Grouper Developers Forum

["William G. Thompson, Jr." <>]

Hi Micheal,

I tend to think of at least 3 different general UX categories when
thinking about access/group management with Grouper.

1) IAM Technical Staff
Responsible for install/configure/maintain Grouper and centrally
managed groups, roles, permissions, etc.  Has deep knowledge of IAM
architecture, data, access management concepts, policy, etc.  Needs
full access to Grouper administration.

2) Department/Distributed possibly-non-technical staff
Responsible for ensuring proper authorization via roles and group
assignment.  Understands access management concepts and policy.  Needs
access to simplified group and role administration.

3) Distributed non-technical staff
Makes authorization decisions as part of an application workflow or
service request.  May not understand access management concepts or
policy.  The Duke Toolkit is a great example of this.

So, I don't know if we need multiple UIs per se, but surely we need
multiple UX whether that's in a one system or not.

Best,
Bill


On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Michael Girgis 
<>
 wrote:
> Hi everyone.
>
> I'm interested in collecting some feedback regarding your thoughts on the 
> need for multiple Grouper UIs. As you know, right now we have two UIs, the 
> Admin UI and the Lite UI. As we move forward with a UI redesign, we'll need 
> to decide if we're going to redesign both UIs, enhance just one or the 
> other, or integrate them into one.
>
> I'm going to take the optimistic route, and suggest that if we design a 
> single interface effectively, maybe we can successfully combine both into 
> one, and even reduce some overhead along the way. As I understand it, the 
> most important features of the Lite UI are:
>
> * removes excess clutter for intermediate users
> * provides ability to deep link directly to a group's management screen
>
> So perhaps as we redesign a single UI, we can pay special attention to 
> providing the ability to "hide" advanced features (which is already done to 
> some extent in the Lite UI). For example, we could include a tree for 
> navigating folders and groups which could exist in a collapsible left 
> column - since lite users may not need to access more than one group, they 
> can leave this collapsed at all times. And maybe it would be possible to 
> save some of those UI settings in a user's preferences or session so that 
> she doesn't need to adjust things everytime she accesses the site.
>
> Regarding deep-linking, is that not an option in the Admin UI, or is it 
> mainly that the page you would link to is just not as user-friendly as in 
> the Lite UI?
>
> As I'm still very new to this project, perhaps I'm over simplifying. But 
> I'm interested to know what everyone thinks.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Michael Girgis
> University of Chicago