Introduction to PRTG 7 Part 6: Why we created the PRTG 7 user interface to be a little…. different
This another posting of my series of introductory blog posts about our new software “PRTG Network Monitor 7” which is currently undergoing a public beta test.
We began the development process of PRTG 7 in 2006. The first step was to make a list of features that we (and our customers) wanted to have in the software additionally to all the functionalities of PRTG 6 and IPCheck 5. We listened to feedback from our users and one major task was to create a new software that was able to monitor 10-50 times as many sensors as the old programs and - as a consequence - we also needed a new user interface to enable the users to handle hundreds and thousands of sensors with ease.
After assessing both IPCheck’s and PRTG’s code base we had to come to the conclusion that with neither product architecture - both of them had been under constant development for 3-5 years - we would be technically able to cover our goals. Also both user interfaces were not really great for monitoring setups with more than 500-1000 sensors.
With a few other ideas that we had in mind for the future of PRTG we decided to create a whole new internal architecture which could cover our plans for the next V7 as well as for future versions (of course we are still reusing as much of the old, well tested code as possible). The decision to create a new software as successor to PRTG 6 and IPCheck 5 gave us the unique chance to create a whole new user experience with it.
A user of PRTG 7 will notice that the new user interface is a little different from other monitoring products and also the web interface is a little different from other web based user interfaces. These differences did not happen by chance!
We believe that by “breaking a few rules” and doing some things differently from other products we were able to create a user experience which is a lot easier to learn and understand than without these specialities.
We use context menus in our web interface for example, which is quite unusual. We wanted to make “old-school” Windows GUI programs obsolete with our new web interface. The web interface should - to some extent - feel like a Windows application. And for this intention the concept of “left-click-context-menus” is a great tool that makes managing the sensors quick and easy.
Another sample is the lack of a “sort objects manually” feature where the user can sort devices or groups manually. This may be fine for a setup with 50 sensors, but becomes useless for 5000 sensors or more. A user needs automatic tools to manage many sensors that automatically show important stuff first.
That’s why we have implemented the “priority” concept. The user specifies a rating from 1 star (”*”) as the lowest priority to 5 stars (”*****”) as the highest priority for groups, devices and sensors. When PRTG displays web pages with these objects, it automatically shows objects with higher priorities first. For example on the “Alarms” page you will always see the sensors with a 5 star rating in the list first. Another example is the sensor tree (hierarchical list of groups, devices, and sensors) where also the important objects are always shown first.
At first these and other “a-little-different” concepts may take a moment to get accustomed to, but the longer you work with them the more you will realize how much these concepts make working with PRTG easier and quicker.
What’s you opinion? What do you think about PRTG 7’s new user interface? Please send your feedback to support@paessler.com!