Grouper Developers Forum

[Emily Eisbruch <>]

Draft Minutes: Grouper Call 9-May-2012

Attending

Tom Barton, U. Chicago (Chair)

Michael Gergis, University of Chicago
Lynn Garrison, PSU
Jim Fox, University of Washington
Chris Hyzer, Penn
Gary Brown, Bristol
Shilen Patel, Duke
Tom Zeller, Unicon
Steve Olshansky, Internet2


*New Action Items*

[AI] (TomB) follow up with ScottK about cloning approaches.

[AI] (Michael) will draft a framework proposal related to staging, as a discussion starter.

[AI] (TomB) will connect TomZ with the U. Chicago Drupal use case on the topic of representing/provisioning role/perm info.

[AI] (TomZ) add info to the wiki regarding doing testing on provisioning


*Carry Over Action Items*

[AI] (TomZ) will look into representing/provisioning role/perm info: how should it be "provisioned"? Or should all consumers call back into Grouper?

[AI] (Emily) Initiate an overall Grouper Features table with brief descriptions and links to documentation

[AI] (All) review the Grouper roadmap to be sure it is up to date
https://spaces.internet2.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=14517754

[AI] (TomZ) will put test data in the Grouper demo to show using an LDAP source.

[AI] (TomZ) will review the Grouper LDAP Loader doc and provide feedback to Chris, possibly with lessons learned from LDAPPC work. 
https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Grouper+-+Loader+LDAP 

[AI] (Rob) will follow up with Danno on obtaining the server for the Continuous Integration Environment.  

[AI] (Everyone) review Rob's chapters and give him feedback on the Grouper Users List.

DISCUSSION

Grouper v2.1.1

issues assigned to v2.1.1:
https://bugs.internet2.edu/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&jqlQuery=project+%3D+GRP+AND+fixVersion+%3D+10821

issues assigned to any unreleased version:
https://bugs.internet2.edu/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&jqlQuery=project+%3D+GRP+AND+fixVersion+in+unreleasedVersions%28%29

What are the remaining issues  before finalizing the release?

Chris: would like to finish the web service changes for COmanage.
Could take a week or 10 days.

- Q: What about the PSP performance issue?
- TomZ is profiling what part of the code should be changed first.
- This could be done in a week to 10 days

Q: Is there data PSU can provide to TomZ to look at the provisioning performance issues ?

A: TomZ:  yes, feedback on how many groups, how many members each, the sources for the members,
the scenarios,  description of the environment, how long it's taking.

Lynn: we are using one large group, of 29,000 members.
Was taking 25 hours to provision
When Jimmy returns Lynn can get and send some course data to TomZ
Lynn will send provisioning-related data to TomZ

TomZ had success in improving performance by tuning the subject source. 

[AI] (TomZ) add info to the wiki regarding doing testing on provisioning

Aim to finish the Grouper 2.1.1. release by 18-May, or if not, on the 23-May Grouper call.

There is a long list of issues (52 of them) assigned to future releases.
Please assign the unassigned issues to releases

UI ReDesign Planning

Community input is recorded and numbered on this table:
https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/Grouper/Grouper+UI+redesign+v2.2#GrouperUIredesignv2.2-community

====

Row #6 in table: request for image display of people in a people picker.  

Policy side is up to deployers, but is that easy to implement?
Can the image  be an attribute in the subject source?
Chris: we have been using combo boxes, so there could be issue with that.
possibly could subclass the combo box with a picture combo box in order to solve this

====

Row #7 in table: How to figure out if someone isn't a member?
- in Admin UI , you can figure that out, but perhaps it's not easy enough
- maybe we should separate redoing the features we already have from adding new features.
- should we have an incremental approach, and deal with the enhancements later?
- this does not seem easy and would be a lower priority
- this is more of  a feature request than a UI priority

====

Row #8 in table: Roles and permission UI workflow is too complex

 - it is good to have this feedback

====

Row #9 in table:  action timer... "Would be great when viewing details of a group to see when changes to a group will next be provisioned to downstream systems (or updated from external source)"

- hard for Grouper to know when other systems will be updated

- could we enhance integration so there is feedback from the other system?
- use attributes to help with this?
- how to change things so people who are not insiders are not surprised by how long certain things can take?

- expectation management
- JimF:  at University of Washington, we tell people to wait a while, such as with Google Groups, can take an hour or can take a day and a half

-  could display a range on the screen
- this could be connected to service tagging
- this could be helpful with PSP also.

- Chris added row #15 to the table on "Metadata about provisioning" to clarify the issues discussed here

====

Row #10 in the table:  mobile aware

- JimF: the U-W UI displays a different view for mobile devices
- uses the Dojo package that provides a convenient way of doing mobile
- the mobile screens can handle membership adds and deletes only, not all functions
- upon request (email Jim)  and Jim will send directions for you to have a test account, and to take a screen shot of the mobile look

Agreed we should have a mobile sensitive UI

It was noted that with mobile, it's not a matter of one page that works for both,

need a different design for the mobile display

Q: Chris: can the mobile UI be the accessible UI?
A: Probably not, trying to make both accessible is the way to do it

Chris: would like to us HTML widgets , and this could be hard for the screen reader

Michael: on a mobile device you want to use _javascript_ to make the widgets usable

- Makes sense to start a redesign targeting a mobile client

- the small screen forces you to focus on top tasks
- Forces you to focus on the user

====

Row #11 in Table. Clone

- you want to have a new group and want to have values filled in based on another group.
- Right now we have a copy and then one can rename
- TomB will ask ScottK what exactly the gap is here

[AI] (TomB) follow up with ScottK about cloning approaches.

====

Row #12 in Table. Attribute handling should be on same page as the groups and membership

- right now there's a different page for attributes instead of having it right there.
- UW UI has a tabbed page, and this makes more sense

- It was noted that the UW UI hides some things (such as stems), but the most important functions are clear

- It was agreed that the UW- UI makes sense
- can hide some of the functionality in the user drop down

Q: Do tabbed pages work with mobile?

A:  yes, each tab can become a row in mobile, can use Jquery Mobile

====

Process for the UI Resdesign

[AI] (Michael) will draft a framework proposal related to staging, as a discussion starter.

Technology for UI

- Bristol uses jQuery
- JimF likes Dojo
- The Dojo mobile package makes it easy to implement something that looks decent


Next Call: Wed. 23-May-2012 at noon ET

 













Emily Eisbruch, Technology Transfer Analyst
Internet2

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