Survey for Zen Cart v2.0 Admin Dashboard

[Kim]

Greetings Zen Cart users!

We are working on the redesign of the Zen Cart Administration tool and would like you input on the "Dashboard" - The dashboard will be the first thing you see after entering the admin.

We are envisioning the ability to have various widgets to display summarized information, we'd like your ideas for those widgets.

What information is important to you when you need an overview of your business?

We'll be watching the responses for the next couple of weeks for some great ideas.

[edadk]

I'm pretty happy with the current Home screen.

I've made a couple of minor changes to the current screen, don't know if others would find these things useful -

-I've increased the Counter History to show the last 21 days of activity. It gives me a better picture of activity trends. A small graph of that info might be nice.

-I've also added the server up-time/server load info onto that screen. Current load is something I monitor often.

Ed

[Kenichi]

A sales summary widget would be nice. Something graph-like that shows number of sales and revenue.

[kuroi]

I think dashboard widgets should be plugins, so that we have the flexibility to choose which work best for us, add new ones and share them with the community.

[Soniccc]

Iconography (for the menus) would be a Great addition to the Cart. The brain more easily stores images than words, so it would probably be easier for beginners to learn how to use the admin.

Generally speaking, I think it's good with as much data-mining as possible. For instance tools that would let you know when there's a medium to long term change in consumer behavior so you may track change's in the trend pattern of consumers, visitors.

I think Piwik has a nice sleek admin interface (although ZC has made me a fan of green..).

[Kim]

Thanks for the replies, but I think I must not have been clear in my request. We are asking what specific information widgets you would like to see in the default dashboard.


So ...

Are you looking for a quick site traffic check?
Last XX # of orders?
How many new orders?
Etc, etc.

[kobra]

I believe that I agree with kuroi in this
That the framework should be flexible if not also configurable from the admin to have 1, 2 ,3 ,or more block areas that can contain the information one finds useful...

You did not elaborate about what the structure will be, OOP, some incarnation of a RPG lang, or a light weight inclusion of a Crystal reports type - open source of course....

Where by a user can assemble their own displayed output through code or preferable a menu

No stock item is ever exactly what another needs or wants

[nigelt74]

Widget number 1
For a widget, I would specifically like one that tells me

1) How many debugfiles are in /cache
2) Displays the contents of the latest debug file

Widget number 2
Presents the hits and sales data in graphical form (I just find graphs easier to read trends on)

Widget 3
New orders (drect bank deposit is extremely common here, so being able to cmpare a quick list with bank statement would be a boon)
contains
1) order number
2) Date
3) amount
4) payment method

[Kim]

Thanks Nigel! We'll definitely keep those ideas in mind.

[Website Rob]

I would say it is understood that dashboard widgets should be plugins but it is also a given that there should 'default' or 'core' widgets supplied with a default setup. That would be the starting point for 'widgets' people can enable/disable at will.

With that said, I would like to see:

- Admin Template changer
- CSS based Mega Menu (such as seen here)
- Modules Viewer, what modules have been installed - including version and link to download page
- Pie Chart Viewer, could include various information that can be grouped by relationship to each other and is either pre-coded to display said relationships or allows one the ability to state which relationship groups one wants to see