progress towards a beta-testable version

[David Judd]

Hey folks,

I took a couple of days off work to catch up on some things, and one of those things was Permabank. Two pieces of news:

First, the staging version of Permabank is now accessible at www.permabank.in/ - which means the links all should work, although login has stopped working. To log in, you can go to the admin page, and log in either as david/david or joesmith/joejoe. (If you log in as david, that gives you admin access to create more users.)

If any developers here have experience with OpenID, it would be awesome if you could take a shot at fixing the login. Otherwise we may have to revert to Django's default, which would work but mean that there's no direct tie between people's Permabank account and any of their other accounts.

Second, I've implemented a first version of a gift/wish fulfillment workflow with thank-you notes. The supported scenarios are as follows:
1) Evan posts a gift on Permabank, where David finds it. Optionally, they exchange messages about it. Offline, David receives Evan's gift. Then:

1a) David clicks on the gift page, and clicks a link to write a thank-you note. Evan receives a message containing the thank-you note, and can choose to accept it or ignore it. If Evan accepts it, the gift is marked as completed (and David receives a message notifying him).
1b) Evan clicks on the gift page, and clicks a link to request a thank-you note, and selects David as the person who received the gift. David receives a message notifying him of the request, and can choose to write a thank-you note or ignore it. If David writes the thank-you note, the gift is marked as completed (and Evan receives a message notifying him).

2) David posts a wish on Permabank, where Evan finds it. Optionally, they exchange messages about it. Offline, Evan fulfills David's wish. Then:

2a) David clicks on the wish page, and clicks a link to write a thank-you note, and chooses Evan as the person who fulfilled the wish. Evan receives a message containing the thank-you note, and everything continues as in 1a.
2b) Evan clicks on the wish page, and clicks a link to request a thank-you note. David receives a message notifying him of the request, and everything continues as in 1b.

It would be great if people could test out the workflow on the staging server. If you have changes you want to see, post them as new items to Better Means (but please check that they're not already there).

I already know of some major missing pieces: thank you notes aren't publicly visible yet, and some items in the fulfillment forms that should be read-only are editable, and at a few points two clicks are needed when only one should be. The UI could also use some work to try to make the next step more obvious at each point. I didn't follow the wireframes in what I just added because I couldn't find them in time.

I don't know when I'll have time to follow up, but maybe somebody else will be inspired to work on the next round...

-David

[Evan Wagner]

David,

Thank you for the work!  I've been testing it out just now and it seems to work quite well- I sent a thank you note, posted a new gift, a new wish, and will wait for your responses to further test work flow.  

It would be great if others here could throw in some data.... : )

Also, for those who don't already know, I met with Justine last week and she is ready to step in as lead dev once she finishes a job in a couple weeks!

Solidarity,

Evan

--
Evan Wagner
reStorAtiVE
646.641.1772

[Evan Wagner]

Note- Search function doesn't seem to be working...

[David Judd]

Search won't work for newly added items until somebody manually re-indexes. There's already a ticket to fix this. It should work for everything around since before I sent this email, because I just ran the re-index.

-David

[Devin Balkind]

  Judd - heroic work here.  Seriously.  I can't thank you enough for pushing this forward.  We've got to build on the momentum you've just created.

I've reviewed all the items in the BM and voted up the ones I think are important.  I urge other folks to do the same.  Judd, as the primary developer it's up to you to tell us if the items we create in BM have enough information and how we can generally improve our items (should we call them tickets?)

There are lots of developers on a variety of different lists.  If we have actionable items and requests, I'm sure we can recruit folks to hope on it and help out.  Please post defined tasks - such as OpenID issues - to this list so I can forward them onward.

As the software develops, we're going to need an increasingly organised QA (quality assurance) process for going through use cases, tracking bugs, identifying UX issues (things that aren't clear) and general usability stuff.  Anyone interested in taking that task on?

As for me, I'm got the following on my BM plate:
* Community management - setting up a blog and a mailing list to increase the project's stickiness.
* Write copy for the website.  It would be nice to have an info architecture doc for that.  Is anyone working from one of those?
* Footer - not sexy but useful.

Is it appropriate for us to restart semi-regular calls about progress? 

What more should be done?

Looking forward to rolling this puppy down the hill.

