Have a look at our refreshed design for Znuny 7. Have a look around and feel free to gather some impressions.

Znuny GUI Redesign

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in the project. Here's what we've been up to this year, and the first look at what's coming in 2023. We hope you're as excited to preview and use as we are to present Znuny 7.0.

We decided to give you a preview to give you an idea of what is coming and what the current state is.
It is still possible to drop feedback and get involved in the process.

This state is not ready for GitHub yet, but will be available mid-January.
If you are a developer and need early access, to adopt your add-ons, please drop us a mail, and we can get in touch.

Let's get started.

Path to change

The last GUI updates are way in the past. Users have gotten used to the interface and that updates won't change anything fundamental. Which makes this release, and all the decisions we made, even harder.

This post sets a marker for a long journey to come. We will update the GUI components with every major release, so users will get more used to it.
Understanding more now about how to make smaller, more digestible changes and what the software, and its UX mean to our community. We have been accompanied by our design agency over the last year.

We have done great things in a very short amount of time. At the same time, we've kept much of the traditional while rebuilding and reorganizing for the future.

Goals

Our goals are simple.

• Pave the way for the future.
• Make small, decisive steps.
• Improve the GUI
• Keep the community on board
• Draw a path for existing users

We are doing this by adopting proven and trusted technologies which have stood the test of time. By doing this we have been able to give the 12-year-old design a fresh new look and feel, but not lose who we are, what, and how we do things.

Challenges

Customizing the interface brings several problems. We have technical and business challenges.
The technical ones are primarily a matter of function and technology. The business requirements, are the really complex ones.
It is not our intention to scare away “existing” users. We also strive to keep the costs for re-trainings down to a bare minimum.
Everyone user of 6.x should be able to find their way around.

At the same time, we want to point out that the software is evolving and that we are in a process of change, which will continue over the coming years.
New agent and customer users should feel welcomed and benifit from a more modern interface.

What to expect

To avoid disappointment, here is a small summary of what and why
We touched all areas of the interface:

• Agent
• Customer
• Admin (disabled in this preview)

The customer user interface has received the most significant changes because the amount of existing feedback and the need for it were much higher.

The agent interface has received a “technological refresh” in this stage, numerous changes have been made, and larger screens are now better utilized. The main challenge here was to keep the agents on board. The old click-paths are mostly still possible. We make better use of the given screen estate and reduced long forms to a flexbile block|column design.

Affects

As a user, you will immediately feel the freshness, but require no additional training to adapt to the change.

As an administrator, you will have some new features, but migration is kept smooth as we first focused on better and more consistent design and implementation of design elements for standardization in development.

As a developer, you will spend some time getting to know the new design elements and adapting your products and features to make use of them.

Key Features of Redesign

• Standardized implementation of flex-box to improve screen usage
• Reduction of classes using variables and component modeling via CSS
• Reusability through the introduction and documentation of standard components
• Centralizing CSS, making it easier to centrally affect components during skin customization

Peer Review

We hope you enjoy the new design and have prepared a system that includes all the current features of the framework in the new design. We want you to have a stab at it and give us your feedback.

Questions or Comments: community@znuny.org
Discord: https://discord.gg/XTud3WWZTs

Disclaimer:
This preview is not production ready. It is also “not just a skin”. A lot has been changed and there will be bugs, missing features (RTL, Accessibility features, …) we are mostly aware of it. The spacing and margins between elements are not final. There will be changes!

Furthermore, the instance used for preview is in “Demo Mode”. Changes to personal settings are not possible, and the instance is reset every 24h. Please don't post personal information, they may be visible to others.

Links to the preview:

Agent: https://preview.znuny.rocks/znuny/index.pl
User and Password: tagent/tagent

Customer: https://preview.znuny.rocks/znuny/customer.pl
User and Password: wec/wec