The what, why and potential of the move to a more unified UI
OpenText is moving it’s content management customers from Smart View to the new JATO UX. The change itself is for positive reasons, however nobody enjoys a surprise interface change. Imagine the scene, users open the repository on a Monday morning, find a different screen, and spend the first hour hunting for the things they used every day. For an ECM team, that hour multiplied across hundreds of users is the real cost of a UI migration.
How you handle the change decides whether your users adopt it or it causes a loss of time and money. We will try to explain why the move is happening, what your users will notice, and a four-step strategy to help make the switch without disruption.
Why is the change coming about?
Smart View served its purpose, but OpenText now runs many products, each with their own look and feel coupled with individual navigation styles. JATO UX brings them all closer to a consistent design, so users learn it once and can move across the rest of the product suite with more simplicity.
It also makes room for AI. JATO UX includes a dedicated side panel for OpenText Aviator, so users can ask questions about their content without leaving the repository. Smart View is on its way out.
As with any change. planning the move early and choosing the right timing, involving the right people, and anticipating and fixing problems in advance will set you up for success. Waiting forces you to do all of it in a hurry.
What will you see?
A cleaner look and feel – Enjoy modern light and dark themes with a completely refreshed login/logout page and vastly less visual clutter on every single screen. Dark themes have been one of the most consistently requested features, so seeing the community listened to is very positive.
Simpler navigation – A standardized hamburger menu paired with an updated product header highlights both application and module levels, ensuring documents and tools are simpler and more efficient to find.
Better list and grid views – Reimagined toolbars place high-frequency, common actions like exporting, emailing, and sharing right at your fingertips to minimize clicks.
An AI side panel – The native OpenText Content Aviator panel sits contextually alongside your active workspace instead of forcing users to switch to a separate tool improving efficiency and context.
Enhanced reporting dashboards – Data analytics and reports features a high-contrast color theme and revamped graphic styles engineered for much clearer visualization and improved readability.
Refreshed notification centres – A completely overhauled discussion panel surfaces recent team comments, mentions, and system alerts dynamically.
Your own branding – Administrators gain access to advanced theme settings making it easy to configure custom headers, matching logos, and exact color palettes to fit corporate identity.
User-controlled transition – To reduce friction, a user-based toggle appears right inside the upgraded UI, empowering individual agents to transition to the new JATO layout at their own pace to support adoption.
Strategic Path Forward
Although the new system is highly intuitive with a smooth transition curve for end users, a robust migration strategy is essential to address the technical complexities of moving your custom landing pages, tiles, widgets, and API integrations built on top of Smart View. A simple yet effective four step strategy follows:
ASSESS: Audit what your team actually uses. Different admin pages, landing pages, tiles, templates, and integrations, then sort them into keep, fix, or retire. This is the perfect moment to dump the unused legacy clutter your team doesn’t need anymore.
PILOT: Before anyone else sees JATO UX, put it in front of a small group. Give them real tasks from their working week, not a guided tour. Note what confuses them, fix the biggest issues, and keep the feedback. It becomes the base for your training material.
PREPARE: Rebuild what the assessment flagged. landing pages for each user group, your branding, and a test of every integration you rely on. Then prepare people with short training sessions.
GO LIVE: With enough testing and changes to the lower environment, move the changes to PROD over a weekend and introduce to the wider organization post training.
We have been running JATO at Turnpikes for a while and are able to show you exactly what you can expect. We are happy to set up a demo or talk you through what we have found in our implementation and where we see opportunity, please feel free to reach out to us to set up a meeting.
