How to deal with records that require no action?

Question

On a transaction administration page, users can view what they are buying and what they are selling. The main tabs shows both records, each one with a distinguish tag that seperate buying/selling as well as a tab for showing only what they buying and selling.

But when a project gets:

• Completed (meaning the transaction was completed as in bought/sold)

OR

• Cancelled (no longer interested)

Should the records be maintained in the transaction administration page? For example ebay has a "Purchase History" page, but wouldn't it better to keep things simpler and straight foward in a single page?

I can see how completed transactions might be useful to maintain, for example one might want to go back and look at previous record to contact the same company or user. But how can I minimize the clutter completed project can give the the administration page?

What about cancelled transaction in what cases can I completly remove it from the database?

Answer 1

but wouldn't it better to keep things simpler and straight foward in a single page?

It could be -- I'd recommend providing the user with a toggle if you go to a single page. Sometimes the previous tx history could be relevant to current task(s), sometimes irrelevant.

What about cancelled transaction

To me this looks like a binary situation - was the user interested yes/no? If they cancelled the tx - and as a result nothing to do with the tx is live - then they have said "no" and I'd get rid of it. Otherwise you run the possibility of users scratching their heads and saying "How do I make it clear I'm NOT interested?"

Answer 2

If each transaction has a state (completed, cancelled etc.), all you have to do on the main transaction administration page is query for the non-completed/cancelled transactions so only those get displayed.

Alternatively, you can cache list so that when it gets updated, you can inform the user that X transaction have been completed/cancelled since last visit. That way, they know that there has been updates, but won't be required to take action.

Regarding removal from the database, as it's a transaction, I highly recommend that they remain for record-keeping purposes.