[sakai2-tcc] Improve the welcome page experience

[Matthew Jones]

Many SCA's like you said have a "demo experience" to sell the instance.
Like for Longsight someone can signup for

https://trysakai.longsight.com/
https://trysakai29.longsight.com/

And they get enrolled in a few sample course and project sites with
pre-populated data. I think it's the same for rSmart
rSmart: https://mysakai.rsmart.com/xsl-portal
and
Unicon: https://testdrivesakai.com/portal

. These are either populated through webservices, database dumps or java
classes like the "SampleUserDirectoryProvider". Since the foundation (as
you mentioned) doesn't have any staff or developers, and writing something
like this takes substantial time, it's typically not something that gets
any priority since it already does exist in some form though their process
may not be public.

I'm all for doing things to improve the efficiency of the QA process on the
QA servers, but I don't think we should be using our nightly QA instance(s)
as the the user facing demo's for what Sakai is capable of. These are
significantly more likely to have bugs and other issues which could
negatively influence the experience.

If the foundation felt it was useful to hire a developer (or pay a
developer) to setup a stable instance with demo data, that I could see
happening, but I'm not sure of the ROI on that investment.

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Steve Swinsburg <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com
> wrote:

> I think we need something in between having 1000 additional users and just
> admin. Like two extra users enrolled in a site, an instructor and a
> student. On by default.
>
> So then you can quickly jump in and use it but dont have to delete 1000
> users if you want to then do something ereal with it.
>
> We need to lower the barrier for getting up and running with a simple
> demo. And make it prettier.
>
> cheers,
> s
>
>
>
>
>  On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 1:29 AM, Matthew Jones <matthew at longsight.com>wrote:
>
>> I think for part #1 and #2 these users already exist, but not many people
>> *know* about the SampleUserDirectoryProvider that has been around (in it's
>> current form) for over 5 years. Most people know about admin, but this
>> provider (which all of the QA servers use because they start up with "-Dsakai.demo=true")
>> provides:
>>
>> * 1000 sample students with the username of
>> student0001-student1000 (all password sakai)
>>
>> The first 10 or so students have "realistic" names (some of them i18n),
>> the rest are all generic.
>>
>> * Sample instructor (instructor/sakai)
>> * A sample ta (ta/sakai)
>>  * Infinite other users (any user name that starts with test and the
>> password Sakai).
>>
>> The big advantage of this is if you use the "instructor" user you can
>> create a course site, add a roster and get all 1000 students enrolled in
>> it.
>>
>> I use this all of the time, though it probably *would* be more useful
>> documented on the front of the QA pages.
>>
>> Previously, the "welcome page" and other info was stored at
>> https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/qa/trunk/. I'm not sure if the
>> QA process is organized but I remember when I was running a QA, Alan/Seth
>> did direct me here to update content. Though it looks like the last change
>> here was years ago.
>>
>> [1]
>> https://source.sakaiproject.org/svn/providers/trunk/sample/src/java/org/sakaiproject/provider/user/SampleUserDirectoryProvider.java
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Steve Swinsburg <
>> steve.swinsburg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I've just been having a discussion with a member of the Moodle community
>>> about how the default Sakai front page isn't really that exciting. This
>>> applies for both the default QA page and the normal install. I tend to
>>> agree and think we can do better.
>>>
>>> Some thoughts:
>>> * We could provide some info about how to login straight away.
>>> * We could also provide some more demo accounts, with users added to
>>> sites like the mercury site, and have them available on the front page as
>>> well. This would be in line with the OOTB uPortal install.
>>> * Maybe some more info about what you'll find inside.
>>> * A few images wouldn't hurt.
>>> * We could drop some of the pages on the left (like features and
>>> training) and incorporate those onto the front page.
>>>
>>> Compare:
>>> http://qa.moodle.net/
>>>
>>> And:
>>> http://qa3-us.sakaiproject.org:8086/portal
>>>
>>> I'd be prepared to do any code mods required if we can get a UI person
>>> involved as well, perhaps Gonzalo? We have made a good move with the
>>> neoportal, lets go a little further!
>>>
>>> https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-22122
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Steve
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> sakai2-tcc mailing list
>>> sakai2-tcc at collab.sakaiproject.org
>>> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai2-tcc
>>>
>>
>>
>
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