Events UI needs revamped

[curtishall]

We receive a large number of complaints from customers who can't access events because they don't know how to access past events. They assume the events in the bottom section of the live view is all that there are to watch.

The 'Events' icon in the top corner isn't labeled unless you hover over it, so that also adds to confusion. We need to better identity this button (with text?) or move it some where to make it easier to find.

Furthermore, we need to remove 'Load Events' from the events screen. I know why this was added, but it's an extra step that customers shouldn't need...once they select the date it should populate the events.

[curtishall]

https://secure.helpscout.net/conversation/93285671/5024/

[antonsviridenko]

I propose to add label with text like "displaying last 50 event from 10500" in bottom section of the live view and also display total number of stored events in events window

[antonsviridenko]

About "Load Events" button, probably it is better to add checkbox "Auto load events" in settings. If it is checked, events will be loaded automatically and reloaded on date change, "Load Events" button will be hidden. If cleared, "Load Events" button will be displayed and current behaviour preserved. And make it checked by default

[curtishall]

On the main events window (not under the live view) we should have pagination of some type of limiting of events This should provide the user with very clear information on what is happening at the top of the event windows:

Displaying the most recent 10,000 events, there are a total of 18,325 events for your search criteria.

By limiting to 10,000 events per 'page' when can do always with some of the issues on the server side and get away from the "Load Events" button completely.

[themainframe]

Looking at other CCTV DVR platforms, generally such large lists of events aren't used as part of the UI. Better searching, narrowing down by date/time/alarm/camera criteria makes it unnecessary. Is a list of 10,000 events ever useful/worth the performance hit?

[antonsviridenko]

I think that also it will be better to add second widget with date/time selector (and add time selection in first one), so user will be able to select shorter and more specific time periods, like from 2015-05-31 15:00:00 to 2015-05-31 19:30:00

And by default these two can be set to show last one hour of events, in order to save network bandwidth consumed by loading huge amount of events from default selection, main reason for introducing "Load Events" button for clients with slow network connection

[curtishall]

Good idea.