Designing the Context Menu in Advanced Scheduling Board

[JohnTharakan]

Objective

To design context menus for the Advanced Scheduling Board Fiori app, that is both modular and scalable.

Context menus are triggered when the user right clicks on a column of any particular table (Table Context Menu) or any shape on the Gantt area (Shape Context Menu)

Persona 

Advanced Scheduling Board is primarily used by Production Planners for scheduling various planning objects.

Persona : Production Planner

Problem Statement

Existing context menu in Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PP/DS)

Context Menu in PP/DS

The Menus are not organised and it is very difficult to find specific menus that are relevant to specific operations.

Issues with the existing context menus

• The actions and sub actions were not intuitive.
• The Main toolbar actions had a different hierarchy and structure than that from the existing context menus.
• Had a single menu which was not very contextual.

Major findings from the usability study conducted

The end users primarily used the context menu options to perform the specific tasks, even though the tasks can be performed from the main toolbar options. 

Solution

Understanding the Anatomy of the Context Menu

Similar actions or similar set of actions should be grouped together and separated by divider.

Designing the Context Menus

Specific set of context menus should appear on the table side and gantt side for each type of charts. These context menus should help the planner carry out tasks specific to the respective tables or respective shapes.

Table Context Menus

1. Resource Chart (Gantt Chart)

Resources Table Side Right Click

 

2. Order Chart (Gantt Chart)

Order Chart Table Side Right Click

3. Product Chart (Gantt Chart)

Product Table Side Right Click

4. Operation Chart (Gantt Chart)

5. Product Stock Visualisation Chart (Time Continuous Chart)

Product Stock Visualisation : Table Side Right Click

6. Resource Utilisation Chart (Time Continuous Chart)

Resource Utilisation : Right Click Table Side

Shape Context Menus

A Context Menu is displayed with various options when the user right-clicks on a shape in any of the charts. These options are specific to the chart and shapes on which the right-click was performed. The shapes can be selected either manually or with Lasso Selection and upon right-click, the context menu is displayed.

Note : Product Stock Visualisation and Resource Utilisation Charts will not have context menus on the chart side, since there are no interactive shapes or objects.

Resources Chart and Operations chart 

Right click on any shape will show the following menu.

Right ClickOrder                                     Operation

OrderOperation

The Context Menu's are cohesive, and distinguishable. The Sub menu's are also the exact same just as the same from the main tool bar menus, maintaining a consistant hierarchy.

Product Chart and Order Chart

The Product and Order Chart will not have any Operation related actions.

Hence with this approach, we are able to show only relevant actions pertaining to specific tables and shapes contextually.