On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 8:25 PM, David Judd <david....@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Devin Balkind
@devinbalkind
vitamindwb.com

[Evan Wagner]

See responses inline:

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Devin Balkind <devinb...@gmail.com> wrote:

  Judd - heroic work here.  Seriously.  I can't thank you enough for pushing this forward.  We've got to build on the momentum you've just created.

Yes, thank you again David- you are indeed a champion. 

 

I've reviewed all the items in the BM and voted up the ones I think are important.  I urge other folks to do the same.  Judd, as the primary developer it's up to you to tell us if the items we create in BM have enough information and how we can generally improve our items (should we call them tickets?)

I think David would agree he is not 'primary developer'- we don't have one yet, but as I have notified previously, Justine is ready to come on board once she finishes a job she is on now. 

There are lots of developers on a variety of different lists.  If we have actionable items and requests, I'm sure we can recruit folks to hope on it and help out.  Please post defined tasks - such as OpenID issues - to this list so I can forward them onward.

I would like to wait until she is on board so she can guide this process. 

As the software develops, we're going to need an increasingly organised QA (quality assurance) process for going through use cases, tracking bugs, identifying UX issues (things that aren't clear) and general usability stuff.  Anyone interested in taking that task on?

ibid. 

As for me, I'm got the following on my BM plate:
* Community management - setting up a blog and a mailing list to increase the project's stickiness.

 

As you know, this (comm mgmt) has been what I have been doing the whole time, so I have lots of emails to add and content for the blog.

* Write copy for the website.  It would be nice to have an info architecture doc for that.  Is anyone working from one of those?

Copy for the website is something I'd like to do.

 

* Footer - not sexy but useful.

Again, once we properly re-boot the project. 

Is it appropriate for us to restart semi-regular calls about progress? 

Shortly, but not immediately. 

What more should be done?

Read the wiki. 

Looking forward to rolling this puppy down the hill.

Never heard that expression... 

On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 8:25 PM, David Judd <david....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey folks,

I took a couple of days off work to catch up on some things, and one of those things was Permabank. Two pieces of news:

First, the staging version of Permabank is now accessible at www.permabank.in/ - which means the links all should work, although login has stopped working. To log in, you can go to the admin page, and log in either as david/david or joesmith/joejoe. (If you log in as david, that gives you admin access to create more users.)

If any developers here have experience with OpenID, it would be awesome if you could take a shot at fixing the login. Otherwise we may have to revert to Django's default, which would work but mean that there's no direct tie between people's Permabank account and any of their other accounts.

Second, I've implemented a first version of a gift/wish fulfillment workflow with thank-you notes. The supported scenarios are as follows:
1) Evan posts a gift on Permabank, where David finds it. Optionally, they exchange messages about it. Offline, David receives Evan's gift. Then:

1a) David clicks on the gift page, and clicks a link to write a thank-you note. Evan receives a message containing the thank-you note, and can choose to accept it or ignore it. If Evan accepts it, the gift is marked as completed (and David receives a message notifying him).
1b) Evan clicks on the gift page, and clicks a link to request a thank-you note, and selects David as the person who received the gift. David receives a message notifying him of the request, and can choose to write a thank-you note or ignore it. If David writes the thank-you note, the gift is marked as completed (and Evan receives a message notifying him).

2) David posts a wish on Permabank, where Evan finds it. Optionally, they exchange messages about it. Offline, Evan fulfills David's wish. Then:

2a) David clicks on the wish page, and clicks a link to write a thank-you note, and chooses Evan as the person who fulfilled the wish. Evan receives a message containing the thank-you note, and everything continues as in 1a.
2b) Evan clicks on the wish page, and clicks a link to request a thank-you note. David receives a message notifying him of the request, and everything continues as in 1b.

It would be great if people could test out the workflow on the staging server. If you have changes you want to see, post them as new items to Better Means (but please check that they're not already there).

I already know of some major missing pieces: thank you notes aren't publicly visible yet, and some items in the fulfillment forms that should be read-only are editable, and at a few points two clicks are needed when only one should be. The UI could also use some work to try to make the next step more obvious at each point. I didn't follow the wireframes in what I just added because I couldn't find them in time.

I don't know when I'll have time to follow up, but maybe somebody else will be inspired to work on the next round...

-David

--
Devin Balkind
@devinbalkind
vitamindwb.com