Applications Web (Contributor) Input Cell Shading Customizable By User or Admin

We use the WebSphere Liberty-based PAL Application Web as a user interface for 500 decision makers from line managers to C-level executives to enter, update, review and approve financial planning information.  The Budget Application is used year-round and there are periods of intense activity where all management is required to interact with the tool to open or close financial planning processes either accounting for or projecting activity across hundreds of accounts for periods stretching as much as 18 months into the future.  In these cases managers might have hours to submit information that will be reviewed at the executive level the following morning.

 

By way of example, imagine that several times a year, in addition to your regular job, you and 500 of your peers are asked to estimate the amount of ingredients you will need this time next year to bake a cake to be consumed by 3 million people plus or minus 500 thousand. For about ten years, you have been well trained to know that you need to add the number of chickens required to produce the right number of eggs for this cake in a white cell beside a grey cell containing calculated egg production number derived by another team and based on expected egg production per chicken adjusted for leap year, the jet stream and local fox population. This year a feature has been added that turns your white box grey. Just as sure as foxes eat chickens, you know that cakes are not estimated in grey boxes. Now multiply this confusion by the number of cake contributors who randomly have required inputs in grey boxes for the first time.  Finally add the pressure of having your Leadership review your cake recipe and decide that it needs another tier or less icing or probably should have always been a pie to begin with. You will have your inputs reopened except once again they will not be white, they will be not-white. 

 

Make no mistake, our cake makers are the best and our cakes are award winning. Additionally, our leadership always seems to find the right recipe. But we want our people to be thinking about cakes and all the wonderful colors they can incorporate into the into the icing or bake into the filling not which shade of grey is clickable.