#152: Dashboard

Contents
  1. Definitions
  2. Motivation
  3. Proposal
  4. Implementation
  5. Deliverables
  6. Risks
  7. Participants
by Christof Haemmerle — last modified Jan 21, 2010 07:27 AM

We want to create a page where the user can add portlets/widgets showing summaries with content of the portal. The idea is to provide an overview/summery over the content. The criteria which content and wich portlettype can be set/chosen by the user. The personal google page is a very good example.

Proposed by
Christof Haemmerle
Seconded by
Alexander Limi
Proposal type
User interface
Assigned to release
State
completed

Definitions

  • The layouts of the Dashboard should be usable by the user but predefined. (like layouts in CompositPack)
  • The user should be able to customize the criteria of the content to show. (SmartFolder as a ContentProvider)
  • widget/portlets can be installed as products/packages and are available through the add menu.
  • widget/portlets can be draged and dropped between slots in the Dashboard layout
  • widget/portlets can be draged and dropped in the existing slot to reorder it.
  • widget/portlets have a configuration section (personalized google page or attached image
  • portal admin should be able to enforce portlets to exist on users Dashboard based on User Role or Group.
    Position can still though be defined by the user.
  • The user should be able to drag and drop the portlets in a predefined layout (for example 3 colum layout). Maybe we can push this so far that we can also provide a plugin functionality so portaladmins could create their portlets/widget very easily and install them as zope products/packages into the plone site. That would make them available as a addable portlet/widget on the dashboard.

Motivation

As complexity and amount of content grows we want to ensure that it's easy to display user definable content on a central place. We want to provide an overview on the activity of the content and the content itself.

Proposal

  • We relay on the new PlonePortlet (Plip 118) and the need to integrate a viewlet/layout concept in CompositePack.
  • Create Viewlets for contenttypes

Implementation

The Implementation should be based on Plone Portlets (Plip 118) without adding any more logic to a special Dashboard product.

Deliverables

Since we relay on existing functionality there should not be any tests. Documentation will be very short cause this is already a very wellknown way of dislpaying content overviews.

Risks

none

Participants

Christof Haemmerle

<put your name here>

Danny added the following

Posted by Alexander Limi at Nov 04, 2006 01:25 AM
Worklists in plone are a missed oportunity. I know worklists are very expensive to build but if you have them, it must be done right. Of course this goes hand in hand with a good workflow. In any way, it would be nice if plone could recognize all the defined worklists and present them in a grouped way (perhaps in a popup window representing a seperate task list), either in a portlet or in a specific page.

In our company, our most common workflows all begin with the draft state. There is a worklist that is called Work in progress that lists all objects in this state. Also, it is possible to show the worklist in the context of a folder and subfolders. Then the user can quickly see e.g. in the context of a team folder, which items require attention.

Almost finished...

Posted by Goldmund, Wyldebeast & Wunderliebe at Mar 07, 2007 04:01 PM
For a customer we have almost completed a framework holding 'viewlets' roughly based on the Google desktop, that satisfies all listed requirements for this issue. Most likely we will publish a demo somewhere this or next week, so it would be good to see whether this product (called 'Mlango') is fit to either use as is, or at least form the basis on which to build further.
Give us some more days...

Oops

Posted by Goldmund, Wyldebeast & Wunderliebe at Mar 08, 2007 08:49 AM
I didn't notice this issue had moved to completed/merged. Well, let's see whether Mlango will offer features that can be integrated.

Demo of Mlango

Posted by Goldmund, Wyldebeast & Wunderliebe at Mar 09, 2007 01:07 PM
Check a preliminary demo of our dashboard implementation at:

http://www.goldmund-wyldebeast-wunderliebe.com/[…]/

this will be published as a product soon.

teh awesome!

Posted by Justin Ryan at Mar 20, 2007 03:10 AM
Okay this is frakking awesome. I love it! Not sure entirely how it melds with all of the rest of Plone but it has a lot of ideas I've been kicking around for a while.

Great work!

Integration into Plone

Posted by Goldmund, Wyldebeast & Wunderliebe at Mar 20, 2007 07:55 AM
At the moment, integration into Plone (2.5) involves creating content of type 'Dashboard' and filling the instance with viewlets that are either packaged into the product or created by yourself (which is very easy). In the end we would probably like to integrate with standard Plone portlets and have it function at the same level.

For now, we are stabilizing the product and removing sharp edges for most versions of many browsers (IE6 being the biggest pain of course). It won't be long before we put the software into Plone Trac.

Cheers,
Wietze.

Brilliant!

Posted by Justin Ryan at Mar 20, 2007 08:05 AM
That's great. I created a product called simply 'panels' which are intended to be viewlets designed to share between CMFContentPanels, CompositePack, and possibly something like this.

There are some practical limitations but it would be nice to get them in one place. Also, this sort of interface could be really powerful for design a composite page, as in another plip.

Mlango in Collective

Posted by Goldmund, Wyldebeast & Wunderliebe at Jun 27, 2007 03:03 PM
The Mlango framework for viewlets has been added to the Plone Collective a while ago. It would be good to check whether this fits into the next generation of Plone portlets.