Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Better messaging on the calendar

I got an email this morning from Sandy Holterfield (Special School District) and as a result of our discussion I realized that the warning messages displayed on the therapy calendar were a little confusing.  You see, on our calendar page, we have all the days of the current month and a few others from the preceeding and following months at the edges:



Those days outside the month are for all intents and purposes disabled.  You have to change the calendar over to the actual month containing the day in question in order to access it.  This was enforced by an error condition that gave the following message:




Although accurate, the message doesn't actually convey what you need to do to see the day in question.  It just says "That date is not part of this month".  A message that vague is not much use to someone who's confused as to why they're seeing it in the first place.  Thus, in order to make the message less confusing, we've adapted something more descriptive:



The message reads "You have clicked on a date outside of the currently selected month. To view appointments on this date, change the 'Month' field at the top of the calendar to move the calendar to the desired month instead, or use the arrows at the top of the calendar to move forward or backward one month."  I think this should help anyone confused on this page better figure out what the next step is to get at the information they want.  Thanks for bringing it to our attention, Sandy.

See something else on our app that you think could be confusing to others?  Leave us a comment and let us know, we're always happy to try to make things easier.

~Ethan

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