Column Header Limitations

Related products: CS Reports & Dashboards

Has anyone found a solution for seeing and reading 8+ column


headings in your dashboard simultaneously?


1. Header names only work well if super short - otherwise you cannot read


everything. There is no option to wrap around text. You have to manually adjust


each column separately but there is no way to manually adjust them all so that


you can read the whole column header for each column simultaneously.







2. There is no horizontal scroll. So if you have more than 8+ columns, some of


them can disappear on the right and you are not able to see them unless you


minimize the columns to be super narrow, and therefore illegible.







3. there is no option to hover on the headers to view the full header name.





4. So you’re basically deciding between expanding some


columns and reading those, or squishing them to see all your columns but has


anyone discovered a way to see AND read all your columns simultaneously??















 SUGGESTIONS:















1 – pop up displays column header upon hover















2 – Word wrap in column headers to read whole title















3 – Horizontal scroll bar to provide you opportunity to


scroll across to read your column headers



Hey Valerie, sorry to hear you're frustrated and stuck here.





I really like the hover pop up idea, even with word wrap it wouldn't make sense if you have multiple columns and big words. I had a few thoughts to make it less painful in the short term:





1. Usually I label things with the category then the specific, but because the second half of the item gets cut off you could swap them. So instead of a column named "Adoption - Widget1" try out Widget1 - Adoption".





2. The second could be to reduce some of your columns if possible by making a compound health score like Lane proposed/explained in this post if you only have 1 adoption metric, 1 engagement metric, 1 sentiment metric, etc with bunches of measures contributing to it. This would make the data more navigable overall as well as the headers being easier to read. 
Hi Matt, 





That won't work for Val and I that well only because we have several measure that measure very similar things such as:





No searches - 90 days


No logins - 90 days


No alerts - 90 days





No searches - 60 days


No logins - 60 days


No alerts - 60 days





No searches - 30 days


No logins - 30 days


No alerts - 30 days





And several others.  So if we change the order of the names, we get names that look identical unless we can see the whole name.  If we keep the order as it is, we get the same thing: names that look identical unless we can see the whole name. There is no simple ordering that will solve this.





Was it an intentional decision to not have pop ups on hover?  It seems antiquated for 2016.  What about scroll bars?  Is there a technological or ideological reason why they are absent?  It seems out of place for 2016.





I think you guys should really prioritize getting these basics in as they make the table infinitely more useful when a user can view the data in it without significant frustration.  Can you add this to some sort of feature request list?





Thanks,





Chris
Hey Chris,





I think you've gotten the wrong impression. I'm just a Gainsight Admin at a company and try to be active on the community here. I don't know the design decisions.





That said, I think you might be able to reverse it still. Try out "60d Searches" and see how it works. You would immediately know the timeframe of the column and the first few letters would better indicate the content. Just some thoughts!
Thanks I will try that Matt.  I might indeed have the wrong idea.  I was under the impression that I could directly impact design via this page but it sounds more like this is not set up to pass along design suggestions to Gainsight.  Am I starting to now get this right?  Where can I make improvement requests if not here?  Thanks!
Hi Chris,





Apologise for the delay in response. All your feedbacks are very valid. We will soon start working on improving the way we display charts and tables in dashboards. Will ensure that we definitely consider your feedbacks during the redesign. On hover pop-up of column headers should be simpler fix and I will prioritize it in an upcoming release.





Thanks,


Sumesh  
Hey, does anyone know where we can make improvement requests?  Thanks!





EDIT: Sorry Sumesh!  i wrote the above before reading your response!  That's a great response.  I really appreciate it.  Do you have any timing on when this upcoming release would be?





Thx!
Hi Chris,





This is the absolutely the right forum to share concerns, questions and improvement/enhancement requests. Apologies if any delay or response from our side gave the wrong impression. All design feedback is much appreciated. The timing is also good, since we are working on updating our framework and the overall product design.





Thanks,


Manu 
Awesome.  Thanks Manu.  Do you have any idea of when this upcoming release (that Sumesh mentioned) would be?
For the short-term fixes, such as hover text, we'll know better once the upcoming Feb release goes out. For table and reporting design updates, we might need a couple of months at least, since it's a bigger body of work.
That's great.  If this magically made it into the Feb release, I would not be mad.  Thanks for the prompt and clear responses Manu.