{CLOSED} - Exciting New UI Improvements to the Products and Services Page

[fergal_adsk]

We are planning an exciting overhaul of the User Interface for the Products and Services page in the Account Portal so that we can make it easier for customer to get access to the product or service they want to use. 

Highlights of the Upcoming Changes 

• Only present data that is relevant to getting access to a Service or getting access to the Download and Install of a Product. 
• All accessible Products and Services listed in one flat view. One Tile per Product or Service.

• One Click Install access.
• Detailed page per Product with pre filtered lists of available Updates and Content.
• Subscription related data (License, Order, Term, Serial Number info, etc) is all accessible on the Subscriptions and Contracts Page. 

We would love to hear your feedback and thoughts on some questions below. 

Here are some early mocked up examples of the existing UI compared to the newly planned UI. 

Existing Products and Services UI 

Mock Up of the New Product and Services UI 

• Flat View of all Products and Services

•  Detailed Page Per Product and Service 

 

Questions  

( 1- Strong Yes, 2- Yes, 3- Neutral, 4- No, 5- Strong No) 

1. Do you think this will make it easier to find your product or service in the Account Portal?  
2. Do you like the simplified Tile layout view? 
3. Do you like the pre-filtered list of updates for the Products? 
4. Are you concerned about moving all Subscription related information to the Subscriptions and Contracts page?
5. Do you have any other ideas, suggestions, feedback? 

[AllenJessup]

A.  4

B.  3

C.  2

D.  2

Having the AEC Collection I think the Tile Layout will get cluttered. Last time I checked. I think we have access to about 26 products and services. I'd have to interact with the proposed layout to see if it was more usable or not.

[fergal_adsk]

Thanks for the feedback Allen,
The thinking behind having a flat Tile view of all the products and services rather than the AEC Collection itself is because users don't install, download or "access" the Collection. They only install or download the products within the Collection. In today's world you would have take an extra step to click open your Collection in order to see the products and services that you can access. With this new view, we believe we are removing an unnecessary step for users to get access to what they use. It's great feedback though and we'll continue to monitor. Thanks again.

[darius.petersonii]

Will this finally allow non-administrators in an Enterprise Network to install their own updates?

[AllenJessup]

@darius.petersonii 

Not here it doesn't. I can't even create a deployment.

[darius.petersonii]

Do you know if they intend to make a repository for updates to allow Administrators to distribute them outside of the Desktop App? Or, would you happen to know if there is an API command to get each update?

[Mark_Henze]

1. 4
2. 3
3. 3
4. 3
5. Getting Customers used to a format can take a long time; changing it often, if it doesn't provide a quantum leap in improvement. somehow seems counter productive and unnecessarily adds cost to both Autodesk and the customer

[Rusty_Gesner]

Allen Jessup's concern about tile clutter, which I share, could be resolved by having checkboxes in each tile for administrators to mark the product tiles they care about. Then display those checked tiles in alphabetical order at the top of the All Products and Services tile page, followed by all the unchecked tiles, also in alphabetical order. 

Thanks - Rusty

[Rusty_Gesner]

Questions  

( 1- Strong Yes, 2- Yes, 3- Neutral, 4- No, 5- Strong No) 

1. Do you think this will make it easier to find your product or service in the Account Portal?  
   No more or less so than now. 
2. Do you like the simplified Tile layout view? 
   Yes, if my suggestion for checkboxes is implimented 
   No, if not
3. Do you like the pre-filtered list of updates for the Products? 
   Yes, if the "Product Updates" choice which lists all updates and permits us to filter however we want to, is also retained. 
4. Are you concerned about moving all Subscription related information to the Subscriptions and Contracts page?
   No, that is fine
5. Do you have any other ideas, suggestions, feedback? 
   Some peripherally related suggestions/feedback regarding Updates and Patches which I will post separately. 
   
