saving paths in a backend

Question

I thought to enlarge my team for a while to understand a possible improvement for a case is going to be a pita.

I need to be consistent inside a top-down pattern in which I have these nested content below the tabs:

• settings
• elements list

I'd like to have a way to save changes without any frustration for the users.

CASE A: SETTINGS

here I have a settings tab in which I could have various general or custom settings for the the object. How would you save? Just in this tab? or at a object level? Manually or automatically?

CASE B: LIST

Here I have a list, let's say the object is made by various elements (it's a people group). How would you change the edits to the list? autosave once something is done? manual save? higher level save?

It's quite hard to me. Probably I would add an autosave on the high level so that once a user makes a change it's saved. Would it be ok to add the autosave also in the settings tab?

Thank's a lot!

Answer 1

It depends on the kind of data that can be changed. If you have lists with really important/sensible data, saving the changes should always be approved so data does not get changed without you noticing.

To make editing faster inline-edit is a valid option, if you combine this with "Cancel" and "Save" Options you get a quick and secure way to change data.

For settings that aren't really sensible activating auto-save is fine. But as always, consistency is important, users will not understand why some settings can be saved automatically and some cant, so if you use autosave, use it on every personal setting. (that has nothing to do with data tables of course).