Cluttered Interface - Hack? 🤓

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Image you built out that beautiful detail page

But there is just so many fields - but at the same time you do not want to start hiding things from users that might be useful.

Here is an example of a detail page with just way to much information.

What if I can hide detail information with
a click of a button?


I am not sure this was the intention of buttons, visibility but this has been working super nice for a lot of scenarios (there are some caveats to think about of course)

End result: Dynamically showing and hiding detail information - keep in mind the magic comes in the blue button!

Clicking the "Show detailed information" brings up the hidden fields.

Button:
1. Show Basic View -> Showing Basic View
2. Show Detailed View -> Showing Detailed View

Solution:

  1. First create a field that is called "Show detailed view" in your table - With two options "Show detailed view, Show basic View"
  2. Make sure to show this field in the bottom of the page and put visibility so it in reality never shows (See the video why)
  1. Setup TWO button - one for showing the detailed view and one for showing the basic view, use the update record functionality.
  1. Change Label to "Show Detailed View" (And "Show Basic View"
  1. Change the "Label After": to "Showing Detailed view" and "Showing Basic View".
  2. I usually put same color on both before and after , but different colors on the two buttons.
  3. Update the group to use visibility based on the "show detailed field"
  1. Done! - now you a nice functionality to hide and show.

Okey Next -> Use helper texts

I love to use a field I have come to call "Helper Text" - which is a formula field that shows the users exactly what to take action on - For example here the user can see directly that "oh fill out start is needed" (Sure you can do this with a visibility field directly - but I tend to see that users get distracted if fields all of a sudden is hidden - for myself it is because I then start thinking - is this field forgotten, or just not filled out).

The solution is to do a formula field:

  1. It looks at the status
  2. And if the status is at risk, it will require - Start date to be filled out

Keep in mind for larger solutions there is a much nicer way to do this that makes it scaleable , but for this purpose it is good enough and works great with the users.

Caveats to think about!


It only works on desktop - mobile does not have visibility - how ever for mobile I tend to lean against more specialized pages anyway.
I have not seen this documented anywhere.

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