Hi,

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a former customer. I have breifly played around with the beta version of Nexus and thought, since this is the feedback forum I'd share my views.

Firstly, I am amazed at the vast amount of features, and impressed by the modules functions.

However, overall, I really don't like it.
It seems every new product and product version IPS comes up with a new ACP, and up until now you have done a great job of improving what was already great in IPB2.1. However in Nexus, I found the ACP confusing, ugly and over javascripted.
Not only could I not find half the things I wanted to, it ran quite slowly for me, and completly crashed when I turned off javascript.
It seems to me that Nexus could have hapilly used the ACP design from IPB (I actually vaguely remember someone saying that IPBs ACP was changed to match Nexus) but has made a complete mess of creating its own.

Also, I think the front end has had a lot of neglect. For example, when you load tickets in the ACP - the boxes are coloured for staff and user, this is not the same in the front end - why does the front end not just use the same code to load the tickets?

I haven't really spoken to anyone else about Nexus, but I imagine most of the feedback you've recieved is positive, but from my perspective, it needs work... or it's had too much work. I hope you'll take on what I've said.

I agree with you - at first, I was in awe of "OMG NEW STUFF", but you do make an excellent point.

Personally, I won't be purchasing Nexus as I only run a small community, but even if I did own a business, I probably wouldn't purchase it in it's current form.

Nexus is not IPB though. Nexus originally had the same interface as the IPB ACP, but it just isn't flexible enough. It's tough, but people need to move away from looking at Nexus as a 'revision' of IPB. They're completely separate, with different users and different uses.

What were you not able to find? Know exactly what you had trouble with enables us to take another look and see how we can improve it. With something the scale of Nexus though, you'll need to read the manual before attempting to use it (naturally you can't do that right now because it isn't released). There's a wealth of options, and pointing and clicking things without reference won't enable you to explore the power of it.

The front end is just a shell for you to work from. We don't anticipate many people keeping the default website and templates and it wouldn't be a good use of our time if we put a ton of work into something most people are going to change anyway.

I'm not dismissing your comments, just saying that you can't look at it in the same way you look at IPB, because they're very different. If you have any specific difficulties, you need to tell us what they are if we want to improve it

I know Nexus isn't IPB or a revision of IPB, but it is an Invision product.

I mean, let's say I have IPB and IPN connected with Converge. How confusing is it going to be that the ACP of Board and Converge matches, but Nexus looks completly different?

The problems I found was that nothing was centralised. In IPB (sorry for comparing it to IPB but my point is that IPB has it right) if I want to change a setting - I open up the ACP, and click 'Tools & Settings'.
In Nexus, if I want to change a setting, I have to work out which section is going to be in and find it myself.

I know Nexus has a too complex ACP, because in most of the sections the only option in the sidebar is "Add [whatever]" - you could have easilly created a seperate tab for each application, and then had all the areas collectivly in the sidebar, rather than this odd setup of two top navigation bars consisting of javascript menus and sub-menus, a sidebar, a 'launch' button AND a collection of tools in the bottom bar. It's too much.

Now let's say I'm editting the mail parser settings, and I want to get back to the ticket views - there is no simple way to do this. I can't click the main tab or access it from the navigation trail as I could in IPB. I can either go Ticket Management-->Ticket Management(the sub-menu has the same title as the main menu?) --> view tickets, or right-click the tab and click the tab's name (which most users would not figure out). Why does it need to be that complicated?

Finally, it isn't obvious where settings for features are. IPB has that help box in the ACP with links to the settings page (or simply links to the settings page in the sidebar), Nexus doesn't.
For example, what is the use of Ticket Management > View Escalations > Escalations ? The page says "The following tickets have been escalated by the customer." - there is no option (at least by default) for customers to escalate tickets.

I do understand Nexus needs a diverse ACP for the large (and very impressive) feature set. But I am someone who uses web apps quite a lot, I haven't even got any of modules other than the defaults that were included in the beta - and I'm very confused by Nexus.

