Usability improvements that Websphere console could use
Aug 24, 2015
Websphere offers a web based console to manage its settings and deployments. Sometimes, this web console is all that users have access to if their company security policy dictates that users should not have access to actual Websphere install location. Though the web console is quite powerful in that it allows you to control Websphere to a great degree, it could use some usability enhancements that will save time for its users.
From what I have seen, the most common use cases for the Websphere console are - deploying war/ear files and viewing log files. So it makes sense for Websphere console to provide these options right away when a user logs in. The current design just shows a Welcome page once a user logs in. From there, to deploy a war/ear, the user has to:
- Click on "Applications" link in the left navigation sidebar.
- The click in "Application types"
- Finally click on "Websphere enterprise applications" to bring up the screen where they can deploy.
Instead of showing the welcome screen, the Websphere console can take the user to the "Websphere enterprise applications" screen after they login. This eliminates three additional steps to get to the deploy step.
Another common task is restarting deployed applications. Currently, to do this, users have to tick a checkbox for the application, click on "Stop" button, then tick the checkbox for the application again and click on "Start" button. A "Restart" button can combine the two step stop/start operation into a single step.