Usability improvements in Many2One fields
In my experience training new users, many of them have problems working with m2o fields. I see two problems:
- Many of them do not pay much attention to the icon so when they've choosen an element, they still clic on the icon thinking it's going to search. What's worse, many new users think the opened form is for searching but they're changing important data in the system.
- They do not know how to remove the currently selected item
So maybe an improvement would be the search icon always be shown, no matter if the field is empty or has a record selected. This way users can choose another record without using the keyboard. Also this means that the icon is always the same in the same position.
I propose to not even have an open form icon at all. It may be an advanced feature for some users but in the popup there's the "edit" option which allows to open the record on a new tab. It is probably complicated to explain to many users the difference between open and edit. Maybe we should just have the "edit" option and if the user wants to have the open functionality they'd need to:
- Edit
- Modify
- Save the record
- Go back to the previous tab
- Click on the search icon and select the same record again
This will cause the client to call on_change again and refill information. After all, probably the open functionality is really really advanced and a corner case. How many times are you going to need it?
If really necessary we could add the open form icon shown on the left of the search icon only when a record is selected.