Groups Priorities Meeting - 8-11-09

Participants

Oliver Heyer, Eli Cochran, Daphne Ogle, Ray Davis, Michael Korcuska, Keli Amann (remote), Clay Fenlason (remote)

Goals

Tentatively conclude which functional area(s) the project will focus on first.

Process

We reviewed both http://3akai.sakaiproject.org and the 3akai wireframes to examine where group management might touch the existing design. And where the existing design is simply missing functionality that should be there.

Notes

Rather than trying to recapitulate the discussion, the following is a list of observations and questions that came up during the meeting:

1. Both internal and external groups are intended to be addressed in the first design phase
2. Dashboard contacts are not implemented using Sling groups but, rather, are a list of individuals that hang off the user.
3. We need the ability to create sub-groups of contacts (at the dashboard level).
4. "Groups" seems an important concept underserved by the wireframes as a whole: further design consideration is really called for
5. Berkeley working on a "people picker" which might serve as a source of inspiration. Rolling it out soon at Berkeley
6. Keli has some screens based on nathan's wireframes that begins to contemplate groups.
7. My Contacts: Need to be able to create "contact types" or sub-groups of contacts. Is this a screen we should leave to the social networking project?
8. Differences between:
   1. Groups you invite people to (invite/accept)
   2. Groups you assign people to (where you might be an SIS)
   3. Groups that people can openly join (request/approve)
9. Create a space--Need to separate a few things that are combined in Sakai 2
   1. Layout and appearance
   2. Purpose of the site (support a course, research collaboration)
   3. Membership management
10. Create a group - This doesn't exist at all and needs to be created from scratch.
11. Add/Manage Site membership - Needs to be Add/Manage Access
    1. Currently design doesn't involve groups, per se. Has roles and tags.
    2. How does manual vs. provisioned groups interact
12. Membership, roles and permissions
    1. How do we handle the mapping of group members to permissions in a site

Outcomes

• Group creation & management as the priority. This will include manual and provisioned groups.
  • A "group picker" would be a useful contribution, if produced as something other development teams could pick up and plug into their own work where appropriate.
  • We will face the "give this group access to the space" issue, perhaps only in a crude way at first
  • We need to think about how this capability would be used in several different contexts