I don’t have much detail, but a regular “Member” user reported to me:
recently I found the “Architect” mode turning on for me on Fibery. I don’t know how that happens.
I check the user’s account and they’re a “Member” and in the “Manage Access” page it only shows “Editor” for everything.
Button is visible if a person has Architect access to at least one Space, can you check that?
They don’t, at least not according to that “Manage Access” page. Is there some other way to tell?
I have other users reporting the same thing.
A little more testing suggested that maybe when I turn it on, other users see it on, but it isn’t actually that simple. They are reporting that it seems to turn itself on and off, independent of their control.
Oh, I bet I know - we have a “Playground” space that everyone has Architect for.
But these reports are new today, and they’ve all had that access for weeks/months - did something change about the UI?
(We’re remote today so I can’t see the behavior directly.)
One user reports that even with Architect mode enabled, they don’t have access to the databases in our usual spaces.
Oh, I see - that “Manage Access” view hides the details behind popups. The page itself just says “Editor” but if I click on “4 shared spaces” the popup has little icons and indicate which spaces have elevated permissions. That’s not an intuitive UI.
And I remember “architect mode” is recent. Before it was a per-space thing, but now it’s global UI. So users are seeing it, when they didn’t see it before. (And the UI makes it seem like a global mode, even though it isn’t really.)
So I think this was just user confusion - mine, and my users - and not an actual problem. But I suggest that the UI (user, and admin) could use some work to make this clearer.
The spaces that are shown (on the main page) when looking a access for a user are only the Spaces that have been shared with them personally. They can have access to many spaces by virtue of their membership of a group (including the in-built group known as ‘Everyone’).
We chose not to show everything to avoid making the page ridiculously long, but I can see why it might help if that was more explicit. Perhaps we should include the comment like ‘Directly shared Spaces appear here’, similar to what is indicated when nothing is shared directly
Well, it is a global mode setting, but if you are not an admin, its effect will be limited to those places where you have architect privileges.
Oh! I see - yeah, that “Editor” field was just related to a single space, but given its position at the top right, I assumed it was like a summary setting for the user. To me, it looked like a two column UI: the left column listed all their spaces & database, and the right column listed their access. But it’s actually a 1-column UI, with lists. But there’s no visual indicator which interpretation is correct.
And yeah, showing all those shared spaces in the page, with the access level next to it, would have fixed my confusion and immediately made it clear why those users were seeing the Architect button.
Totally get that.
We have to figure how to make a design that also works for workspaces that have many more spaces and databases. For example, I just checked in our own internal workspace, and I have access to 38 spaces and 166 databases, and displaying all that would be pretty grim(!)
You definitely don’t need to follow my UI design ideas… but the current UI seems objectively worse, in that case? You click one of those little buttons and get a popup with 166 databases in it… so you just have a tiny little view space for seeing all those details. How is that better than putting it all directly in the (wide/tall) page, with a scrollbar (and search)?
