The different facets of the Fusion UI
Most of the early screenshots that came out about Fusion were all from the Web-based UI, things like the 9-box grid etc. Now that the product is out there we’re getting to see more. I attended an excellent webinar that explained a few things that were new to me:
1) The Professional User Interface is separate to the Casual User Interface
Oracle are terming the ‘Professional UI’ to be the one that we’ve seen most of so far, and the ‘Casual UI’ to be the one that was christened Fuse that we first saw at OpenWorld. I would expect that the former is targeted at administrative or power-users, whereas the latter is more geared towards Self Service applications. Here are a couple of shots of the Casual UI (click for bigger):
2) Outlook Integration
Oracle also showed the Fusion CRM Desktop within Outlook. This looked fully integrated (as many of the tasks could be carried out without leaving Outlook and accessing the Fusion UI). I’m not going to go into any detail on this as a) desktop integration is already a staple feature of most ERPs, and b) Desktop email clients like Outlook are losing popularity to web based email so this is less important than some of the other items.
3) Fusion Tap
We also saw some screenshots of Fusion TAP integrated with the Oracle Social Network (a professional Facebook, so to speak). Fusion Tap is going to be very useful to those with tablets, and with the continued progress of tablets in the workplace – and especially the growth of BYOD – this population is only going to grow.
One thing I particularly like about Fusion Tap is that it’s configurable, so you can adjust what the user sees and what they don’t. It’s not just a static native app.
4) Mobilytics
This is still in development, but it’s very aesthetically pleasing (as with the above pics, click for bigger):
5) Oracle Voice
The biggest surprise of all for me was the mention of Oracle Voice. It’s basically a Siri, but for Fusion. It’s being integrated with CRM first (and it’s not hard to see that this is where it’d be most useful).
So in summary, there are some really strong UI facets that are currently available, and there are some very exciting innovations that are in the pipeline.
(All of the above is covered by the standard Oracle Safe Harbour agreement, so don’t base anything contractual on what you see here. Some of the above is still in development too, so there’ll be improvements before it is ready.)
Fusion Tipster 