Entities with formula names have surprising Quick Add UX

[HereBeBeasties]

Some fantastic updates have landed in Fibery recently. Thanks to the whole team for their hard work on this - we really appreciate the added functionality and polish. I’m now into smaller nit-picking, which is a very good sign!

There are many places in the UI where you can create entities. Aside from custom forms, these all prompt you to type the name of the entity.

That’s all well and good, but we have a number of entity types that use a formula for the name. When you type a name for these and click “create” the name is swallowed, which is confusing for end users.

You end up with a random blank entity that you have to go hunt down and populate.

I appreciate this isn’t a trivial problem to solve but I can think of three much better behaviours if the name is a formula:

• Instead of the name field, populate the first text field in the entity
• Instead of the name field, populate the first editable field used in the name formula
• Instead of filling in the entity name inline, if there is a form to create the entity type, then pop that up instead. (If there is more than one form then maybe the forms need a “use as default for new entity creation” checkbox or something.)

And also:

• Always open the newly created entity immediately in a right hand panel to populate it (could perhaps do this in addition to any of the above)

Thanks.

[YvetteLans]

I agree that it’s very confusing for new users.

@HereBeBeasties

Instead of filling in the entity name inline, if there is a form to create the entity type, then pop that up instead. (If there is more than one form then maybe the forms need a “use as default for new entity creation” checkbox or something.)

@HereBeBeasties

Always open the newly created entity immediately in a right hand panel to populate it (could perhaps do this in addition to any of the above)

These feels the most intuitive for me.

[mdubakov]

We have this problem on a radar for Quick Add theme improvements. I hope it will be fixed till the end of the year (not a promise). For us it is tightly connected to Quick Add, so form is one option, but we have another option as well, but we are not ready to share the solution, now we are focusing on other things

[njyo]

Just linking to my previously raised use-case:

Creating a new entity with name formula from rich text impossible?

Reviving this topic as it seems like an oversight that one cannot: Select a text Choose Create Entity Select an database that uses formula-generated names [2024-06-05 at 15.16] I understand that the UX is a little tricker as the question is what to do with the highlighted text as the newly created entity will not have the name of the highlighted text. I would suggest placing it in the clipboard for people to paste it into the most suitable field of the newly created entity. Alternatively, …

IMHO, the best approach seems:

• Instead of the name field, populate the first editable TEXT field used in the name formula

And:

@HereBeBeasties

Always open the newly created entity immediately in a right hand panel to populate it (could perhaps do this in addition to any of the above)

Thanks!