Magic link workflow improvements

[winged]

The magic links (#1022) are indeed magic! However, I wish for some changes that would massively improve the feature's usability and effectiveness.

Similar to adfinis/timed-frontend#685, I'd like to have the possibility to have a magic link anywhere (At minimum in activities and timesheet, possibly other places).

I kinda imagine it to work as follows:

• Clicking "new magic link" opens the dialog in an empty state (as it is now)
• Clicking "new magic link" on a timesheet/activity entry opens the dialog with already-populated values from corresponding entry
• The dialog is used both when receiving a link and when sending a link: Receiving a link opens the dialog just as if it was opened via button
• The dialog gets two additional buttons: "Start Tracking", and "Create timesheet entry".
• Add a date field as well, so we can create entries for past (or even future) days

Here's how I imagine it to look (roughly):

This would enable the following use cases:

• Invite someone to work on a task that I've already worked on (timesheet) or am tracking via activity
• When receiving a magic link decide whether to start tracking or create a timesheet entry directly
• The "resume" button on the activity could be entirely replaced with the magic link dialog as well

[StephanH90]

nice.

[anehx]

I thought about something like this as well. However, I think that adding a button to each row in the timesheet is too much so this would be my proposal:

• Clicking the existing "new magic link" gives you some kind of alternative cursor (in my head that would be a wand or something)
• With that cursor:
  • Clicking on an existing timesheet entry opens the dialog prefilled with the content currently in that row
  • Clicking on the empty row in the timesheet gives you the same dialog as we have now

[winged]

[...]

• Clicking the existing "new magic link" gives you some kind of alternative cursor (in my head that would be a wand or something)

• With that cursor:

  • Clicking on an existing timesheet entry opens the dialog prefilled with the content currently in that row
  • Clicking on the empty row in the timesheet gives you the same dialog as we have now

I think this "magic mode" would be rather tricky to understand or be discoverable, unless massive visual aids help pointing the user in the right direction after clicking (highlighting clickable rows). It would also introduce some additional state management complexity.

I'd rather stay with my proposal, I but absolutely accept your objection regarding over-cluttering of the timesheet row.

In the activities tab, we could entirely replay the "play" button, as my proposal would also allow users to "start tracking". It would add one click if you wanted to resume an activity, but that's acceptable IMO.

In the timesheet tab, the magic link button could be hidden unless the row is moused over, to avoid visual clutter. Or maybe we could move some rarely-used parts of the row into an edit mode (similar to the form that pops when clicking on a row in the activities tab) where we would hide the delete button, possibly the remaining-effort input and the "magic" link

[c0rydoras]

@winged whats the current state of this?

also #136 is related right?

[winged]

Yes, I even think #136 can be closed in favour of this one, as this is more detailled.

There has not been any (serious) work done on this, the screenshot above is just a mockup of mine to illustrate the behaviour