September 12, 2017
About LabKey
Whether you’re implementing a brand new software solution or updating an existing solution, changes that affect the workflow of team members are often a major pain point for organizations. Taking steps to manage and communicate these changes and their benefits to your users can greatly reduce the friction faced during implementation and, in turn, increase adoption by users. As you prepare to transition to the new LabKey Server UI (being released as part of LabKey Server v17.3), we encourage you to take the following steps to help manage this change and help make the UI transition a success.
Test the Redesigned Interface
Test the new interface extensively in your staging and/or test environments. As part of the 17.2 release of LabKey Server, we included the “Core UI Migration” experimental feature that allows administrators to turn on the new UI. While the interface is still in active development and certain elements may shift slightly, the bulk of the navigation changes are represented, and we encourage administrators to explore the new UI and test for:
Changes to your primary user workflows (editors, readers, administrators, etc.)
Go through the workflows of your primary users; click through the available buttons and navigate through the interface as your user would, checking for changes to their standard workflows.
Broken customizations
Check to see that customizations you have made to the interface are still functioning as expected. As part of the UI redesign, we have refactored a good portion of our own CSS in order to make it easier to maintain the platform in the long run. As a result customizations made to your server’s CSS may need updating.
UI bugs that should be reported to LabKey
Reporting bugs that you encounter during testing is an important part of the redesign process. Your feedback helps us identify and prioritize fixes that need to be made to the interface.
Identifying updates that need to be made to your server customizations and changes to your user workflows early will give you the opportunity to make adjustments and prepare for any new-interface training that might need to be done with users.
Set a Go Live Date
Decide on a date that you will make the transition to the new UI. Make sure you account for adequate time to test the new version, communicate upcoming changes and your transition plan, and train users on the new UI.
Communicate Upcoming Changes and Transition Plan
Communicating upcoming changes and their implications for your users early and often is crucial to a smooth interface transition. When communicating details about the interface transition to users, make sure to include information about:
- Transition timeline
- Key benefits of the transition
- Key changes/potential areas of frustration
- How users can ask questions
- How users can provide feedback
Provide User Training
Some of the changes being made to the LabKey Server interface during this redesign will affect how users perform certain tasks. If you discover through testing the interface in the context of your team’s key workflows that core tasks are affected by navigation changes, then providing training on how to accomplish this work in the new interface will help avoid frustration. For smaller changes, simply documenting the new process may be sufficient training, but in cases where a user’s workflow is significantly changed a training session may be more appropriate.
Answer Questions
Even with thorough testing, communication, and training, questions from your users are still inevitable. Develop and communicate how users can ask questions as they are are adjusting to the redesigned interface. Depending on the size of your team, that may mean communicating who the contact person is for questions, you may create a message board for questions and discussion, or you may host a handful of Q&A workshop sessions post-implementation. Whatever the method, making sure a user knows how they can have their questions answered will help prevent frustration when they encounter a change to their workflow.
Provide Feedback
Communicating feedback to the LabKey team is an essential part of the redesign process, and we are committed to making sure that you and your users have the best possible experience using LabKey Server. As you explore the redesigned interface in your test environment as an experimental feature, you can provide feedback using the “Give Feedback” button in the top right corner of the interface. You can also provide feedback directly to your LabKey account manager.