Add a tooltip for "Admin State" in the Network forms

[Julie Pichon]

It's not always clear to users what "admin state" means. A tooltip that reads something like "Whether the network is up and forwarding packets" would help with this.

Actually, if my understanding is correct, we might want to consider renaming "Admin state" to simply say "Active" in the dashboard?

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/122135

[Akihiro Motoki (amotoki)]

It is super debatable.

IMO the word "Admin" is important. It is an intention of a network owner.

Neutron network also has "Network Status" which indicates how it operates now.
According to the review you are proposing "Network State", but it is confusing to me.
If we have "Network State" and "Network Status" in the same page, it would be super confusing.

If we have different keyword from Neutron network attributes,
it should be distinguished from "Network Status".
In Neutron v2.0 API, "Network Status" can be ACTIVE, DOWN, BUILD, or ERROR.
We should take into account both attributes when considering other words.

In addition, we should be careful because using different words from CLI and API may bring another type of confusion to users.

[Julie Pichon (jpichon)]

Thanks for offering the Neutron perspective Akihiro, much appreciated! So if changing the name doesn't make sense, would the tooltip at least be correct in this case?

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/122135
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/horizon/commit/?id=ab9e36e9b2177e21820b6009d8a53dfc15c22124
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit ab9e36e9b2177e21820b6009d8a53dfc15c22124
Author: Sam Betts <email address hidden>
Date: Wed Sep 17 13:04:59 2014 +0100

    Made Admin State choice more human readable

    The Admin State choices in create forms throughout horizon
    were not very clear, this patch presents that choice in a much more
    readable and understandable way. The field is changed from a boolean
    field to a choice field with the different states, making it more
    obvious what is being decided.

    Change-Id: I7091e5ccf91c57d3f64e2d4415bed952d09ada71
    Closes-Bug: 1370322

[Matt (mreid)]

I'll admit I still don't understand what Admin State controls at this point. For our neutron deployment, in the Horizon Networks table, we have Status, which is ACTIVE, and Admin State, which is either UP or DOWN. By leaving Admin State unchecked, I can have something with Status ACTIVE, and Admin State DOWN. If Admin State is roughly equivalent to being Active, is that Network actually working when ACTIVE and DOWN or is it non-functional until I change Admin State to UP?

I prefer picking UP/DOWN to checking a box, since it matches up with how its state is reflected in the tables, but the change doesn't help me understand what Admin State is or does.

[Sam Betts (sambetts)]

If the network is ACTIVE and DOWN then it exists successfully in OpenStack but it non-functional, and won't be passing any traffic, you have to set Admin State to UP to make the network functional. Perhaps a replacement for ACTIVE would be HEALTHY or something along those lines?

[Sam Betts (sambetts)]

Moving conversation over to https://bugs.launchpad.net/horizon/+bug/1372985 as this bug already has a commit merged.

[Matt (mreid)]

Sam, while there has been a commit for this bug, I'm not sure it completely solves the problem stated in this bug. It's helpful to have changed the checkbox to a dropdown menu with UP/DOWN, but this bug is about not understanding what Admin state means, and as an inexperienced user, I'm still left seeing a weird field that calls itself Admin State, which can be either UP or DOWN, with no other information. I don't have the depth of knowledge that you and amotoki have, where it makes sense without additional context in the UI, and these are still the same fields that displayed in the table after creation prior to this commit, we're just exposing them at the time of creation, rather than obscuring them through a checkbox. It's a step in the right direction, but I don't feel like that solves the entire issue.

When I read the label "Admin State", my brain doesn't read that as "functional", especially when after creation, it sits next to a column for Status, which indicates ACTIVE. I read Admin State and just wonder what that could mean.

If nothing else, could we also add a bit of description to the right side of the pane? We already change it when they advance to the next step of the Create Network wizard, so information that was specific to step 1 should be able to not show on the other steps.

[Sorin Sbarnea (ssbarnea)]

I have to say at "Active" would have being a much better name for the option. Best is when you do not need documentation or have to google to understand what an option does.