Add "recently accessed" to Kibana Home

[alexfrancoeur]

Our original design included local, user specific recently accessed pages (see below). Given some of the recent work done for recently used time ranges in the timepicker, I think we can utilize the local cache to provide a list of recently visited saved objects. These could include dashboards, saved searches and visualizations. I think this will greatly improve the adoption of the home page as more than just a UI to help you get up and running.

@snide @formgeist seeing how the designs have changed, maybe we can get some additional input on how this can look in the current implementation?

cc: @nreese

[formgeist]

@alexfrancoeur Sure thing! @snide would you rather delegate within the Kibana design team to do a revised concept, or we could always meet for coffee and have a chat about it?

[formgeist]

Spoke to @snide in our designers meeting yesterday, and I'll try and design a proposal for adding this to the Home screen next week 👍

[alexfrancoeur]

awesome, thanks @formgeist!

[formgeist]

I created a few mocks, all in this Abstract branch. I've asked for feedback from some of the Kibana design team, but please add your feedback.

[formgeist]

This came up in the comments section of a single mock, so thought perhaps to move the conversation here. We probably need to talk about some specs for the feature;

• Show up to 10 recently accessed items in the element
• Truncate labels by x chars to avoid overflow issues
• Sort chronologically (latest first)

Open questions

• Do we need a clear option?

@alexfrancoeur thoughts?

[cchaos]

The main difference that I'm seeing between the current new home page and the one referenced in the description of this issue, is that the new home page has really become the "Add Data" page whereas the mockup above has a bunch of different sections pertaining to Kibana overall.

If the idea is to eventually get the homepage closer to the mockup above, then we should think about restructuring the layout to be closer to that end goal. Otherwise, I feel like the addition of the Recently accessed section feels out of place on the "Add data" page.

[nreese]

@cchaos The home page currently has two sections. The Add Data is the most prominent, but this is coded up really as just a promo section. The second section is the Feature directory. I think adding the recent accessed to the top adds another section and does a better job of making the home page more than just Add Data

[cchaos]

I think the problem lies within our use of panels and titles. Having one large title be "Add Data" makes the whole page seem to belong to that title. In the mockup above, you have 3 equal sized titles describing each section. I think a simple solution is to reduce the size of the "Add Data" title to match those of the sections below and wrap it in it's own panel. Like so:

[alexfrancoeur]

@cchaos to answer your first question, yes. We'd like to homepage to be more than an Add Data and Feature directory. Eventually, we'd like it to be a much more broadly used landing page. The two most notable features we'd like to add are "recently accessed", "what's new" and potentially even an "upgrade prompt".

@formgeist thanks for relaying specs and linking to the abstract comments. I have a hard time keeping up with them in abstract these days.

Show up to 10 recently accessed items in the element

I would agree with and think the expandable component should make this a good experience

Truncate labels by x chars to avoid overflow issues

+1 here as well, I just want to make sure if you hover, you get the full description. We have a number of users who are prefixing their saved objects with a group or application description. We do this in beats modules for instance. If a user has done this, it's possible that all names of recently accessed saved objects are the same when truncated

Sort chronologically (latest first)

Yes please!

Do we need a clear option?

I'm not sure if this should be a requirement, but it could be a good option. Honestly, I don't see why anyone would want to clear this, it'l likely be the most useful part of the homepage as a new user begins to use Kibana more 😄
How would you see this working? Clearing the full component so it just removes that section? If you cleared, would you then only see Add Data and the navigation sections? I guess this would also tie into what the question of what this looks like when it is empty. For a brand new user to Kibana, an empty recently accesses section isn't the most appealing

I also agree that the carrots look like a bread crumb. I know Capser had some ideas around saved object "type" icons. If it's a dashboard, a dashboard icon. Visualization a viz icon, etc. Would that fit in this design?

I like how the designs have evolved. I prefer the latest one from @cchaos at the moment. Kibana Home is not solely meant to be focused on adding data. I think we can give equal focus for each of these sections of the homepage. The "Add Data" experience will evolve into more of a "Solution" experience as well. I can provide more details around what I'm thinking for this section live

[cchaos]

++

I think it will be easier to manage future additional home page sections by encompassing each current section in it's own panel.

[nreese]

What should be displayed when hitting kibana for the first time and there is no recently selected history?

[alexfrancoeur]

@nreese my thoughts are that we hide this component completely. @cchaos @formgeist what do you think?

[alexfrancoeur]

yes @nreese !!!