Yellow Notes in Aurena

We use the sticky notes a fair bit for collaboration but also in a digital equivalent of a physical sticky note.

E.g. when raising a purchase req i’ll often leave a sticky note for the procurement team if I really want the specific item (as sometimes they’ll get an alternative product which might not do exactly what I need as well) or for links to suggested suppliers websites if its a non-regular item order.

or

“xxx called yyy and will follow up on zzz” or “spoke to xxx who will yyy” etc.

They’re used pretty heavily here - not saying there’s perhaps not a better way or we couldn’t adapt but just that they are very much used and appreciated. Removal of them would be a big adjustment for our organisation.

Sticky notes is a feature that our users use every single day,.  The simplicity and ease of use is hard to beat.  The ability to communicate something temporarily in the context of a specific transaction and have that communication be obvious is a feature that our users would miss a great deal.

While it has limitations, our users understand those limitations and work accordingly.

There’s a reason why the real paper sticky notes are still sold in office supply stores - people buy them and use them and there’s nothing else quite like it.

That’s true.

They’re mostly used for clearly communicating (like “in your face”) what needs to be done/corrected (especially with expense sheets and invoices).

What we care about is that there’s a relatively easy way for our users to do this, without having to use Outlook every time.

But yes, I agree that they need to change to be better suited for the web UI.

I have the same experience from when I was a customer. It’s a very nice ‘in your face’ feature to highlight something. We used the extensively in a number of different ways and also had events to automatically create them based on certain criteria for ‘special task’ that were received through an integration. It’s something that we should definitely keep in some shape or form!

What we do, is we extract the raw text using a java class, it’s lightning fast, and gets us the content (which is what we care about at least, not the formatting).

Our users heavily use sticky notes in all areas of the application as a means of simple and imediately visible information for communication. it communicates specific information that can not be handled anywhere else in the application.

it also allows to handle pictures or weblinks, which is frequently used.

Appreciate the feedback on Sticky Notes.

It’s clear that the easy of use and the “in your face” aspect is key here. We as users of IFS software are humans, and we like to make analogies to the real world and sticky notes are a tangible thing. That was the whole idea behind sticky notes. 

Custom fields or a separate tab or a regular Notes field could seem to serve the same purpose, and as much as it does that from a tech point of view (rich text and images a side) - it doesn’t provide the same user experience.

Note also that Stickies are stored as a connected objected (sort of), so the data is not searchable on the main business object, such as Customer Order or an Invoice. It is also not possible to put the data on a report etc. 

Sticky notes uses RTF (Rich Text Format) which is a (dying) Microsoft format used mostly in Windows - so it is not suitable for cross platform and web use. 

It is clear sticky notes is very important for some of you. It is also clear Sticky Notes is not implemented in IFS Aurena. If sticky notes re-appear in some shape and form it will not be using RTF and user experience would have to adopt to a responsive web layout (not using saved X,Y position) and not be a floating window. But to me it is clear the strength is on the simplicity, the real world yellow sticky note analogy, and the flexible “collaboration” aspect.

We are using it rather lot on transmitting extra info regarding construction projects whose lifespan can be 5 or more years even. The sticky notes are not very liked because they are always on the way and have to be moved around. We have a custom feature in use for entering manual log entries for projects and that could be the place to migrate the sticky notes contents before the switch to Aurena. It could and probably should be done already in IEE to get rid of the stickies.

But the sticky notes can be used everywhere and what I described above is only one certain view where it has been used. So the notes used elsewhere still have to be backed up and transferred somewhere else.

Supply Chain

1. Sticky notes- 
   1. They are important for communicating on Customer orders acting as a pop up message in quickly alert the user if a issue.
   2. Shop Order to communicate internally. They may use Note field but they are not easily noticed.
   3. Obsoleted inventory items to quickly alert someone of the reason why it was obsoleted.

              Everyone would like to have sticky notes in Aurena.  They are a very easy way to communicate information.

Sticky Notes are currently not in the plan. They do not feel like something that belongs in the current web-based UI, at least not in the form they had previously. Also, we were working from an assumption that Sticky Notes was something that was quite popular in demos, but not really used by customers. From the examples that I’ve heard here it sounds like some customers are using them instead of custom fields to save some additional information. Not that much for collaboration (which was the driving idea behind Sticky Notes).

Hi @domze,

Could you please let us know whether there is any internal task/ETA proceeding on this activity?

CC: @Piumi Rubasinghe @Rusiru Dharmadasa 

Best regards
Udara. 

As a customer we use Sticky Notes through the system, as a quick “in your face” notes when someone enters a screen:  customer orders, purchase orders,  purchase requisitions, shop orders, posting proposals, RMA’s, Work Orders.  The loss of the Sticky Note would be a major loss for us.  Please reconsider or come up with an equivalent solution.