As all of you are certainly aware, the developer conference in Brno is
right behind the door. There are going to be talks about various topics
and I think it would be great opportunity to discuss structure and
workflows in Conductor as well, because right now, we are not very good
at it.
One of my presentations will focus on this topic and I hope that we will
collect lot of feedback from you and discuss it. Hopefully in the end of
conference, we will have Aeolus all done and programmed :)
I don't wanna surprise you with something completely new and start
discussion about something what just jumped in front of your eyes.
That's why I am sending this e-mail in advance, trying to introduce you
few of my ideas. I don't wanna get into many details here, that's what I
plan to do at the conference, but I hope that giving you brief basics in
advance would be useful. If you are interested, you have chance to look
at it and think about it a little bit more before we discuss.
I tried to improve a structure and navigation of our application and
together with proposing new concept and workflows, I believe, that in
the end, we will manage to make user's life easier.
=============
Conductor structure
[1] http://conductor.jaromircoufal.cz/conductor_navigation.png
It's not very different from the current one, but together with
following improved areas of concept and processes, also small changes
play big role in the end. I also tried to reflect main personas, so if
they have some restrictions, they will see just sections relevant to
their role.
I will just list main categories, underlying layer is captured in mind
map (see link [1]).
** Dasboard* - welcome page informing about everything what happened in
the system (available just through logolink)
There are three major categories:
** Cloud Environments* - everything what is related to active elements
(running instances)
** Catalog* - our not active content (templates / outlines, images)
* *Cloud Providers* - places where we actually run the content
And one important for managing access to particular parts of our app:
** Users* - list of users, groups and their permissions
============
Conductor concept
[2] http://conductor.jaromircoufal.cz/conductor_concept.pdf
Just an example of the concept. Content in it is just for example purposes.
* For managing all elements, I think that 2-pane layout would do a
miracle here (list on the left, details on right)... [2] - page 11
* Right after entering the section (no selected item), there should be
statistics information related to the section... [2] - page 9
* There are three different views, regarding user's needs... [2] - pages
11+12+13
=================
Main Conductor Processes
[3] http://conductor.jaromircoufal.cz/conductor_processes.png
I walked through three main user needs based on several talks. There is
not captured how it is related with Conductor right now (e.g.
Environment or Pool dependencies), it's just based on user expectations
and my view, how I designed them to be effective.
*
* Create image* - we just want to specify what will the image contains
inside.
* *Prepare for launch* - now comes the step when we want to launch the
image, so we need to specify few parameters. After setting them, we can
launch it right away or save it as template (deployable)
* *Launch* - we get overview page with all pre-set parameters. We don't
wanna care about setting anything, just launch... [3] - Quick launch. Or
we want to edit some parameters, let's hit to edit them. After editing,
I can save it as new template (deployable), overwrite current one or
just launch... [3] - Advanced launch. There are not two separate
buttons, these two describe one view, but two different approaches (also
might be restricted by permissions).
=
Actually everything should work based on permissions which are assigned
to user. It would not be easy to implement, we need to be careful, but
if user has no permission to manage anything from Cloud Provider
section, he shouldn't see it. If user has just right to run prepared
deployables, he will see just Catalog/Catalogs from where he can launch
them, no other section from Catalog will be accessible to him, etc.
I hope it makes sense at least a little bit. In Brno, I will try to make
it more clear and explain all you wanna know. If there will still be
anything unclear, please speak up.
I am looking forward to seeing all of you.
-- Jarda
--
Jaromír Coufal
Interaction Designer
Red Hat Czech s.r.o.
Mobile: +420 724 595 508
E-mail: [email protected]
IRC: jcoufal at #cloudforms-ui, #aeolus, #brno
