fleetdm / fleet

Open-source platform for IT, security, and infrastructure teams. (Linux, macOS, Chrome, Windows, cloud, data center)
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Improve experience for Fleet environments with many labels #22362

Open ddribeiro opened 1 month ago

ddribeiro commented 1 month ago

Gong snippet: https://us-65885.app.gong.io/call?id=3532396675968293631&highlights=%5B%7B%22type%22%3A%22SHARE%22%2C%22from%22%3A1012%2C%22to%22%3A1170%7D%5D

Problem

Labels in Fleet are increasingly being used as a mechanism to target specific hosts for certain things. As organizations create more labels, they can be difficult to manage in Fleet’s current UI.

Currently, the only way to create, edit, and view labels is on the Hosts page by clicking the Filter by… drop-down menu. This works for environments with a small amount of labels, but would get unmanageable for environments that have hundreds of labels.

What have you tried?

I tried looking in the Fleet UI for ways I could view and manage my labels. I was only able to find them in the Filter by… drop down menu on the hosts page.

Potential solutions

It might be appropriate to add Labels as a top-level item in the Fleet navigation bar (along with Hosts, Controls, Software, etc.). This would allow more screen real estate to view many labels, click into them directly to edit them, and see host counts for each label. Having a dedicated page would provide a richer experience than managing them through the pull-down menu on the hosts page.

What is the expected workflow as a result of your proposal?

As an IT admin with many labels in my Fleet environment, I would be able to view all my labels on a dedicated page instead of a narrow drop-down menu. I could see host counts for each label on this page. If I click into the label, I could edit it directly and possibly see what items (custom settings, OS updates, etc.) are using that label.
RachelElysia commented 3 days ago

Just added a second customer label onto this. Except I would title it "Improve experience for Fleet environments with no labels", but the same solution applies.

We have a customer with no labels get stuck in the UI for adding a profile and selecting targeting custom labels, but has no labels present. Screenshot:

Screenshot 2024-10-29 at 11 19 12

User:

Hey, can you help here? I am not seeing any labels in the include/exclude list.

As a user, it's hard to tell how to add a label from here.

My response:

If you go to the "Hosts" page and "Filter by" platform/label dropdown, you can create custom labels that will show up there.

This experience really highlights one of the painpoints of the Labels UI/UX and I really think we should prioritize revamping how to manage labels sooner than later.

My suggestion: Short term solution: Anywhere there's a "empty labels" UI, or any labels UI for that matter, we add a button or a link to add a label so users aren't lost how to take the next steps. (Here's an example of a similar empty state for a software list that has a link to add software so the users aren't lost how to take the next steps) Long term solution: Make labels a more top-level item as suggested in this ticket. Adjacent suggestion: We should allow users to live query a label SQL in the label flow so they know if the label SQL they created work to target their intended hosts.

cc: @nonpunctual @noahtalerman

RachelElysia commented 3 days ago

Also, while digging GH, found this additional labels related customer request #18841

nonpunctual commented 3 days ago

Related:

https://github.com/fleetdm/fleet/issues/21825

https://github.com/fleetdm/fleet/issues/21894#issuecomment-2341430736

Making a Team is under User menu in Settings & is not near Hosts Making a Label is practically hidden in a pulldown below the Search bar on Hosts view Making a Policy has its own tab

Maybe they should seem "more" equivalent in the UI?

Team = group of hosts Label = group / sub-group of hosts Policy = state of hosts which has reference in Fleet UI

Rachel Elysia Perkins

Teams has been there since the start of teams when we only had a team dropdown on the Host page, it's really a core feature of the UI

Labels is the same! It's always only been in the dropdown

Making of a policy, we're moving Adding software to it's own page level page so it matches the /queries/new and /policies/new

noahtalerman commented 3 days ago

Hey @RachelElysia can you please break out a separate feature request for deebradel? It sounds like deebradel's problem (no labels) is different than cisneros (many labels).

If they're part of the same request we lose this understanding. The feature request becomes overly generic.