How to elegantly create new parent when midway creating new child and realize you need a new parent?

Question

I have a child record called customers.

So when I create a new Customer, it's a form with a few text fields and one dropdown tree structure that lists all possible Companies that a new Customer might belong to.

Sometimes, when creating a new Customer midway through the form, the user realizes they need to create a new Company.

Creating a new Company is a form that requires at least filling up 3 fields in a new form.

How do I elegantly design the user flow?

In the first place, the only form to create new Customer is a modal dialog popup.

My options are:

1. have a link next to the Companies dropdown that says or Create New Company and this link opens a new tab to the standard Create new Company form. When the user is done, they need to go back to the previous tab and then press refresh so that the dropdown will load the new Company
2. have a link next to the Companies dropdown that says or Create New Company and this link opens a modal on top of the original modal. This new modal is to create new Company and when they press submit for new Company the old modal comes back with the dropdown preselecting the newly created company.
3. inside this modal for creating new Customer, I have 2 horizontal tabs. 1 for creating new Customer and 1 for creating new Company. The dropdown is always polling the server side for Companies thus ensuring the dropdown is always up-to-date.
4. Others?

The frequency of adding new Company will be high at first. As time goes by, the frequency will drop.

Let's assume high frequency.

Answer 1

I would go with the second option. It's unobtrusive and flexible. And it doesn't nessesary have to be a modal dialog, it can be integrated directly into the form so that you the user don't loose their flow.

Answer 2

I think this would largely depend on how often new companies are going to be added.

If the frequency of adding new company is low

I would go for first option and simply say 'Add Company' rather than 'Create New Company' since this Company would already exists in the real world and you are simply adding it in your system.

If the frequency of adding new company is high

Add another option 'Add Company' in the drop-down which will be differently highlighted (with a different background color) to indicate that this has a different action from other options in the list.

Answer 3

I think you shouldn't have a specific button for creating a new company, but rather have it be the default state.

Company:

<add a company>
Apple
Google
Intel
Microsoft

If users add a Customer, they can quickly say who the relevant Company is, or they can fill in the Customer info first. When they finish with Customer info, they press next. If they have selected a company from the list, done. If they have not selected a company yet, show them (again) the list with options.

When (the default state) is selected, show editable textboxes. When "Apple" is selected, show the text, but uneditable. This allows them to check if they've got the right one. I'm talking about Apple Corps, obviously.

It's 4AM, so my brainsquish is a bit fuzzy. Does the above all make sense?

Answer 4

Here is a mockup of creating any related data while user is in the process of creating another entity. Creating new company dialog that is called out from a button can be in modal or it can be in an expandable ajax area right below the input form. Having a full text search & autosuggestions in the companies form will save your database from some amount of typos and multiple clones of the same company spelled wrong etc.

Answer 5

I think most options that divert the user from one linear task off on a separate tangent aren't ideal.

One option that comes to mind is the ability to select a company or "other", which allows you to fill in the new company's name and nothing else. That's information that is conceptually part of the child record's information.

Then once the full form (and therefore primary task) has been validated and completed, send the user to a new form to fill in the remaining details about the company, with the company name prefilled to help make it clear what operation is being performed. Extra nice (but potentially forbidden in your data structure) is the option to "skip completing company" and come back to it later through the presumably familiar edit company workflow, leaving the new company as a stub (presumably clearly marked as such in listings etc.).

That allows the user to focus on the task at hand, deferring anything tangential to it until the task is complete (whether it's a single record creation, or a batch data entry scenario).