Open mattieharding opened 6 years ago
jastill
commented
6 years ago One of the benefits I see from the creation of the app is less the UI but more the database with available services. I have built an Alexa skill that queries the service and currently answer simply questions such as how many mentors in
Cheers JohnA
furlan
commented
6 years ago I like the idea to have UI5 application. It's a good opportunity to show the UI5 capabilities. However, I agree that performance is an issue. You could achieve better performance with other tools. It's something that SAPUI5 team should address in some way.
I don't like the idea of spreadsheet. It will solve the issue, but close the doors for future implementations (i.e. Mobile application) or integration (i.e. link SAP Mentor info during SAP Events).
esjewett
commented
6 years ago A set of spreadsheets was used previously. Even if the only goal is to have information for the Mentor team, there were a bunch of problems with that:
Feel free to design-think the bejesus out of this, but I'm pretty sure the UI5 app situation is way better than the old shared-spreadsheet approach, even if performance is abysmal.
mattieharding
commented
6 years ago Apologies as the Spreadsheet was just an example of initially exploring the options of what we were trying to achieve that I definitely don't want to go back to either! Anyway, I agree with everyone's comments, but to clarify, I'm actually asking (from a UI5 app perspective), what are we trying to achieve with Lemonaid. e.g. Having a easy to update database of information about SAP Mentors sounds like the specific scenario which I fully support (and to be honest, performance for this task is on par with SAP Jam anyway & possibly even faster because of the UX of SAP Jam and spreadsheets).
But any other use case for Lemonaid (such as advertising location of SAP Mentors beyond SAP Mentors) I think should be explored differently. e.g. I think the audience for this app should be purely SAP Mentors and even the SAP Mentor Program Group should use a different tool to access the database.
e.g. ResolvingiIssues should focus on only the above & any other scenarios that are strategic.
As John (kind of) says, it's about the API more than anything else which is the value of Lemonaid.
In summary, as this a Mentor wide tool, how do we get a common vision for all of this? The way I see it, we need to keep Lemonaid current in terms of allowing people to select the right SAP product names that change every second month and capturing additional information as it is identified; but then focus on the public and private API's more than anything else (including performance of these API's) which we should advertise in order to be used in weird and wonderful ways like Alexa!
Maybe this issue should just say: "We need to document the vision for Lemonaid and share with all the Mentors to get final input for 2018". e.g. Maybe one crazy strategy is we use the whole SAP toolkit and have tools like Cloud Analytic reports on top of this and go crazy with the API everywhere (just joking - no way we could get a cloud instance publicly accessible in the cloud for that!).
mattieharding
commented
6 years ago I realised I'm still missing my point above, so I'll simply pose a question..."If" the main purpose for Lemonaid was for SAP Mentors to update their details, and to be able to leverage these details from an API perspective; shouldn't the app be an authenticated app where the first page you see is your details in a single page (not master detail) in display mode with the option to edit?
Cao-Jason
commented
6 years ago I don't think we've reached the full potential of Mentor Finder yet. Data management was the original and basic purpose of the app. We have this functionality now for the Program team to use (getting all mentors to actively update their info is another topic). The potential and longer-term purpose of Mentor Finder is for public awareness of contributions and engagement with Mentors. For example, beyond the community members seeing who is a Mentors, where in the world they are, what their expertise are, community members should also: -see what social media updates from Mentors -find out what events (customer conference, SIT, user group meeting, influence workshop) mentors are attending or speaking at -join upcoming webinars presented by mentors -see a newly or last published blog post/ authored book -contact/message specific Mentors with a question/request/invitation etc (not trying to replace SAP Community's Q&A platform here)
Whether this would be automatically aggregated or Mentors can update manually, I think it would be beneficial for Mentors to share this, for community members to see this, and for the program team to have.
mattieharding
commented
6 years ago 2 takes on your response @Cao-Jason - Have we identified the personas who would actually do this and more importantly, why they would do this getting to the real reason they are doing this? Oddly enough, this should probably be done after we determine the future state vision of the SAP Mentors too since it could impact the perception we want to give the community about the SAP Mentors (Are we approachable, are SAP Mentors expected to host more Lemonaid stands at all conferences as part of "entry", what is the focus of Mentor Webinars going forward - e.g. Mendix was a strange one with the Mentor name as I understand it, etc - deliberately putting controversial statements to drive why this information is important). And from another take, this type of information definitely sounds like more of a SCN hosted content than a bespoke app that takes 30 seconds to load which is fine for updating details (though could be much quicker if we dropped the map and loading of all Mentors and focused on who logged in) . In other words, why not do like Fiori suggests, and create a very specific data entry solution for Mentors to update their information, then build specific (can be Fiori, or any technology really) that leverages the data to fulfil these other requirements - though this is an example and we should DT this before going any further. BTW - One of my specialties is trying to get to the root of building the right solution rather than being an expert in any one technology (which isn't an option in the Lemonaid skills matrix for reference) so this is my way of using my expertise for Lemonaid...I hope everything I'm writing is not coming across negative, as really this is the sort of thing that is done in a workshop and taking a few minutes between doing other things makes it difficult to not be very blunt with my thinking. I think the work put into this app, now I have more info, is fantastic, but just think we should pull it back to it's core reason for being from a UI perspective.
I was going to help fix some bugs but found myself having some key questions about the purpose, audience and strategy for the Lemonaid app and Gregor encouraged me to raise this as an issue for discussion which obviously will take more than a simple response to resolve.
To be blunt, Lemonaid's key purpose appears to be so the SAP Mentors Program Team has up to date information for every SAP Mentor. Secondary purposes might be so non SAP Mentors can locate the SAP Mentors in their region, but I suspect this might be a more European flavour of use as I can't see that being something anyone would do in Australia. Another secondary purpose is to highlight that this is a solution built by SAP Mentors using SAP technology; though it's so slow loading this in Australia (>30 seconds excluding SSO) that it wouldn't get as much recognition as it deserves technologically speaking.
But this leaves me thinking - If the main purposes is for the SAP Mentors Program Team to get up to date information; why wouldn't we simply use a spreadsheet in SAP Jam and force everyone to update it once every 6 months (I'm okay with a little forceful housekeeping in order for the SAP Mentors Program Team to effectively do their job). Yes it's hard to get into SAP Jam sometimes, but maybe that's a requirement of being an SAP Mentor too and you get automatic alumni status unless you're off to Antarctica for 6 months?
Note - The one thing this approach doesn't really give us is a database of SAP Mentors for use in a global map, or for mailing lists, etc; but maybe that's just a manual task every 3 months to do updates to these real databases (not over-engineering the solution for that problem)?
Now, maybe if we Design Think around the solution and brainstorm the requirements and personas involved; we might identify the need to show on SCN the diversity of location, gender, age of the SAP Mentor program for executives like Bjoern and the community in general and in this case; wouldn't we want the lightest Web Site content possible (loading of SCN is still too slow compared to the old days), and possibly drop UI5 for that scenario and go with something else (there's lots of options - even UI5 with anonymous access and akamai cached data of SAP Mentors public information)?
Kudos to those who created this solution for sure (I especially love the please wait GIF), but my issue is - do we know what we need and where this is, and should be going? I always want to believe in what I'm doing is the best thing for my customers, but right now, I think we're serving mixed and not necessarily optimal purposes.