The New Agility Content Manager Interface

The New Agility UI is here

The new Agility UI is live, and we are showcasing the Plenum design system that it is based on.  This design system provides the foundation for the UI, as well as the Apps, both in the marketplace and any private apps you may create for your organization.

What is Plenum?

What is Plenum? Agility UI

As a concept, Plenum is an enterprise design system that outlines how we approach User Experience in Agility. In practice, it's a set of components and larger elements that use that system to create the Content Manager app itself.  You can actually browse the available components here - we've open-sourced the library as a set of Storybook.js components.  This is part of our larger strategy that allows developers to create Apps that extend the Content Manager App into new areas and integrations.  These Apps can share the same design principles as Plenum by using the components we've made available.

What's in the New UI?

While we will eventually provide complete feature parity with the previous interface, we are only showing the Editor Centric features first for Beta 1.  

That means only the following sections will be available:

  • Home Dashboard
  • Content
  • Pages
  • Assets

The following sections will be made available soon as part of our continuing Beta program on track to our Release Candidate in early 2023.

  • Models
  • Settings
  • Reports

How do I Use the New UI?

If you have a current Agility account, simply log in to the Content Manager and click on the yellow button in the top right entitled "Try the New Look". From there, you can click through to see the same screen you're currently viewing.   If you want to open it in a new browser tab, simply Ctrl or Cmd click the "Get Started" link.

Using Agility CMS' new UI 

What's Changed in the New UI?

This update is based primarily on user feedback from customers and partners.  We've listened, and we've learned how people want Agility to work, and how they want it look while they're using it. 

We've kept many of the same paradigms that our customers told us they liked while moving away from things that aren't as useful or intuitive.

Navigation

The basic layout and navigation of the new UI should be familiar.  All main sections that you have access to are available as Icons on the left navigation panel, with each section opening up a 2-Panel interface.  As you navigate deeper into linked items, you'll notice a breadcrumb along the top that allows you to get back to the original items and also indicates clearly what item you're currently on.

We've also made it much easier to control the sizing and spacing with the ability to resize the left panel, manually collapse and expand the new right panel, and resize columns in grids.

See for yourself in the video below:

Apps and Custom Fields

As we stated above, Apps are the future of no-code integrations with Agility.  We want you to be able to easily extend the UI and to connect with the business tools you need.

As such, all apps built using the latest SDK will function the same as the new UI, including all 1st-party apps such as the Cloudinary, Block Editor, Formstack apps and more (with more coming soon!).

We have decided not to support legacy custom fields or legacy input forms in the new interface.  You will be able to continue to use the classic UI for those.  We will be announcing a strategy for all legacy elements and integrations at a later date.

Other Notes

There are still some features that aren't quite ready to ship yet, so you'll need to use the classic UI for those:

  • Content and Page Scheduling
  • Content and Version Restore
  • Content List Item Re-ordering
  • Gallery fields and gallery creation from the Assets area
  • Import / Export

Something Really Cool

One of the really cool things that we've brought to the new UI is the ability to refresh or reload your browser window while editing content without losing your changes.  We now save your content item edits locally while you're working so that if you navigate away, you can return to that item and continue editing.  Furthermore, if someone else edits the item that you're working on, you'll get a notification about that, allowing you to then "revert" your changes or save your version of the item.

We're continuing to innovate and to bring more features, both in new and existing, into the new Agility UI.

We hope you'll love it!