Explain disabled actions
Author: Shiran Hirshberg | Last edit: August 23, 2023 | Design type: Action menus, Alerting, Buttons and links, Definitions, Onboarding | Product area: ACM, Cluster as a Service
Explain disabled actions
Background
We encountered situations where we had to display inactive text fields and actions within an action list. Our intention was to retain these elements in the UI in order to guide users regarding upcoming fields that need completion or actions that are currently unavailable for specific reasons.
To enhance user comprehension concerning the reasons behind the disabled fields/actions, we incorporated descriptive messages into the component or implemented tooltips that appear when hovering over them. Presented below are a few instances in which we addressed these scenarios.
Design
Below you can see a scenario where adding a new template failed. Users can create a cluster from each template but in this scenario, the template is not ready. We kept the “Create a cluster” action in the action menu but disabled it and added an informative description of why this action is disabled.
In this case, we disabled two text fields below the “Helm chart repository” field, because users need first to choose the repo and then we will be able to show them the Helm charts which are inside this repository. We disabled the text field and added an informative placeholder of “Select a repository first” to guide users and explain why these fields are disabled.
In this example, we already have text inside the text fields. When users try to edit this form, they cannot change the values in these two fields, so we show a tooltip on hover explaining why these two fields are disabled and what they can do if they want to change it.
