I'm writing an application where an admin user will create a sequence of items. When a user creates an item they need to be able to specify what the next item in the sequence will be.
My problem is that users will probably create items in order and, since the next item doesn't yet exist i'm not sure how to have them specify what they want the next item to be.
Does anyone have a good solution for how to accomplish this without predicting the future?
I'm making certain assumptions here since I don't have the entire picture. Lets say the user just created an item. On successful creation you can show her/him a message (or take the user to a page or show a dialog) with a message that item was created.
Here you can show two "actions". "Assign the next item to this item" Or "Create a new Item as the next Item". These two actions will allow the user to select existing item a the next item or show her/him a form that creates a new item as this items next.
I hope my assumption is not entirely wrong.
(1) Can you change - at least for the UX - to "previous item"?
That might require keeping the order information separate, and applying it before you commit the batch
(2) Can you display the order of items, default to "creation order", and allow the user to re-sort?
Upon creating an item, you can show the user a list of already existing items, offering to choose the one(s) which should have the new item as "next in sequence".
You can employ some usability assistance here, such as sorting the list by creation order (showing the last created one first), and perhaps preselecting it.