[Engine-devel] UX: Display VM Downtime in the UI

[Malini Rao]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Adam Litke" <alitke at redhat.com>
> To: "Malini Rao" <mrao at redhat.com>
> Cc: engine-devel at ovirt.org
> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 4:19:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [Engine-devel] UX: Display VM Downtime in the UI
> 
> On 18/12/13 16:04 -0500, Malini Rao wrote:
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Adam Litke" <alitke at redhat.com>
> >> To: engine-devel at ovirt.org
> >> Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 9:42:59 AM
> >> Subject: [Engine-devel] UX: Display VM Downtime in the UI
> >>
> >> Hi UX developers,
> >>
> >> My recent change: http://gerrit.ovirt.org/#/c/22429/ adds support for
> >> tracking the time a VM was last stopped and presenting it in the REST
> >> API.  I would also like to expose this information in the admin
> >> portal.  This feature has been requested by end users and is useful
> >> for managing lots of VMs which may not be used frequently.
> >>
> >> My idea is to change the 'Uptime' column in the VMs tab to 'Uptime /
> >> Downtime' or some equivalent and more compact phrasing.  If the VM is
> >> Up, then last_start_time would be used to calculate uptime.  If the VM
> >> is Down, then last_stop_time would be used to calculate downtime.
> >> This helps to make efficient use of the column space.
> >
> 
> Thanks for your comments!
> 
> >MR: I like the idea in general but can we extend to other states as
> >well? Then we could have the col be called something like 'Time in
> 
> I would argue that 'Up' and 'Down' are the only persistent states
> where a VM can linger for a user-controlled amount of time.  The
> others (WaitForLaunch, PoweringDown, etc) are just transitions with
> their own system defined timeouts.  Because of this, it really only
> makes sense to denote uptime and downtime.  When the VM is in another
> state, this column would be empty.

ok

> 
> >current state'. Also, I think since this col is so far from the first
> >column that has the status icon, we should have a tooltip on the
> >value that says ' Uptime' , 'down time' or '<Status> time'.
> 
> Agree on the tooltip.

I think we should do this in addition to whatever way we decide to display this info elsewhere in the table.

> 
> >>
> >> I am not sure how column sorting is being implemented, but if we
> >> combine uptime and downtime into a single column we have an
> >> opportunity to provide a really intuitive sort where the longest
> >> uptime machines are at the top and the longest downtime machines
> >> are at the bottom.  This could be accomplished by treating uptime
> >> as a positive interval and downtime as a negative interval.
> >
> >MR: That's an interesting idea. Not sure how that would translate if
> >we did all states and times. Then I would think you would do
> >descending order within each state but then we would have to fix a
> >sequence for the display of the various statuses based on the
> >statuses that matter most.
> 
> This is much simpler if you just work with Up and Down.
> 
> >>
> >> Questions for you all:
> >>
> >> - Do you support the idea of changing the Uptime column to include
> >> Downtime as well or would you prefer a new column instead?
> >
> >
> >MR: I do not like the idea of introducing new columns for this
> >purpose since at any given time, only one of the columns will be
> >populated. Another idea is to remove this column all together and
> >include the time for the current status as a tooltip on the status
> >icon preceding the name.
> 
> What about adding the uptime/downtime to the status column itself?  I
> don't necessarily think this will muddy the status much since there is
> still an icon on the left.

I like that idea. This way, a column is not dedicated to a piece of info that is relevant only sometimes. Depending on how critical/ important this info is, this could just be a tooltip on the icon and the up and Down status values. 


> 
>