[sakai2-tcc] Improve the welcome page experience

Mon Apr 30 16:30:33 PDT 2012

Ok maybe I wasn't entirely clear in what I was referring to.

I'm not talking about sending people to the QA servers as their first experience, I'm talking about improving the out-of-the-box install that someone can run up themselves, either via source or demo, or see on the nightly build servers.

What I did mention was that BOTH the out of the box install, and the QA servers, do not list ANYWHERE how to actually login to the system. People need to go elsewhere to figure that out. The QA page does mention creating an account but people shouldn't have to do that to get started. (Side note: I actually don't understand why the admin password for the QA servers is different to the normal admin password?)

And the default gateway page does not list ANYTHING about how to login. People get the system up and running and then are like, "ok, now what. Let's click around and see if we can find something. Ah, new account, that sounds like it might be it. Ok I'm in, now what do I do? And, how do I administer this thing?"

We need to make the very first impression a good one.

This is what I meant that we should do:
1. Improve the HTML page that users see on the gateway. This would include info about how to login.
2. Remove some redundant links on the left nav and add the info they contain onto the front page.
3. Create two new accounts by default, without requiring any additional configuration. For argument's sake, call them 'student' and 'instructor' with the password being the same. Add these users to a site. Also provide the info about these two accounts on the front page.
4. Potentially improve the myworkspace info page in a similar manner.

This does not require webservice scripts.

I understand the SCA's reason to ensure their own pages are up to date. But we don't funnel everyone that comes along into using an SCA and what people get when they start up Sakai on their own machines should be a good experience.

It's not a lot of work to do this. And I will do it. In my own (unpaid) time. I am just asking for others input on how best to go about it, and potentially have someone with a bit of design skill work with me.

This is a valid concern. The guy I was talking to on that Facebook thread works for Netspot which was recently acquired by Blackboard. He posted about this issue a number of times over the past few years, also mentioned in that thread.

On 01/05/2012, at 2:06 AM, Matthew Jones wrote:

> I also think that keeping these updated without someone paid in charge of this would be more of a challenge. If you look at the current static html welcome pages I referenced that haven't been updated in ~3 years, nearly all of the links on them are broken.
> 
> Imagine if we had to keep java files or web service scripts updated. ;)
> 
> For the SCA sites they have a important reason to making sure these are updated. The day something breaks on trysakai we are investigating it. 
> 
> Try some of the links on 
> http://qa3-us.sakaiproject.org:8086/portal
> 
> :)
> 
> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Matthew Jones <matthew at longsight.com> wrote:
> 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
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