Loading message

Question

I have page that contains a list of tenants that are currently active.

To add a new one, there is a link to a full page form that adds the new client to the list of active tenants.

This operation takes a while, so we decided to add a loading message that explains to the user whats going on (database created, application configured, etc)

We were wondering where to put this feedback and we came up with two options:

1. Show a modal that is updated with events from the backend and after the operation is complete an "ok" button becomes clickable, after the user clicks the "ok" button its redirected to the list of tenants

2. Show the feedback in place of the form content (in the same page without showing a modal) and after the operation was successful we show the user a link to go back to the list of active clients.

Are there substantial differences among these two? Is there a more intuitive way to accomplish the same thing?

Answer 1

As long as the process is just a few seconds, I think you can handle it this way:

1. User clicks "submit" to add a new tenant
2. Show a loading modal with a message "Adding your tenant" (or something similar) with a little animation (as long as it is just a few seconds, you don't need to show the details of the process)
3. After the tenant is added to the system, take the user directly back to the tenant list and show an animation/indicator of some sort that the new tenant was successfully added. You don't need to have them click "ok" to go back.

You can read here for more details on when to add more detailed progress status. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465469.aspx

Answer 2

Modal is not a good idea here, because it blocks other user actions too (or prevent them to see their data that already loaded). you can simply show small progress bar on the right side of your screen with short data about the item. after it added, hide the box and just highlight the row of new item in table (or any other container you using).