   Thanks - Rusty

[Rusty_Gesner]

I don't want users installing updates themselves.
I remove the Desktop App from my users' computers because I want to control/monitor/verify what updates and patches are installed and when they are installed.

[darius.petersonii]

All of our users have different products, so its hard to get everyone's updates.

What do you use for updates? Do you just download all product updates and push them out?

[fergal_adsk]

Hi Darius,

Thanks for the feedback. 

No, this will not provide that capability for non admins to install updates. The Products and Services page redesign is just about improving the UI so that customers can find what they're looking to download or install more easily. There is a longer term initiative in the works to the address the problem that you mention and to address a lot more use cases around managing updates, automatic updates and controls for admins to manage updates for their users. We will be sharing more on that soon.

[fergal_adsk]

Hi Allen, Would you be able to share a little more about the problems you are having with creating a deployment ? The new Custom Install workflow in the Account should provide you with what you need to create a multi product or single product deployment. I would love to hear your experiences with that feature.

[darius.petersonii]

Ok great! I actually posted a script in the other community boards. I'm also piecing together an advanced solution to address this with Tanium--so I just wanted to see if you guys had already fixed it. 

I'll start distributing my solution, and I'll keep checking back for the official solution!

[fergal_adsk]

The ability to pin your favorite or relevant product tiles so they always show up at the top of the page is in our backlog and is definitely we will be implementing. It might not make the first release but certainly soon after.

[fergal_adsk]

Thanks for the feedback. The existing Product Updates page will remain as it is for short while but we are also planning to make a bunch of usability improvements on that page too. The pre-filtered list on the detailed product page will be in addition to the existing Product Updates page.

[andrewpuller3811]

A. Do you think this will make it easier to find your product or service in the Account Portal?

4 - No. I am in the same boat as Allen - the AEC collection shows 42 items at the moment, although the filter for the desktop/cloud would be very useful. Most of the current Access Now buttons next to cloud services lead to the product page on the Autodesk website rather than accessing the service so being able to filter them would be great.

B. Do you like the simplified Tile layout view?

3 - Neutral.  With refinement the "Flat View of all Products and Services" might be more efficient in terms of space used compared to the current layout. It could be improved by hiding the description (if you are installing the software you should know what it does or whoever has asked you to install the software should). Also you should loose all the redundant white space - there is no need for it so why take away from the number of items that will be displayed? With regard to the one click install, I would be ok with that as long as it remembered the download option like we currently have of "Browser Download", "Download Now" and "Install Now" and have that button switch between them. I work in a control network environment where we have to get permission to download programmes, let alone install them, so Install Now is not an option.

C. Do you like the pre-filtered list of updates for the Products?

2 - Yes. Could be useful if filtering was remembered.

D. Are you concerned about moving all Subscription related information to the Subscriptions and Contracts page?

4 - No.

E. Do you have any other ideas, suggestions, feedback?

We primarily create deployments, so the ability to save configurations or read them back from a downloaded deployment is essential. For one minor change in a deployment - e.g. got the path wrong for one of the settings, you have to recreate the whole deployment. Also the current system for deployments where the download bootstrap tries to extract an exe in to the temp folder and run it is flagged as virus like behaviour hear so special permissions have to be enabled any time I want to download a new deployment - It would be nice if there was a choice of where the files were extracted to.

[AllenJessup]

@fergal_adsk 

It's not your problem. It's mine. About 4 months ago IT revoked all Admin rights outside of IT. So I can't run the EXE files I created to make the custom deployments.

My reply was meant to point out that you still need Admin rights. 

[fergal_adsk]

Hi Darius,
The long term plan that we are working towards is to enable Admins to control when and how their users receive updates automatically. Admins will have the ability to specify which users receive which specific updates they want them to receive. In the meantime, admins can access Updates in the existing Product Updates page or in the Custom Install workflows for deployments.

[fergal_adsk]

Ah, got it. I hope your experience of creating your deployment package was easy at least 🙂 .