New Desktop UI Release 2022

Add me to the users requesting the ability to see both the metadata card and the document preview simultaneously. When we have a large quantity of files that need metadata manually keyed, we can't waste time switching tabs to find the values we need to key. I realize that the toggle feature disabled the configurations but adding extra mouse clicks to an already laborious process seems like a large step backwards.

I've seen a lot of comments from the admin perspective, but not as many from an operations perspective, in which this feels like an impending train wreck. The web version seems to have got it right. Perhaps I missed a thread where a good solution was provided for the desktop client?  

Add me to the users requesting the ability to see both the metadata card and the document preview simultaneously. When we have a large quantity of files that need metadata manually keyed, we can't waste time switching tabs to find the values we need to key. I realize that the toggle feature disabled the configurations but adding extra mouse clicks to an already laborious process seems like a large step backwards.

I've seen a lot of comments from the admin perspective, but not as many from an operations perspective, in which this feels like an impending train wreck. The web version seems to have got it right. Perhaps I missed a thread where a good solution was provided for the desktop client?  

I should add that I'm new to this forum/community and still trying to find my way around.  

You can Set the Metadata Card to Open only a single Window.. Then you can Open Metadata Card for an object in a separate Window and click another object it switches Preview and Metadata Card to the News object..

But i agree, please M-Files consider adding the Triple View to Desktop Client, Monitors are wide These days :D

Thanks for the advice. I found some info on setting the SinglePopupMode and will try that. If it works, I'll push it out to our users. That sounds like a reasonable workaround.

I noticed something else about this: when the metadata card is at the bottom, it takes two presses of the TAB key to get to the save button. In the right-hand position, I have to tab through every field in my card or use the mouse. In Oracle, we can set tab flows to put optional fields after the action buttons and get the user on to their next task quickly. 

I used another ECM product before M-Files, and the default behavior when updating a view full of files that needed metadata was to automatically select the next file in the view after each save. We could update a hundred files without ever touching the mouse after the first click. M-Files is great, but that's one feature I miss from their competitor's product. 

I'm looking at a view right now for a facility of ours that is unfortunately delinquent in putting away almost 2,000 files that need manually entered metadata. After the desktop changes, they may just give up on those and leave them at their current unfiled state. They'll still be able to find them, but it just adds to their already poor practices and may cause problems with retention policies for those docs. 

This concern was mentioned in the New Desktop webinar a month or two ago, so I know that M-Files is aware of it. It's a big enough UX problem for us that it would have failed our regression testing. 

Most of the above added for the consideration of the M-Files development team.

Thanks again for the reply, sweise!

Very useful tip! I've been testing it and like the results. I found that the popped-out metadata cards maintain their link to the instance that spawned them, so working in two M-Files windows simultaneously is not a problem. For editing a bunch of files, this may be better than the toggled card because I can set it on another monitor, and it stays open. A few hundred users will be getting this registry key this week. Thanks again.

I'm glad that you found help from this setting! We are still considering other ways as well for showing the metadata and preview side-by-side, as there has been a lot of feedback around this issue.

And another.  I don't pay much attention to what M-Files is doing as it's been visually the same forever.  Today came into auto update of a pretty big change in UI.  Now my users who are filing large amounts of paper data have to look at the paperwork while filling in the metadata instead of seeing it all on the screen.

I thought this was the "Bottom Pane" view option, but that just seems to make the empty box under the files list different sizes.  Options should be "Off, Blank, Metadata".

I hand-keyed over 500 files this weekend, just to get a feel for the new UI. I like the metadata card better in a popped-out window than at the bottom now. You can drag it wherever you want, and it stays on top of the view that you're working on.

In this case, I was entering invoice numbers for a bunch of invoices that had printed too light for the barcode to be read, so the data I needed was always in the same spot. I put the metadata card right over the preview pane, underneath the invoice number to locate it faster. I ended up using a two-handed approach, using the mouse to highlight the data in the preview, select the metadata field and to select the next record after each save. Keyboard hand did copy and paste and CTRL-S to save the card. 

I pushed this registry key out to about 400 users last week, and they all have it in the new version. I also sent out an advanced notice email to all users with some screenshots and instructions on how to use the single popup metadata card. We have had zero help desk tickets on this so far.

I'm not sure this is the correct way to do it, but it worked for us. It's vault-specific and version specific from what I can tell, so adjust this for your situation.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Motive\M-Files\22.10.11903.5\Client\MFShell\YourVaultName\]
"EnableSingleMetadataPopupMode"=dword:00000001

Just tested this out.  It works for our needs.  Hate relying on a registry setting and would prefer user selectable options. But in this case, I would think that this should be the expected behavior of the popped out metadata card so I'm OK with applying it broadly.

We use registry keys to set global settings for M-Files, like automatic logout timers and auto-filling of metadata. I've just been going through that file to clean up all the old ones that are now built into the application. M-Files update now copies the old registry settings forward, so it's not the maintenance headache that it used to be.   

You can enable the client setting via Advanced Vault Settings so you don't need to distribute the registry key via other methods, please see this post: https://community.m-files.com/forums-1552881334/f/general-discussion-feedback/7404/new-desktop-ui-full-release-q-a/21190#21190

Once the client setting is enabled in AVS, the users will get it when they next log into the vault.