Confusing UI for agenda webcal subscribe/ics download buttons

[jennifer-richards]

The agenda page's UI for subscribing to webcal or downloading ics files looks something like:

(see #3786). This is shared between the main "agenda" tab and the "personalize" tab that permits filtering as well as selecting individual sessions to appear on the agenda.

These are a bunch of similar buttons: an ics file can be downloaded for a specific area, for all the "non-area" events, or for the currently filtered set of sessions. The latter can also be "subscribed" to as a webcal link.

The filtered calendars are only offered when there are filter parameters selected. These can also represent "filtered" views selected by the UI above these links, or "personal" views selected by combining the filtered views with individually selected sessions on the Personalize tab.

The current set of buttons is a bit haphazard. Really need to rationalize this and offer a more coherent presentation of these options. Just visually, the button sets are different sizes/styles and split across lines in a way that's not of obvious significance to a user.

[NGPixel]

My agenda rework in vue.js use the following UX:

The personalize tab is gone.

The user can instead filter by areas:

The user can further filter the agenda by picking individual sessions:

The Download as .ics button use whatever you have selected / filtered from both the Filter Agenda and Pick Sessions features.

Does that make sense?

[rjsparks]

A few points of trepidation:

1. I expect there are users that use the current selector and calendar view at the same time to help work through conflict resolution, and will be irritated by having to swap between views.
2. I think I'm seeing significant custom color styling coming back in (at the headers/borders).
3. (much more minor) checkboxes on rows throw a flag for me - visual confusion. Is the motif of selected vs unselected buttons not available or not reasonable in this design?

[NGPixel]

@rjsparks

1. Considering you can only view a few entries before having to scroll up and down in the current view (see example below), would having the calendar as an overlay instead a better experience? For example, a "calendar view" button could be added to the right navigation (which follows as you scroll) and clicking it would display the calendar over the list, on demand, so you wouldn't loose your current position.

2. The colors are temporary and can easily be changed to match the new IETF / datatracker theme colors.

3. Would highlighting the whole row in addition to the checkbox acceptable? Or do you have a better solution in mind?

[rjsparks]

at 1) interesting idea - lets pursue it, but I don't think you see the main workflow that I was trying to point to yet. Users will want to see the calendar change in realtime as groups are selected/deselected when filtering by groups in the "filter agenda" panel you show above,

at 3), I wasn't talking about the items in the list view, but rather the items in the "filter agenda" panel

[NGPixel]

Moved the "calendar view" to the sidebar menu, as a button:

Clicking the button would open a drawer, on top of the current view, for example:

[larseggert]

Why is there a different font for the time column?

[NGPixel]

@larseggert I was experimenting with some different fonts. I reverted to using the site defaults:

Here's an early preview of the FullCalendar implementation for the calendar view:

and you can also filter areas / groups while the calendar view is opened:

[rjsparks]

Is this issue still useful, or are we better tracking these conversations in other places. I suggest closing it.

[vttale]

Still open, so I have a question. What is designed to happen when you click the "Add To Your Calendar" -> "Subscribe...(Webcal) button"? On Desktop Chrome, it opens Google Calendar for me but then as far as I can tell nothing else happens. No subscription is evident among My Calendars / Other Calendars on the bottom left of the Google Calendar view.

The design of the button also makes it very difficult to fetch a calendar ID out of it that I could use by manually adding via Google Calendar's Add Calendar interface. I started to dig down through the Developer Console to find out what that might be, but then decided maybe I should just ask what I'm doing wrong.

Maybe this all belongs some place else and I should create a new issue, or maybe (as I am prepared to believe) it isn't even n issue and doesn't warrant one, just pilot error for which I need to be educated. That's why I leveraged the most recent issue about subscriptions rather than starting a new one (yet).

Oh, also, this would be expected to dynamically subscribe only to the complete agenda, right? Not to a personally filtered calendar? Cuz that latter, now that would be killer -- a focus on only the groups I care about but that automatically gets any updates as needed.

[rjsparks]

The webcal buttons are just hrefs to webcal: URLs. Your OS and whatever app you've configured for dealing with those URLs are where you tell your system what should happen.

Right click on the URL and copy link.

And yes, you can subscribe to only the sessions you are interested in. Use the filter or pick buttons, save your selections, and then subscribe to the resulting calendar.

[rjsparks]

Right click on the URL and copy link.

Ok - I see that doesn't work.
@NGPixel maybe we should add the ical/webcal links as options on the Share dialog?