I invited a friend to my server and tried sharing a music playlist, and found myself in a UX experience that kind of sucked.
This is the Grant Access form, and it is kind of awful.
For starters, it prefills our own username, but you obviously cannot share to yourself and the error message tells you that. So why is this the default choice? An empty field would be better.
For another thing, this form requires Plex usernames if the user has been invited to your account. This sucks because if I invite user@example.com, I have no way of knowing what username Plex will assign to that user. I have to look at my list of users after I send the invitation, and copy the text.
Why is the account’s email not a valid way to select a user in this context… or any other? If I invited user@example.com to my server I should be able to enter that email here or anywhere instead of needing to look up that Plex decided to name them usexamp232 or whatever.
And here is the worst part: because Plex username is required, if you make any kind of error and enter an incorrect username that is still a valid Plex username within the Plex universe, you just sent an invitation to a stranger.
This form should offer some kind of a menu of users who are already associated with your account, showing both their Plex username and the email address associated with that account. Have a text field too, sure, we can add email addresses or usernames if we wish, which generates invitations if needed.
But if the username you enter is not already invited to your server, you should get a confirmation dialog, because honestly, are you really inviting new friends by their Plex username instead of email? Who thinks in terms of Plex usernames? I only use mine when I log in, and I have no idea what my friends’ usernames are.
Even if no other UX improvements can be made, please at least let us punch in an email address in this context. That would be a great improvement.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
