We’re releasing an update tonight that will change the layout of DevResults menus. This update won’t add or subtract any menu items or features, just rearrange them in a more intuitive way.
The four main menus will be:
- Data, for accessing features where you can view or edit indicator data
- Program Info, the place to manage the content of your DevResults site
- Tools, for additional features that aren't required for indicator results management
- Administration, the place to govern site-wide settings and choices
Before finalizing this update, we sought feedback from users who have chosen to receive advanced notice about changes to DevResults. We received very positive feedback about the new Data and Tools menus, plus some helpful suggestions for how we could improve our initial proposal. In response to that feedback, we:
- Kept the People section under Administration instead of moving it to Program Info
- Chose the menu name Program Info (instead of “Program”) to make it clear what people would find there
- Alphabetized the Tools menu
- Re-worded the Enter Data options
Our survey was anonymous, so we couldn’t respond directly to users about feedback, but we wanted to address some of the questions we saw there.
Several folks expressed concern about being able to get to the things they always use with one click. Don’t worry -- every menu item has always been accessible with one click from any page, and that’s the case in the new version too. And if you’ve never tried it: you can also click on a main menu name itself to get to the first thing in the list. (So you can click on Data to get to Dashboard, Administration to get to Users, and so on.)
We had questions about why some menu items are listed twice. For example: you’ll be able to get to the activities index under either the Data menu or the Program Info menu. The reason is that some people might need to find an activity to enter data, and other people might need to find it to configure its details. Since our new layout is geared toward what people are trying to do in the site, we included it in both places.
A few folks asked about renaming “Activities” to something else. That’s outside the scope of what we were aiming for here, but we hear you. Offering that option would be way more complex than it sounds or we would have done it already. (For one thing, it would be hard to offer help materials if everyone used a different word for such a central concept). It’s something that we’re always looking into, but for now we’re sticking with the standard term used by the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
Speaking of help materials, please bear with us as we update all of our help articles with the new menu layout. Again, none of the functionality will change with this update, just where you find the menu items. So the help pages should still be helpful!
And one final note: the Bookmarks menu went live last week, and we’re pleased to hear that folks have found it useful. We received one request to let folks bookmark many activities or indicators at once, instead of going to each page individually. Good news: you already can! Find instructions on our help site here. And keep the feedback coming at help@devresults.com.