Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.Issue Summary:
...[H]elp find ways to make Rules easier for a relatively experienced admin but a newbie to Rules - such as myself - to grap the concepts and the reasons for why things happen the way they do.
Related Changes:
#1495552: [Meta] Improve overview page
#1244738: Provide a description field
#1498840: Create "master_defaults_overrides" branch
#2116275: Tags as Menu on right sidebar -
#1236586: link tags to their filter pages
Indirectly Related Changes
#1498854: [Meta] Refocus discussion group to announcements and development
#1092440: Recompile documentation for Rules
#1496304: Create a real FAQ
[# Add a glossary]
More info:
All open UX related issues sorted by priority
All open DX related issues sorted by priority
Original Report:
I am so fed up of trying to figure out how to tell rules "When this event happens, tell the scheduler to run that event in x amount of time". I've spent the last hour trying to figure out whether rule sets are needed, how to pass variables back and forth... Argh!
I apologise for the ranty tone of this post: I have found the Rules module to be both amazingly capable and incredibly frustrating in equal measure, as there is little or no clear explanation, outline summary or step-by-step instruction to be found anywhere in the Rules interface.
This is therefore a request to the Rules-using community at large, and to the maintainers of Rules, to help find ways to make Rules easier for a relatively experienced admin but a newbie to Rules - such as myself - to grap the concepts and the reasons for why things happen the way they do.
I appreciate that Rules ties in to other modules, but as Rules seems to do most of the "heavy lifting", and it looks like an administrator's time will be mostly spent in the Rules interface, it looks to me like it's the Rules interface which needs some re-working to remove some of the barriers to participation, such as obscure or missing descriptions).
Why can't the interface either just be outwardly simple or, failing that, for there to at least be enough information that I can find a link saying something like "You can read tutorials on setting up your own rules here" so I can RTFingM without resorting to a Google search or three? =o)
Sorry for the ranty tone, and for any offence I may have caused here - if I didn't hold the Rules module in such high regard as an excellently-conceived piece of code, I wouldn't be so frustrated at the difficulties I seem to have understanding how to make it do simple tasks!
/al
Comments
Comment #1
MXTSubscribing
Comment #2
klausiDocumentation: http://drupal.org/node/298476
Tutorials: http://drupal.org/node/298482
Yes, Rules is complex, any good ideas in simplifying the user interface or improving the descriptions is appreciated.
Comment #3
mitchell CreditAttribution: mitchell commentedWhy not...
Comment #4
fagoyep, best get started with issues tagged with "ux":
http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/rules?issue_tags=ux
Comment #5
mitchell CreditAttribution: mitchell commentedIf you'll be in Denver for Drupalcon and would like to work on this, see http://denver2012.drupal.org/bof/rules-ux-regroup
I'll update this issue with notes from the BoF.
Comment #6
mitchell CreditAttribution: mitchell commentedOne concern for the current UI that I heard from tizzo (paraphrased and elaborated here) was that it is difficult to understand how each rule builds on / affects other related rules. Often, configurations include several rules for workflows, but this is very difficult to manage or to take over from another person's preconfigured environment. This was the reason we later added tags, but it doesn't make a significant usability improvement.
Comment #6.0
mitchell CreditAttribution: mitchell commentedupdating issue summary
Comment #7
mitchell CreditAttribution: mitchell commentedI want to thank rob loach, jody, tizzo, klausi, and itangalo for a great discussion. It was a pleasure working together on this and sharing tasty snacks. Across the board, dried persimmon and skittles seemed the tastiest. I look forward to more Rules BoF/sprints with fellow #rules-users.
Most of the ideas we voiced are in #1495552: [Meta] Improve overview page. So, that would be a good place for people who are interested in this topic to start. There are still challenges ahead, like deciding what of these changes will go into Rules and when, figuring out who wants to participate in the development, and determining how much money we would need / could collect to sustain effort toward this. A main issue regarding development bandwidth is that everyone who came is a busy person with additional commitments and mostly a personal interest in Rules UI advancements. So, once comments start coming, or don't, we'll also need to talk to interested businesses and individual supporters who may wish to donate/pledge/reverse-bounty to ensure this meta-issue's success.
Comment #8
dasjocool to see momentum here, looking forward to a greater rules user experience :)
my personal favorite would be #1269884: Inline rules support
Comment #9
mitchell CreditAttribution: mitchell commentedFor discussions about UI improvements, see Rules UI Mockups
Comment #10
fagoplease see my comment over at g.d.o.: http://groups.drupal.org/node/219209#comment-724009
Comment #10.0
fagoreworking
Comment #11
TR CreditAttribution: TR commentedComment #12
TR CreditAttribution: TR commentedWon't do this in D7 at this point in time.