tungsten-network.com

Black hole of purchase orders and bad UI design.

I work at a large state university. My background is in Computer Science and Business Analytics. My job currently deals with veteran education benefits. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), unfortunately, requires us to use this substandard product called Tungsten. Tungsten is essentially a black hole that sucks up purchases orders and makes you jump through hoops to find them again. VA creates a purchase order in Tungsten. There is no way for us to find a purchase order, except by the PO number. We can't search for ANY metadata with that PO such as the veteran's name, the VA counselor's name, the dates the PO is active, etc. All this information is stored with the purchase order in Tungsten, but Tungsten doesn't allow searches on anything other than the PO number and the date it was submitted. We have to manually dig through POs, one by one to find one if we somehow lose track of a PO number for a student. We have to setup an entire system just for keeping track of everything in Tungsten. So we have to use our own proper invoicing system, then we have to maintain a spreadsheet with Tungsten PO's and our invoices. Then we have to manually create a Tungsten invoice, copying everything from our real invoice. Then we have to hope Tungsten doesn't lose it in the black hole.If we do have to search for a PO, there is no way to stay on the search screen. We can't open the PO in a new tab. They block that, because they enjoy making everything as difficult as possible. They also don't save where you are at in a search, so if you open a PO to see if it's the right one, when you close it, you have to create a brand-new search EVERY SINGLE TIME. Then you have to remember what PO you just looked at, page through the results, make sure you are on the next PO, and then open that one.The system was clearly designed by interns, not software engineers and web designers that understand good UI/UX. The system is very slow, and while you are actively using it, going from page to page, it will ask if you are still logged in. I am not talking about if you sit idle on one page for a long time. While actively using it, it will continually ask you to verify you are logged in. Most modern websites will rely on a combination of methods such as JavaScript and session cookies.Another annoyance is when trying to type in line items for an invoice. Every time you select a textbox, such as to paste data in from your REAL invoicing system, Tungsten covers up the textbox with a tooltip so you can't see what you are doing in the textbox. It's absolutely infuriating that we have to fiddle around with EVERY single amount pasted. I have used fortune 500 enterprise-grade systems such as SAP, and while they are known for not being user friendly, they are efficient once learned. Nothing can make Tungsten efficient. They actively design it to be as painful and slow to use as possible.

Date of experience: Dec 16, 2025