The Admin

THE CHALLENGE: Create an Admin system in which campaigns can be grouped together in a nested hierarchy, but in which at each level of the hierarchy users can configure settings that apply to that group, with inheritance, locks, and overrides. Oh, and make it easy to use.

Out with the old

For this project, we needed a new management system that would operate at a universal/collective level the previous one was not capable of. The requirements here were many:

Users can organize many campaigns into whatever hierarchy they wish.
Collective data for multiple campaigns can be viewed and analyzed.
Settings can be configured on any level of the hierarchy, with inherited settings, locked settings, and overrides.
It must be intuitive.

breadcrumbs

The first (and, surprisingly, the most challenging) piece we tackled was the navigation. We came up with a multi-tiered navigation system, in which a user navigates to, and tracks, their location through enlarged breadcrumbs.

Below that is a tabbed navigation that appears for all levels of the hierarchy, in which users can manipulate settings at any level they wish.

Inheriting

The next challenge was the inheritance system, where settings configured on a higher level of the hierarchy would apply to all campaigns within that hierarchy, but with the ability to override those settings on lower levels, while maintaining the ability to lock them, thereby preventing overrides.

Taking that level of complexity and making it intuitive and usable is a tall task. But I think we nailed it.