The new slide menu is AWFUL! Is there any way to use the old flyout menu instead?

+1

I have to agree here.  IN the old menus, if you weren't exactly sure of the name of the report you were looking for, you could drag your mouse down and eventually find it.  Now that takes many more clicks.

I guess the only option now will be to guess what the report is called and enter that in the search box.

One last note, this will also mean that you need to properly name your reports if you have the same report as an eVar and an sProp, since in Search, they will both look the same.  I suggest adding a (p1) or (v1) to Pros and eVars respectively...

We implemented Adam's recommendation over a year ago and it is quite helpful in search and dealing with developers.  We have props and evars with the same names so by adding the c# and v# respectively, then we know which is which when searching.  It also helps when a developer asks about prop10.  Before, we had to look it up on a spreadsheet to see what report it corresponded to since sometimes Custom traffic 1-10 would only have 8 enabled so you didn't know if the last one was really 10.  The funny thing is that our users now reference reports by the c# or v# because whenever we would reply to emails asking for reports to use, we always use the report name plus the c#/v# so now I have users emailing me asking about the c10 report rather than the Article/Blog. I give this tip 2 thumbs up.  I'm also not a fan of the new sliding menu and all the clicks you have to use to get to what you need.  I do like the Favorites spelled out because when people couldn't find their dashboards, just saying click the Star in the left rail confused users.

Just out of interest as an analytics solution provider was Adobe Target used to test out the impacts of new nav? Or like most non data driven companies was the decision to launch this painful experience simply done using the hippo method? and if so who was the hippo?

Benjamin Gaines wrote...

Yes, we had a lengthy and highly successful beta test. Testers reported that the change was a bit disorienting at first, but that once they grew accustomed to the new navigation it was not a barrier to usage, especially with the improved searchability on the left nav. 

I sincerely feel the pain of users who are struggling to get accustomed to the new navigation. All I can say is that we are working toward additional improvements to how you access and share data that will make it much easier for users (particularly those who don't use Adobe Analytics every day) to get the insights they need. 

 

I was in the beta, and as Ben mentioned, it was a bit jarring at first.  But now, I like it better than old way.  Combined with the search enhancement, it's even better.

One big issue I have is that we like to document how to get to reports and using the fly-outs we could grab an image of the entire navigation to a specific report. I know the new search features are nice but it's like spelling a word. If you can't spell it then the dictionary is pretty useless. The same here if you don't know what to search for it's hard to figure out what report you want and for a lot the context is important of how you get there. [ie props and evars that might have the same name] I have all my props/evars/events numbered because of an Adam Greco recommendation but many of the reports and events that are adobe default ones don't have numbers and you have to know what you are looking for to find them.

So what your saying is Search is the only way you want users to navigate? Because otherwise it is utterly unusable. For example, how can I click 'Back' to get to "Reports & Analytics" only to have the menu tell me to go 'Forward' to get to "Reports & Analytics"? The hierarchy is illogical. I have been using the new UI daily since it was released, hoping to get used to it; sorry, it's not happening. Every action takes twice as long to complete when I know where to go. When I'm looking for something... forget about it.

Agree - I find it painful to do what used to be quick and easy.

I can't imagine that Adobe will revert back to how it used to be, so hopefully it'll be "ok" with familiarity.

Thanks for all the replies folks!

Not to harp on about it, but yet another reason why the new nav doesn't work is that the breakdown menu is still the same mouse-over and folder structure.  Previously, getting users familiarised with the menu structure by navigating to the reports helped embed this structure so they knew where to look when applying breakdowns.  

Now, if we are going to have to advise they search for every report, there is still no way to search when applying a breakdown and therefore users will find it very difficult to find the correct report.

(P.S. I do agree about the eVar and prop numbers suggestion - we've been doing this for a while - but this is more to help admins rather than the standard user.)

Tim.

+1000

The new nav is frustrating me and everyone else I work with. Most of our users are not daily analytics users and only access a limited number of reports. We have nested reports several levels deep. Thanks (Adobe) for forcing us to memorize where everything is and how everything is named.