The user interface is driving me nuts

We really like passbolt. It’s definitely the best team password manager out there right now. However, I keep running into this issue… the interface is a mess.

For example, if I want to create a new group I have to go to users->create->new group. What?
There’s no “default” groups and I can’t assign users to a group until they log in. So if I create a user and they sign up the next day but me or another admin is not available, they can’t access passwords until we can login and set the group for their user.

Now my biggest beef… adding passwords/groups. I can’t add assign a default group when adding a password. I have to go back and edit the group, no big deal, but now I also have to type the group name to search for it instead of a basic drop down list. This is common across passbolt and seriously inconvenient.

I can’t filter users (by group) in the users page. I have to click the user just to see the group they are in but even then I can’t edit the group the users are in. Instead, I have to click the group, click the “PLUS” icon, and edit the group by typing each name of the person. I have had to manually add 20 or so users to a group. And if I miss a user I have to go back to users to figure it out.

In other words, the interface is a hot mess. Are there any plans to improve the interface? We are a school district so funds are limited which one reason why we haven’t purchased passbolt. But if we were to make the purchase I’d say we probably would go with a different product just because of the UI that is all over the place.

I appreciate all of your hard work!

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Hello @mack

Thank you for your frank feedback. They are definitely plans to improve the user experience of passbolt.

One of the limitation you mention is not being able to add users to the group before they register. This is due to the fact that at that time the user does not have a public key and therefore it is not possible to share any secret with them. This was not done to make the software hard to use on purpose, but to ensure end to end encryption. However we hear you, this is not nice. Our plan (for this year or early next year) would be to allow admin to add the user but with a “pending encryption” state, so that once they are login they can see the passwords metada, can not use them yet (since it’s not encrypted for them). They will be able to nag other users (not necessarily the admin) to encrypt the pending secret for them. Think of it as a “request access” feature. This will reduce the work load on the admin side and make it more clear for the users.

Concerning your other point “I can’t add assign a default group when adding a password.” this will be solved with folder. With folder you will be able to assign permissions that will be directly applied when you will create a password inside it. Think of it as a permission template that will be assigned when you move / create resources into it. We are a bit late on the delivery for this feature, most likely it will be ready in November / December, we are taking a bit more time because we want to get it right.

Concerning your last point I agree this feature would be usefull, e.g. allowing managing groups via the user record and not just the other way around.

We will take some time to create stories for this issues so that you have some clear entry here to track progress.

Cheers,

Thank you for your response :smile: Everything you said makes sense. I know the software is still a work in progress (that’s why I posted!).

Glad to know you are listening - looking forward to future updates!

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We’re always happy to get constructive feedback :slight_smile:
Thanks a lot for being positive!