vRealize Automation Notification System

The current version of vRA (vRealize Automation 8.0+) has areas of improvement in its notification system. All the information from vRA is communicated to the users via Email notifications only. These email notifications are difficult to manage and use because the current system doesn't provide any customization functionality for them.

Besides, users who used the previous versions of vRA were used to a better system. They could enable or disable a particular notification scenario for which they would receive the email notification. Also, they could customize the email notifications' branding and content. Users who experienced this previous version of vRA were unsatisfied with the current version as they were used to a better system.

The personas I used are Jason, Shauna, and Scott, who are the primary personas of vRA. These people are Cloud Admins, DevOps SREs, and Developers, respectively.

Based on a design partner meeting conducted with 29 customer participants, several user problems and expectations were noted. They are:

• 01

  In-app notifications

  "I want to see the notifications in vRA portal. It is hard to keep track of email notifications."

  "I get a lot of emails and there’s a good chance that I miss some critical notification."

• 02

  Notifications via Slack/text

  "I want to keep using email notifications. But I also would like to get notifications in Slack."

  "I prefer getting notifications via Slack as I am more active in that."

• 03

  Granular level customization

  "I want to be able to subscribe and unsubscribe to any notification as I prefer."

  "I want to add or remove users to any notification. I want to granular level customization."

• 04

  Notifications repository

  "It is hard to use email inbox for audit and compliance purposes. There should be an easy way."

  "I want to access a previous notification and any action taken on it easily."

• 05

  Branding the email notification

  "Branding is important to our company. I would like to use our company branding in email notifications."

  "I want to have branding capability like we had in vRA 7. We should be able to change logo, font and background color."

• 06

  Customize email content

  "I want to be able to edit the content of email notification using some editor, like we had in vRA 7."

  "I want to add subscribe/unsubscribe functionality and remove some sensitive content from emails."

I performed a competitive analysis with different VMware products as well as some external products. I collaborated with designers from the Cloud Services Platform (CSP) team, vRealize Operations (vROPS) team, and VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) team to understand their approach to notifying the users. I learned that most of the use cases they have are very similar to our user requirements. So, I documented the different components of their notification system as shown below.

Based on the discussions with other teams and the above findings, I realized that designing a notification system takes multiple components, such as Banners, Alerts, Toasts, etc. Since vRA already uses some of the components, I decided to focus more on Toast notifications, Notification panel, and Notification inbox that I felt would address some of our user problems.

Based on the findings from background research, user research, and competitive analysis, I created the end-to-end story as below.

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After creating and presenting the end-to-end story to my team members, I considered the feedback I received and designed low-fidelity prototypes. Considering the time and scope of my internship, my team and I narrowed my project to in-app notification only and excluded the branding and email templates. In low-fidelity prototypes, the main UI components I focused are Toast, Notification panel, and Notification inbox. Since the other teams at VMware were already using these components, my first designs were reusing them to maintain consistency. However, I iterated these designs after several discussions with my team, which are as below.

Based on the discussions with my team, I improved the Toast component by exploring different design systems as below.

We found that moving the timestamp to the bottom, as shown below, would make it easier for the users to find it.

For the notification inbox, I explored different designs, shown below, instead of going with the table or grid-like design adopted by CSP and VMC teams.

Based on these explorations and discussions with other designers, I learned that having an Outlook like design, shown below, would be better than a grid-like design.

See live version

We presented the E2E story and the low-fidelity prototypes to developers. After multiple discussions with them, we narrowed down the Northstar vision and created a Minimum Viable Experience. We considered the technological feasibility, available time and resources, etc. in the narrow-down process.

Using the Clarity Design System and Figma, I designed high-fidelity prototypes while referencing Cloud Services Platform(CSP) implemented panel. However, I received feedback that the notification panel can be improved. The initial high-fidelity design of the notification panel is as below.

We decided that grouping notifications by day or time is easier for our users to differentiate the new notifications compared to the previous ones. We decided to remove the 'Clear' button and 'Load more notifications' button as they wouldn't be beneficial for our users. For the redesign, I explored different notification panels as below.

After considering the different options, the final design is as below.

The final high-fidelity prototype for the Minimum Viable Experience is as below.

After finalizing the high-fidelity prototypes and end-to-end story, I presented the work to different managers and designers. After discussing the improved experience, the notification system can bring, the managers have successfully incorporated the project into the product roadmap. I also presented my work to a broader audience by taking part in the VMware intern poster session.