Redtexture's dashboard

Adendum:
I suggest taking a look at your traffic.
Although it is split two ways, between companies and users, I suspect that the primary cause of traffic is users of services. Hence, the desirability of letting them into the forums in a clear way. (And the same goes for ongoing company users, if their access is as hazy as for "customers). – Redtexture, on April 02, 2009 18:07

I like the new look, and colors but the usability needs some testing and improvement from this user's point of view.

I arrive at GetSatisfaction mostly to check on forums and to search, but it appears the search box is a log-in box, since the text for log in or new account is to its left of the search. I suggest changing the order, swapping the login to the right, and make the search more centered, even though this sacrifices the symmetric design and balanced look of the top.

Continuing, as a "customer" (individual user looking for support)
[and I didn't know I was a customer],
I'm mainly trying to check on issues people have discovered or found, and I'm not going to log in unless I'm going to post something, either a question or a reply. The access to just getting into the forums, for the person familiar to your service is a tiny box (in the upper right corner). You've got to serve your regulars well, and not annoy them with a sales pitch every time they arrive. They know whats so great already about GetSatisfaction.

It's an improvement that the search for products and companies has been combined, but when the search fails (perhaps for mis-typing, or because the service is listed, but not the company, or mayt be because the user typed the address (someservice.com) or whatever) the offer to sign up a new company name is not so welcome. (And it is desirable to get most of the companies or services web addresses (someservice.com) into this apparently unified search database.)

When clicking on the gloriously big "customer link" I don't get improved access to the support forums, but again have the tiny search box in the upper right. So that means for the second time this user was not quite finding the "obvious entry point" in using the support forums.

For example, the (sales) example for some company's support topic is bigger than the box to enter the forum.

I hope those details help your perspective on next steps.

There is a listing, by the way, of users granted rights, in the "admin" tab, two places over from the "applications" tab, next to the "logout" tab.

There are a number of DabbleDB administrative irritations that could be improved upon.

For the situation you described, I started a DabbleDB category with contacts and permissions granted and associated applications, so I could have it all in one place.

I cannot think of other choice to you, than using a field of type "web link", for URLs connecting users to a collaborative Google Document.

You could truncate the field in question, putting that truncated text into a new field, leaving the original field unchanged, since it appears you don't need more than say 25 characters to be visible.

No on resizing.
There's a trick on setting column width which can make text more sane. Use a nonbreaking character to extend the field name size (browsers differ on use of dash for breaking).

Like:
ReallyLongFieldNameForBigTextField
TextField____________________________________________

Another alternative is to have views specifically for viewing the text field, and don't display the field when you really don't need it.

Just keep open multiple tabs on your browser. No big deal.