There is an incongruency in the behavior of the “New Item” button and “+ Add Item” at the bottom of the group. The New Item button creates an item called “New Item” then selects its name for editing. +Add Item takes then input of a name, then creates an item with that name.
The problem is when there are automations like “When item created, create item in other board” or “When item created, change status” etc. will trigger automations before the name is set if you use “New Item”. This also means the item can get moved around by automations while you are trying to set its “new name” after its been created.
Additionally, you cannot cancel the creation of the new item. Pressing esc may cancel changing the name, but the item is created.
You can avoid this using the +Add Item at the bottom of a group, but that adds the item to the bottom of an arbitrary group and may not be desired. In +Add Item you can cancel creating the item by deleting the new item name and clicking out. Clicking out creates the item if there is text.
I have yet to encounter anyone having an issue with automations as a result of +Add Item - everything still works as expected. However, New Item has been troublesome on many occasions due to it creating an arbitrary “New Item” item before the user sets the name.
My recommendation is that the behavior of New Item be changed to insert a row accepting a name and then create the item upon return key/click out (if a name), with esc cancelling the item creation (click out with blank name also cancels). Alternatively, New Item button pops out a small text box to accept the new item name which then creates the item on return/ok and cancels on esc/cancel.
On +Add Item, the esc key should erase text and move remove the focus from the text entry for +Add Item. Currently, click out cancels on empty, creates on non-empty name.
This would keep both function intact, but make behaviors consistent, and make creating an item through New Item be less problematic to “item created” workflows.
I am aware of the use of forms to create item using the New Item button’s dropdown option to use form. This newer feature should be enhanced to make the form based dialog default for the New Item button (if configured as such). It would permit the creation of items with a full set of column values, including required columns, straight from the new item button. Today there is no enforcement of the use of the form based item creation. Enforcement of form based item creation would be absolutely phenomenal though and solve so many workflow problems. This means automations could be based on values at creation time, which is not possible with the other two item creation methods. It also means users are forced to input required information to create an item, adding controls to business processes.
