with same databases on multiple levels:
Team > Projects > Pages
Team > Projects > Tasks
Team > Projects > Tasks > Notes
Team > Projects > SubProject > Pages
Team > Projects > SubProject > Tasks
Team > Projects > SubProject > Tasks > Notes
Team > Projects > SubProject > Goals > Milestones > Task > Notes
Team > Projects > SubProject > Goals > Milestones > Task > SubTasks
Team > Projects > SubProject > Goals > Milestones > Task > SubTasks > Notes
If I scroll down to have the level visible with the max depth, then the parent level is scrolling out of the visible window, and even if its still visible, I sometimes have to use a physical aid like a pen on my display to see how a child level aligns with which parent level.
A workaround is to create CATs for multiple databases instead of the Team level. The drawback of that is the increased maintenance and complexity of access combinations when then the number of teams increase. The purpose of a CATs at team level is to have a default set of team permissions, and we add more CATs on other databases that cover non-default permissions.
I don’t think I’ve previously heard of any users with templates that have 20+ rows!
I will be interested to see if any other community members report a similar issue.
FWIW, in your example, it would seem that you only need 15 rows, so it should be possible to see them all on one page:
Team
_Project
__Page
__Task
___Note
__SubProject
___Page
___Task
____Note
___Goal
____Milestone
_____Task
______Note
______Subtask
_______Note
Also, I’m curious why it matters what the parents are in such an example.
Do you need to distinguish what access a person in the Team gets for a Note that is linked via Team>Project>Task from a Note which is linked via Team>Project>Subproject>Task ?
TLDR the interface may not be optimal for your case, but I cannot in good conscience say that this is a ‘bug’ that needs fixing.