Jon,

There aren't two places to change views. Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by \"change\".

Navigation: Changing between views

The larger button with the down-pointing disclosure triangle is (as the disclosure triangle should suggest) a menu. And this is the way to navigate from one view to another. Say you've created a tasks solution. You might create and save views that use different ways of displaying the data and/or use different filters. In my project manager solution I have views like this:

Active by due date
Calendar
Active by project
Closed by project
Kanban by project

I've configured and saved these views, and I use that views menu to switch.

Configuration: changing a view

The smaller button is not used for changing between views. It's used to change the configuration of the current view. If you're looking at a grid view and you decide you don't want it to be a grid, you want it to be a calendar or a kanban, this is how you'd change it. It doesn't take you do a different view: It just switches the display mode for the current view.

What's a \"view\"?

And this is major. A view isn't just a display mode. As a total package, a view is made up not just of a display mode but also settings that affect which fields are displayed and in what order; what filters control the selection of records for display; how the records are sorted, grouped, colored, and/or spotlighted; and in grid views, how short or tall the rows are (or in kanban, what size cards are used). When you use the view navigation menu, you might switch among six different grid views that differ not in how they look from ten feet away, but in how the data is presented. Major difference.

Final note: Views and record sets

While we're dealing with Views 101, I should add that the configuration of a view affects all users of the solution.

So, if you have multiple users working in the same solution, say you have a view called \"INVOICES recently paid\" that, when you set it up, finds invoices marked paid in the last 14 days. If that is a public view, it's going to show invoices marked paid in the last 14 days for all users. If another user wants to see invoices paid in the last 30 days, and she revises the filter, that change will affect everybody — and will do so immediately. (So somebody looking at the last 14 days record set will suddenly see more records on screen.) Here I use the example of how a filter impacts all visitors to that view, but the same thing applies with sorts, grouping etc.

Very important to keep this in mind when creating views. Think hard about them, name them carefully and systematically (because you may end up with a lot of them), and then (in most cases at least) lock them.

And you may want to let your users know that they can create private views and do anything with them. A private view is visible only to the user who creates it.

Why are there two places to change Views?