How DJ Software Inspired the New Filters in ERPNext

*Following is one of many ERPNext experiences happening in our company.* When we started using ERPNext (from version 4) my colleagues made me realise it's not user-friendly and too much developer oriented. The Industrial Automation Group is an Australian company based in Perth, Western Australia, with its history in the supply and manufacture of Process Control Systems. Recently the company expanded to include a small team of Software Programmers dedicated to ERPNext's development. My colleagues, mainly engineers in areas related to process control, have different ages (18-60+), some are Australia-born and many have different origin backgrounds. Same differences apply to the computer knowledge. In my case, I'm the in-house Accountant and also have a qualified Software Programmer past career back in Italy. So too me ERPNext was capable enough to seek information and create reports. However, especially Henk, the boss, was not happy about the filters in lists: *“Too much IT oriented and time consuming, too many clicks, I’m not going to use this thing” he said.* Mmm... ok... so I've started thinking on how to shrink the list of fields to the most common ones. This issue wasn't a priority at that time and we didn't have enough programmers and experience to develop it. Thus, I kept thinking on how to improve it. Wait a minute... one day, while using Pioneer Rekordbox filters to organise music for my DJing hobby I thought “Why we don't use the same approach to enhance filter lists?” In the meanwhile Robert came on board and after a bit of training, did some other fixes an developed a beta E-Mail Inbox. From there we started the initial new Filters design for Lists. After a few weeks of developments and tests we released it internally and then to ERPNext/Frappe Community. Now it's available on Frappe.