So IP NEXUS will be ready for BRIDGE with IPB FORUM for example if we purchase CMS Component?

You can view it on the link I sent you earlier. I have IP. Board, Converge, and Nexus bridged together though Converge. So the users can register in one place and have access to numerous places by logging in with there e-mail.

Hmm when DYNAMIC CMS Component has included(if when we purchase of course )? As the others portals, as SUBDREAMER.
We can view the same users statistics on forum and on portal...?

And in Nexus there is a nice menu that says Tools and Settings....

I have to say I like the new ACP layout, it is correct for what Nexus is - modular business software.

Just my 2cents worth

Edit - The only one change I would make is to move the page notes section etc from the bottom off the screen up to a new menu by the Launch button. The bottom bar can get in the way a bit when the page you are looking at scrolls. If you see what I mean.

IPB is almost set up for someone with little knowledge to be able to use, however Nexus is on a different level. It is a CMS package and anyone who has used any CMS software before will find that Invision's Nexus ACP is very much similar to many of the population CMS's currently in use. There is always a learning curve and espcially will be with this because of the functionality that it allows and what you can do.

I'm sure there can probably be some things to change to make it more efficient but we wont' be able to really tell what changes need to be made until we start using it in production vs beta. Beta is good for finding bugs, issues with general use but when it comes to streamlining or real improvements you won't find that until you are trying to stretch it to the limits which usually comes with production sites more so than beta tests.

I didn't like the new ACP at first but its growing on me. I do like loading up different tabs for different areas so I don't have huge menus to navigate. I would like to see an IPB install with IPN's ACP.

You can still right click and open links in a new browser window or tab, I don't see what the issue is?

You've been using IP.Board for a while - possibly as much as four years. IP.Nexus is different. It's bound to take a while to get used to it.

There is no way we can stuff IP.Nexus into the IP.Board ACP, it just won't fit.

I do recall that when we moved the IP.Board ACP from a long list of links in a frame to the tabbed interface, people had similar complaints.

Progress is almost always met with resistance.

I agree with you it being slow, IPB admin cp is fast for me but the Nexus takes too long to load pages and i think in some areas that i will make a new topic about could be using ajax better.

Overall i am pleased with it.

That's how most of us (that weren't actually developing the interface) felt. At first, it's entirely new. The tabbed interface as used in Nexus is really different from anything else we use regularly (outside of perhaps an actual web browser for example). But once you use it for a while, it becomes more and more useful.

Like, when I'm looking at a ticket and someone aims me saying can you check this ticket, I can hit search, put the ticket id in, and click the search results - all in the same window, and it saves the last page I was on in the tab drop down. Same when I'm looking at a ticket and someone needs me to check their IPS Beyond account. I can look at their client area account to confirm they have a current support contract using the search without actually leaving the support ticket I was looking at.

The more you get used to it, the more useful it is. Just think what it was like when we went from single browser instances to tabs in the browser - took some getting used to for sure, but who could live without it now?

browsers have tabs

i kinda grew on me quite quickly, i'm liking the nexus acp, i guess when i use it more i can decided better.

When Invision Power Board came out was it as beautiful as it is now? A new product isn't going to be entirely meet your needs (maybe you get lucky), but something as big as this product is it will take versions to perfect it to something as great as IPB. It just needs time to meet its full potential and amaze us with new features and progressing technology.

IE6 Users.

lol indeed, i used ie6 for a while even though ie7 was out because i used the tabs on another comp and found it really weird.

but to be honest, now i switched i find it much easier to navigate and keep my Taskbar clear, it definatly helps when im developing my websites, as i have so many programs open as it is, i dont need 100 web pages open too (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, FlashFXP etc not to mention the stupid amounts of chat programs i run to keep in contact with friends, clients, clan members etc.)

So basically, tabs do help

People still use IE6? I would have thought you'd at least go IE7, or even better, Firefox.

I do have to agree with this one, don't quite see how the escalations work. been playing with the escalations settings in main settings and the area under customer support and doesn't seem to change the ticket page in the main site or make any difference to the acp area no matter what i do...