How often do you use Undo?

Most of my clients aren't the site maintainers themselves, so I rarely get to explain the content management features Perch has to offer myself. Generally, I think many don't know the feature exists.

The only instance I remember I had to roll back a change was on a staging environment when the client wanted to make a big content change to a region, but they were almost certain they wanted to go back to the original version. They just mentioned it in passing and I showed them how to roll back.

In terms of UX, I like the Revision History tab on multiple-item regions. It seems it's only visible when the editing mode is set to listdetail. I like how it shows the available versions, when they were created and by which user.

The Undo button on the other hand just reverts to the previous version. I don't like how it doesn't ask you to confirm the action particularly because it also looks like a tab itself. If the behaviour was similar to the Revision History tab, I might use it more or introduce more clients to the feature.

tldr; I rarely use the revision system. While it's good to know it's there, I don't think I'd miss it if you were to remove it. If you opt to keep it, I would prefer the behaviour of the Revision History tab to that of the current Undo button.

My clients tend to use the drafts feature to manage changes rather than publishing and using the undo feature.

I have no way of knowing, aside from contacting them all and asking. My feeling would be that its not used and that my customers would use the draft feature instead. The problem that I have seen with the undo, when I've used it, is that there's no 'redo' if you 'undo' too far. (Hope that makes sense). I guess you could 'undo' (by mistake) something that you did several weeks ago.

To add my thoughts:

- Clients have been worried to Undo as it's such an immediate action, and there's no way to redo.

- Be nice to view full revision history from the actual edit page (as Hussein mentions)

- It'd be shame to lose it all together, but I do think only "one" undo would be more than adequate in most situations, but keeping the "revision history" so editors can still see who edited what, when (clients have said this is very handy where there are multiple editors)

I can't say for sure because I don't know what my clients do when inputting data. I don't teach them about undo, therefore my assumption is that they would not use it. I know I don't use it for my projects.

If I press Undo, I don't know what I get. Also there is no Redo if I use it.

But Please leave 'Undo' in!

Only somehow make it more visible what its doing.

To give me more the feeling of being in control you can maybe:

* Add a Redo,

* Add a date to the Undo button (Undo to version 4 from May 3, 2008)

* Mark (like color?) the changed values after an Undo, so I know the differences. Maybe not the words in the text, but on a field level. (Don't want to make it too difficult for you.)

René

Almost. In fact we have reduced PERCH_UNDO_BUFFER to 1 in order to reduce the time taken by "OPTIMIZE TABLE PERCH_DB_PREFIX_content_index" when making changes.

However it did come in pretty handy once when my boss unchecked the "Allow multiple items" checkbox instead of "Edit all one one page", thereby deleting all items but one unintentionally.

I know this is from a while back but it feels like the undo is only really useful within a session. Without a comprehensive history of edits it's hard, as someone says above, to know what you might be undoing.

I had never used it until I read your question, but I just did now. I sort of knew it was there but wasn't quite sure exactly what it did, but it works as I would have expected.

rarely to never

It's used very rarely by my clients. But events that need it tend to be a major/critical and when it's impossible to restore the database from a backup without data loss.

As people have said above, the UX of the current implementation could definitely be improved. I feel this feature may fit well in a more comprehensive publishing workflow addon which also includes features like advanced permissions (over and above the current roles), publishing and deletion approval workflows and auditing. Maybe a paid addon?