 Does
Lawson’s software suck?
Well, I recently read the new book, Why Software Sucks
by David Platt, recommended to me by Michael Wardinski
from Watson Wyatt Worldwide. You can check it out at
David’s website (see
http://www.whysoftwaresucks.com):I won’t
spoil the book for you, except to tell you that, while
the title and concept of the book is intriguing, there
isn’t a whole lot of new ground covered. A lot of the
material re-hashes (albeit with attribution) ideas from
Alan Cooper’s ground-breaking About Face (see
http://www.cooper.com/content/insights/cooper_books.asp).
I’m also a big fan of Joel Spolsky, a prolific writer
about software-related topics (see
http://www.joelonsoftware.com). Joel recently
published a diatribe where he asks, “How many
Microsofties does it take to implement the Off menu?”:
| |
I'm sure
there's a whole team of UI designers,
programmers, and testers who worked very hard on
the OFF button in Windows Vista, but seriously,
is this the best you could come up with?
|
|
| |
 |
|
| |
Every time you
want to leave your computer, you have to choose
between nine, count them, nine options: two
icons and seven menu items. The two icons, I
think, are shortcuts to menu items. I'm guessing
the lock icon does the same thing as the lock
menu item, but I'm not sure which menu item the
on/off icon corresponds to. |
|
(You can read the rest for yourself at
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html.)
At this point, I knew I was onto a theme—so allow me
to bring some of my Lawson pet UI peeves to your
attention. Now, remember, I use Lawson’s software every
day, and for the most part, I like Lawson—but sometimes
its software does suck.
Let’s start with ProcessFlow
In particular, check out the brand-new ProcessFlow
Integrator 9.0. When you first maximize it on your
desktop, it looks just a wee bit too low:
 
And, if you look really closely towards to bottom,
you’ll see that it’s partially obscured by the task bar,
making it difficult to click on the Activity Node
category groups:
Who designed this dialog box?
The next example of “sucky software” is this dialog
box--although I can use it, even I can't begin to
explain it:
You mean I can’t re-route flows?
Consider this example. I want to change the ‘unknown
file’ link to send an email. To do this, my logical
expectation would that I could drag an Email node into
the flow and right-click the flow connection (or “flow
edge” in Lawson parlance) and select an option to
“re-route flow”, choosing a new from/to connection. But,
alas, no:
To accomplish this, I have to first copy the
JavaScript Condition Expression to notepad:
Then I have to delete the flow connection, create a
new connection and insert the Javascript:
Why can’t I re-order the priority of the branching
logic?
The Branch activity node works by reading from the top
down, and executing the first “true” condition:
What if you want to change/re-order the logic? You
can’t. You have to delete and re-create each branch
connect (hopefully remembering to copy the JavaScript
expressions to notepad first since you’ll them when you
delete the branch connection!):
I can't reference ProcessFlow variables when using
the Email Activity Node?
Presumably, whoever designed this dialog box has never
used ProcessFlow to generate an email. When composing
the email’s content, there is no (easy) way to insert
variables. Here, I’ve had to type in the <!_inputData>
variable, relying on my memory and keyboarding skills:
You can see the variables if you click on the
Attachments tab. You can click the “>>” button to add
the variable as an attachment—how come there’s not an
‘insert variable into content’ button?
Adding a Bookmark to a Group in Portal
Alright, we’ve picked on ProcessFlow enough. Let’s move
onto Portal. If I want to assign a Portal Bookmark to a
group of users, why does it take so many steps across so
many tools?
First, I have to create the Group in Resource Management
Administrator:
Then I have to edit each Resource to add them
to my new Group:
(Note to Lawson: When I right-click on the Group, why
can’t I have an ‘Add People Resources to Group’ option?
)
Then I have to go into Portal
Bookmark Manager, and Add the Group’s access to the
desired bookmark:
Finally, each user still has to go and
“subscribe” to the content:
So, there’s some of my pet UI peeves about Lawson’s
software. Do you have any other examples about how
Lawson’s software “sucks”? Send them to me at
mailto:letter-comments@lawsonguru.com, and I’ll try
to publish them, assuming of course, that they really do
suck! |
