Hi all, Yes good idea! As Ethan below suggests we should rather embed into a widget platform for what has been described by Marcelo above.
I would like to go a bit further and suggest that* ESME should be able to render certain URL's as widgets. * E.g. instead of getting a message like "Can you please approve XYZ http://somelink"; you would get a message with widget being shown for what is behind http://somelink. This would be just a simple extension of the feature that some twitter clients such as Brizzly already offer. Brizzly for example renders images and video links automatically inline. I believe this is especially a great idea for mobile devices, because something like an simple approval could be done very quickly without starting any application, from wherever you are. Regards, Markus "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" -- Alan Kay On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:09 PM, Ethan Jewett <[email protected]> wrote: > That looks very interesting and I think it's a great idea. A couple > comments (sorry, it's been a busy week, so this is a bit off-the-cuff): > > 1. I'd like to echo Daniel's suggestion to pursue an existing widget > container/standard if we do this. To offer another option: Shindig is a > pretty mature implementation of the OpenSocial widget container standard. > (Oh, and it's an Apache project - http://incubator.apache.org/shindig/ ;-) > > 2. I wonder if we might want to consider embedding *ESME* into a widget > platform (via the APIs) rather than embedding *widgets* into ESME. My > impression is that this might be a lot easier and may more closely align > with how ESME will be deployed (in the Enterprise) with a UI wrapper. > > 3. I'm skittish about putting code into ESME that interfaces with SAP > modules. My understanding of SAP's IP position is that code that interfaces > with SAP Enterprise Services contains SAP IP and cannot be licensed under an > Apache 2.0 license (or at least SAP reserves the right to spread FUD on the > topic). I'm not comfortable working on code that does this or committing it > to an Apache project until SAP clarifies its position publicly and > unequivocally. Because of this, I think we can provide a framework and > examples, but I think we should think twice before providing an actual > widget that interfaces with SAP as part of the distribution. > > Ethan > > > On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Marcelo Pham <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi there, >> >> I had a chat with Dick and he thought it would be good to share this idea >> we had for Akibot with the ESME community: >> >> *General concept* >> >> 1. The idea is to include a "widget" area to ESME front end. These widgets >> would be plug & play components that help users from a same group or >> department to see real time info, such as financials, inventory maps, sales, >> etc. etc. >> In brief, we would be marrying business intelligence (widgets showing >> relevant, summarized information in real time) with social media >> (microblog), this would give the whole group a sense of total business >> awareness (they would know exactly what's going on, what employees are >> chatting about, issues (microblog), what's the most named item, the most >> mentioned customer (tags), figures for sales, inventory (widgets)) >> >> 2. For example, the executive and sales groups would have a widget in >> their microblog that would show real time information for today's and YTD >> orders: >> >> >> This widget would read data from the SD module and inform everybody how >> sales are doing. >> >> 3. We would start with widgets that read from SAP modules (SD, FI, MM, >> etc.) and maybe after we could extend it to other ERP's (JD Edwards, Mas500, >> Navision, etc) or other groupware apps (Salesforce, Exchange, etc.) >> >> *Details* >> >> 4. If ESME can be skinnable (meaning to allow users to change around the >> HTML of the front end) these widgets could be embeddable in the form of an >> object, like: >> >> <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" >> codebase="http://widget.esme.us/?v=1.0"; width="200" height="400" >> align="middle"> >> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> >> <param name="movie" value="widget1.swf" /> >> <param name="quality" value="high" /> >> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> >> >> <param name="feed_username" value="username" /> >> >> <param name="feed_password" value="12345abcd" /> >> >> <param name="feed_url" value="http://10.1.1.10/SAPFeed/"; /> >> >> <embed src="widget1.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="200" >> height="400" name="foo" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" >> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" >> pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"; /> >> >> </object> >> >> Or something like this but using JS. >> >> 5. Widgets would be available to download from common open repositories >> such as ESME website, Google code, etc. A widget would be composed by a >> Flash or JS file to download, and a sample code to embed into the HTML front >> end with instructions on how to customize it. We will contribute with all >> the widgets we do and also help develop widgets made by other members. >> >> 6. Since these will be all behind-the-firewall installations, there should >> not be many security issues, although we would include a username/password >> to authenticate to the SAP feed >> >> *Open for discussion* >> >> 7. Embeddable code / format: we haven't decided what formats will be the >> best (JS, Flash, both...) >> >> 8. Connection / authentication: how to connect to the SAP feed and how to >> authenticate to it >> >> 9. Widget permissions: how to allow/hide widgets for different groups (for >> example the sales widget should not be shown to the purchasing group, etc.) >> >> >> What do you guys think? >> >> >> Good night, >> >> >> Marcelo Pham >> Head Developer >> Akibot >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >
