Multiple users/authors can edit the same story

[jwirfs-brock]

This is a use case that I encountered while speaking with several different groups and organizations. Sometimes, the person who had created the organization's Floodlight account leaves for a different job. Or, they may simply want multiple members within an organization to be able to edit the story. DPS did this successfully by using a single account, but for various reasons, people are not always eager to have a shared login (especially if they are creating accounts via Facebook or Twitter).

Right now, via the admin, you can reassign a story from one user to a different user. This is a workaround in case someone at an organization leaves without a record of their Floodlight login information. But it might also be useful be useful to be able to have multiple user accounts able to edit a story.

I see this being something that you could do via the admin (at least at first, until we see how useful it is). Eventually, if it's a feature that is getting a lot of use, we could build in a user-facing interface for adding multiple authors.

It's also interesting to note that users are fairly frequently sharing the preview link as a way to collaboratively edit stories (or to get feedback before publishing).

[ghing]

+1 for this. @jwirfs-brock, can you sketch out/describe how you'd like the user facing behavior around this feature to eventually work? I think it's wise to not build out UI for this as a first step, but having an idea of how you'd like it to work eventually will help decide on the back-end data modeling.

[jwirfs-brock]

@ghing Sure, I will put together some notes on how a user might interact with this feature. I agree that thinking about the user-facing side, even if we end up implementing it later on, will help us with the design.

I'll reach out to Matt and Matt at DPS for some ideas, because they are the group that most actively used collaboration in the stories they posted. Who knows, their feedback may be that having one shared account worked fine. We'll see...

[jwirfs-brock]

Here are some comments from Matt Gray (story wrangler for the DPS/AmeriCorps project) on multiple people editing the same story:

• We did use a single account to edit the stories, which only Matt [Dodge] and I had access to. Early on, I had writers working on their stories separate from Floodlight, and then I would take their material and create a Floodlight Story. About midway through the process, I realized that it was extremely helpful to work directly on Floodlight with the storyteller. So we began building the initial story outline and then content on Floodlight. This REALLY helped move the process along as it enabled the storyteller to better understand the medium and the final product they were working towards. And it provided me with the opportunity to show the storyteller 1:1 all the features of Floodlight with their story publication deadline on the more immediate horizon. It also allowed Matt and I to still have exclusive access and the final say, which protected against premature publishing and glitches on our account: the brand management and quality control expected within DPS.
• Hmmm, not sure about the multiple accounts. Our process at the end of the project that I mentioned above worked really well. And it eliminated the need for several people having to sign up for "yet another account on another website" which people seem to be overloaded with these days. Keeping that in mind, our process worked since we had two point people for the project (Matt and I) with whom all stories were collaboratively written, edited, and finally published. For a large organization without similar point people, multiple users/accounts working on a single story would definitely, without a doubt, be a HUGE help. And if people only had permission/access to certain stories, it would also eliminate my fear about other glitches and accidental edits happening in stories by someone other than the stories' authors.

[jwirfs-brock]

@ghing Here are some initial thoughts as to how this might work as a user-facing feature.

To clarify some of the details, I'm going to refer to a story owner as the user who created a story and a story editor as an additional user that can also edit/build the story.

The bare minimum actions we would want to have are:

• a story owner can add a user to a story as an editor
• a story owner can remove a user from a story as an editor (if a story has editors)
• when a story is assigned a new editor, that user should get a notification email and the story should now appear in that user's story list on the "My Account" page

I think we should start with the bare minimum. Later on, there may be other things we can do, like:

• a story owner can add a user as an editor to all stories in a project or organization
• a story owner can remove all editors from a story (as a batch)
• a story editor can add other story editors? (we could also just restrict this to the story owner) ...but we should definitely hold off on those until we see if/how people are using this.

Where should the action of adding/removing editors take place? There are two possible places:

1. In the Story Builder
2. In the story list on the My Account page

I prefer (2), because (1) is (at least for now) all content that is publicly reflected in some way, either on the story detail page or in the story itself. I see adding story editors as something distinct. It's not really a part of the story itself.

My suggestion is that there would be an additional column on the story list on the My Account page (http://floodlightproject.org/en/accounts/stories/) for "Editors." By default, when the story owner is the only user who has access to the story, this is either blank or lists the story owner. It could then have a "+" icon, and clicking on that icon would let the story owner add other Floodlight users as editors. Once a story has editors, there could also be an edit icon (a pencil or something standard). Clicking the edit icon would allow the story owner to remove editors.

Here's a sketch:

Of course, the story list is already pretty wide, so adding a column on the far right may not be the best option. I'll defer to @bpawlak and @patternleaf for better ideas in terms of layout, icons, etc.

[bpawlak]

I definitely agree that this is something that belongs in the My Account section, but I wonder if it belongs on the main My Stories screen or if the links on the left shouldn't be taking the user to a story configuration/report page as we previously discussed. Right now, clicking on "CLIC web test story" (in screenshot above) takes the user to the story detail page on the main floodlightproject.org website.

However, we had talked at some point that that link could instead take me to a detailed "Story Management" screen where I can get the embed code, see how many views I've had, see how many times it's been embedded, manage tags and - now - add/remove other authors.

See http://clients.inovdesigns.com/floodlight/account_stories.php for reference. Click on "My First Story" to see the page I'm talking about.

That way, we can keep the exact same "My Stories" view for all users, regardless of whether or not they are a Story Owner or Story Editor.

[ghing]

I like the idea of sharing settings being in a separate page as suggested by @bpawlak, mostly because I feel like the story list is already pretty crowded. However, I think it's still important to have a link to the story's detail page. I could either see adding a "settings" link, or adding a "view" link and swapping the link behavior as Bill suggests.

[jwirfs-brock]

I also like @bpawlak's suggestion of having a story settings page, and agree with @ghing that we should still have a link to view the story ("view" would certainly be an appropriate label).

It sounds like this conversation might lead us into a deeper discussion about updating the "My Account" features. For reference, here is how Blogger handles post management. Obviously, it's a lot more robust than we want/need Floodlight to be, but I really like their interface: A few things in particular I like:

• When you mouse-over a post, you see the actions you can do with it (Edit, View, Share, Delete). You can see this on the first post in the list.
• The basic page view stats are right there, without you having to click on anything or go anywhere.
• You can add tags from this view.

Are there other CMS conventions that you've used that you like or dislike? I'm sure a lot of this is personal preference, but I like being able to edit some meta-data from the post list view, without having to open up the post, or in the case of Floodlight launching the Story Builder.

[mgrayinnovation]

This has come up again during the Pivot in 2015 ... these back explorations and notes are worth looking at as we enrich the Floodlight experience. Moving it into P7.