Progress bar/numbers on modules#520

The new update removed the progress bars/numbers next to the modules in the menu, but those were really helpful for checking project status quickly as a manager, and for seeing which step I needed to jump in on as a contributor. Having to click into the module or activity page to see the status isn’t a huge burden, but it does feel like unecessary clicks to get a quick overview of project progress that was previously available at a glance as soon as I opened the nest. Submitting a vote to bring back the progress bars/numbers in the menu!

Hey Erin- thanks for voicing your opinion, and we’ll leave this issue open for other users who feel the same.

We didn’t take joy in making this change, knowing it would add a click to get at full information. However this change allowed us to substantially improve the performance of NK. That in turn allows us to provide better load times & availability to a larger number of users.

Previously, to keep progress numbers in sync, we’d have to reload them frequently:

• On page load
• On every record completion in modules (screening, tagging, MA extraction, CA, adjudication, etc.)
• Every time you iterate a record in inspector

Since there are dependencies between progress counts (e.g. including a record increases the denominators on tagging, MA extraction, CA), we reloaded progress for every module enabled, every time one of the above actions was taken. To make matters worse, counting up progress can be slow for certain modules, since they may contain many records.

By using visual-only progress bars, we only need to update progress for the relevant module after initial page load, since the exact number isn’t being displayed. This reduces our database load by more than 50%.

Thanks for the additional context Karl! I’m still voting for a more nuanced progress bar visible on the nest home page for a quick glance, but definitely understand if there are tradeoffs that win out.