launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Albisetti <martin.albisetti@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 01/13/2010 02:32 PM, Tom Berger wrote:
> Looking at a bugwatch on the bug page, it is impossible to tell whether the
> information provided by the bugwatch is up-to-date.

Taking a step back to an ideal world, the system would work well enough that 
the default assumption is that everything is up-to-date, and when something 
isn't, it gets fixed in the background.
To push us in that direction, I'd try to make out-of-date bugwatches as flashy 
as possible, with a clear path-to-action that contacts us the people who can do 
something to fix is (us?  a question?  a bug?).


> The proposed solution is to indicate that synchronisation status of a bugwatch
> using its icon. We will use three version of the icon, one for unknown or new
> bugwatches, one for bugwatches successfully synchronised and one for bugwatches
> with recent failures.

I wonder if newly-added/unknown bugwatches shouldn't be hidden/grayed out until 
we sync?



> The bugwatch itself should link to the new bugwatch page (description below),
> but we should consider the usability implications of not linking directly to
> the remote bug. The challenge may be to provide links to both the Launchpad
> page and the remote bug.

As discussed on IRC, I think we should preserve the link to the bugtracker. 
There's a lot of value in letting people jump to the upstream bugwatch quickly, 
but very little in sending them to another page (unless the bugwatch failed, 
which is the exception).
The edit icon is probably the best way to link to there, although it breaks the 
pattern a little bit.



> === Dedicated bugwatch page on LP ===
>
> Currently, we don't have any page representing a remote bug watch. Bug watches
> appear in bug pages and bugtracker pages, but there isn't a single place where
> a user can go to look for all the information available about a specific bug
> watch and its synchronisation status.
>
> The bugwatch page will present:
>
> * All the remote bug information available in Launchpad.
> * Link to the remote bug.
> * Link to the Launchpad bugtracker page.
> * Information about the bugs this bugwatch is related to.
>   * Bug number, title, targets (anything else?)

> * Basic information about the bugtracker sync status.

So the status is about the bugtracker, not this specific bugwatch?  If so, I'd 
try to make that a bit clearer.


> * A control for initiating sync.

I would word this "Retry sync now", I think retry is the key word here.
Also, I'd put it next to the unsuccessful message rather than the last sync 
time, as that's where you will want to retry. I'm guessing you put it there 
because it will be on the page even if it doesn't fail?  For manual syncs for 
the impatient?  If yes, I'd re-word it to "Update now", and maybe offer the 
retry link in the message as well, even though it will end up doing the same 
thing. It's not a great solution, I'm open to brighter ones  :)




> === Changes to the bugtracker page ===
> To indicate the sync status, each line in the table of bugs/bugwatches should
> indicate the sync status of each individual bug watch. We will do this by
> adding a column displaying the last sync time and whether an error occured.

I'd order by least-updated first, show totals to get the idea of the amount of 
syncing that is going on, and maybe by default just show bugs that have never 
been synced, or haven't in a $longtime. Offering a link to the full list would 
be good, but the total and the problematic ones may be enough.


> For the bugtracker as a whole, we need to display information about sync runs,
> and a way to trigger a new sync.

I'd re-use the same pattern for forcing a sync as the other page.
Can we show a log?  Maybe next to the last sync, we could show a log so people 
can figure out what the problem is for themselves.

As for the projects that use this bugtracker, I would be super cool if:
- You could add a project to it from there instead of going to the project
- Show the total number of bugswatches each of those have

Finally, a call-to-action for failures to contact us would probably go a long 
way to raise awareness.


This is a fantastic work, I think it's a solid base to polish. Thanks Tom.

--
Martin