Dos and Don'ts

Recommendations for what you should do:

Identify the user’s tasks and focus on them. Remember that it is all about the user.
Provide overviews. The Role Center, chart panes, and Activities all help users understand key business information quickly.
Use progressive disclosure when it is possible. For example, provide FactBoxes with high-level summaries that can be drilled into instead of putting all the detailed information on a page.
One task, one page. Everything a user needs for a given task should be on one page, but not necessarily in the same level of detail.
Clear the clutter. Help the user focus by removing information that is irrelevant to the given task.
Reduce search time. Give users what they need in each context. FactBoxes are good for this.
Use visual cues instead of text when possible. Icons and Cues are quicker to scan than text.
Think about how a user works. Arrange FastTabs and other elements in the order that they are typically used.

Recommendations for what you should avoid:

Don’t structure the navigation pane according to application modules. This will require users to waste time jumping between modules.
Don’t attempt to fit too much into the Role Center. An overview stops being an overview if there is a scrollbar, or if there are too many details presented.
Don’t mimic the database table boundaries when you design pages. Typically users will want to see details joined from several tables.
Don’t fill pages with information that “might be relevant”. Remove fields and actions for the user profiles that do not need them.
Don't include more than two lists on one page. Instead, show read-only lists in FactBoxes or show a FactBox with record counts that open additional lists.

What you should do