Improve the Commerce configuration UX

Awesome, looks like we can get inspiration from status reports page :)

Also, we could embed help links and other resources in the above to docs.commerce.org or other docs, as webform module does. This would help users go straight to the help rather than first raising a support request.

@AaronChristian awesome job.

@AaronChristian wow, this is looking great!

An optiomal widget that shows unfulfilled orders wold be nice as well!

Mabey some aggregated data would be useful as well. Some commerce_reports widgets? But I guess that is a differnt issue.

Love it! Maybe the icons could be reused in the quick add modal.

Good job, i really love it !

Only one suggestion is to keep configuration and content separated to not be confusing. Commerce has a lot of entities and concepts, so we should expose only commerce contents items first and then configuration items in another page, like commerce 2.x does.

You also need to account for unknown modules adding their own items (such as shipping), you won't have any applicable icons there, so you'd need to assign a generic one. Even if there were icons for the most popular contribs, such a case is always possible, and needs to be designed for.

Patch creates a template that splits up the Commerce dashboard into multiple groups. Styling needed - I have added classes as required.

TODO:
- add modal popup
- add group weight
- Add '+Quick Add', as needed

Patch in #15 somehow missed the twig file. Here it is.

Patch #16 is good. I'll get started with some styles.

Alright, I made some progress on the styling of this, building on @gauravjeet 's patch.

Some things to note:
* updates gauravjeet's template file to follow BEM methodology.
* adds css/commerce.dashboard.css for styles.
* adds js/dashboard.js for generating the default icon based on the title first letter.
* adds icons/dashboard directory with some initial icons.

Still lots left to do, but it's a good start. Here's a screenshot.

Whoops. Wrong patch file. This is the correct one. :S

I've reviewed this thread, and while it appears there was a fair amount of real-time discussion about the approach, I'd like to offer some pushback here and some suggestions.

First, let me reiterate what GoZ said above. We shouldn't be mixing content and configuration into tiles like the proposed screenshots. We've always very carefully ensured that Orders, Products, Promotions, etc. - the actual content of the store - were easily accessible at the primary menu level while configuration tasks that are rarely referenced are placed beneath that menu.

Second, I kinda feel like the whole thing should really be the interface for the Configuration page itself. It makes sense to have a wizard there with more expansive tool tips and the like on a page like that. A tile based UI like Drupal uses elsewhere would be perfect for grouping configuration menu items, too ... like putting the "structure" menu items in a single group (Order types, Product types, etc.). I probably wouldn't try to use icons.

Last, the main Commerce dashboard should itself be sales oriented with quick links to Orders, Products, Promotions, etc. This is the same in most eCommerce platforms. I often reference it against Shopify, and it's in that spirit that we began developing our reports dashboard. Given that, I think we should retitle this issue to "Improve the Commerce configuration UX" and focus on that while leaving admin/commerce alone for now.

Added the first two issues:
#2897929: Move Stores to admin/commerce/config
#2897928: Rename the Tax Types menu entry to Taxes
Moving stores to confugration further reduces the main screen, which now has only Orders / Promotions / Products / Product Attributes / Configuration.

I had a call with Ryan about this, where we iterated on the idea to have the configuration menu have the same tiles that the Drupal configuration menu has.

Here's a proposed structure.

Left column:

Stores
* Stores
* Taxes
* Currencies
* Store types

Payments
* Payment gateways

Shipping
* Shipping methods
* Shipment types
* Package types

Right column:

Products:
* Product types
* Product variation types

Orders:
* Order types
* Order item types
* Checkout flows

Note that the ordering of items is not alphabetic and aims to put more frequently used items first under each group.

Current version. Still missing the Stores link under "Store".

1) I really dislike the redundancy of the item descriptions, but I can't think of anything smarter for now.
Suggestions welcome. Removing them is an option, but would feel a bit alien compared to admin/config.

2) I renamed the "Stores" group to "Store", feels like it makes more sense, since it's more of a global site-wide thing. It breaks the convention a bit (since other groups are plural), but I'm not sure it matters much. It would also be weird to have "Stores" under "Stores", and we'd have a URL collision.

3) The configuration link on admin/commerce now has the description "Configure Commerce and related modules." which still sucks. Help?

1. So, re: the item descriptions, I don't see harm in having them, but I agree that if they just restate the name of the menu item, they aren't really useful. I also wonder if we can get away with hiding descriptions by default. To rewrite them, we can describe the default or common actions you would perform in each menu:

• Currencies: Enable the currencies your store requires.
• Store types: Add or edit fields on your store edit forms.
• Tax types: Define the taxes you collect.
• Payment gateways: Configure one or more gateways you take payment through.
• Product types: Add or edit fields on your product pages.
• Product variation types: Add or edit fields that differentiate product variations on your product pages.
• Order types: Add or edit fields on your order edit forms.
• Order item types: Add or edit fields on your order item edit forms and their related Add to Cart forms.
• Checkout flows: Define the checkout flows for each of your order types.

2. Since the group names don't actually appear in the menu hierarchy, I don't mind them being a bit redundant and including "Configuration" or something similar. They could all be "Store configuration", "Product configuration", etc. Even without a suffix, "Payment" works better than "Payments", so then "Store" will look less out of place.

3. How about something that gets at the combination of settings / structure? "Configure your store settings and structure."

Iterated on Ryan's descriptions, and committed.