Short version:
> Would anyone object to removing (de-bundling) the BookmarksPortlet
for the upcoming 4.1 release?
I'd be a -0, favoring dropping from the ootb Welcome tab but not
de-bundling for uPortal 4.1.
----
Long version:
Yes, the bookmarks portlet UW-Madison uses is the Jasig Bookmarks
portlet. Our build incorporates it via a Maven overlay along the lines
of that shipping in ootb uPortal 4, so we could easily continue to
include the portlet in our portal regardless of whether it remains
bundled or not in ootb uPortal 4.1.
I agree with Jim that it remains to be seen whether and how bookmarks
portlet functionality carries forward into redesigned MyUW-Madison.
Taking this past month as a random example and taking only a very quick,
shallow look at the analytics: Madison's bookmarks portlet was the
fourth most-rendered portlet in our portal for that time period. That's
because it's on the default welcome tab, but it does mean at least users
don't dislike it so much as to remove it from their layouts. :)
I agree with Drew that the bookmarks portlet isn't the most impressive
and most demoable portal content. I'd favor a more modest adjustment
for uPortal 4.1 of dropping the portlet from the welcome tab. I'd favor
continuing to include the portlet ootb as an available portlet.
The lift for an adopter to then remove the portlet entirely from their
uPortal implementation, upon locally evaluating it and deciding it
doesn't help, is modest, and is not different from the lift they will
make in removing portlets like Notification, Calendar, Courses, Email,
Contacts, which despite being lovely will not make the cut for inclusion
in all uPortal implementations.
That would seem to nail the cleanup, put best foot forward, but rock the
boat less.
I haven't checked how much the Bookmarks Portlet is contributing to
uPortal build time / build and runtime resource consumption. I'm
assuming trivially. If the Bookmarks Portlet is a resource hog I could
be easily convinced it's not worth the cost and unbundling is in order.
So, looping back to the original question, now explicated:
> Would anyone object to removing (de-bundling) the BookmarksPortlet
for the upcoming 4.1 release?
I'd be a -0. I don't favor going so far as de-bundling, but I wouldn't
veto consensus to do so, especially since it's quite easy to decide to
include this portlet in our local uPortal implementation regardless of
what's happening ootb.
Kind regards,
Andrew
On 12/10/13, 4:02 PM, Jim Helwig wrote:
We have a bookmarks portlet but I would have to see if it is the
bundled version. We can probably dig up some data on usage. To be
honest, I don't see it having prominent position in our redesigned
portal. Perhaps it is old school and I support taking it off the
default welcome tab.
Regarding clutter and build time, perhaps we need to refactor how
things are bundled and what that means. It should be dirt-simple to
add portlets to your install. Perhaps we could trim uPortal to only
"bundle" framework portlets if it is easy to distinguish which
portlets are up-to-snuff and easy to add.
JimH
On 12/10/13, 3:42 PM, Drew Wills wrote:
On 12/10/2013 02:15 PM, Jim Helwig wrote:
Very simple portlets might not require regular commits. What is the
motivating rationale?
Nothing more than a desire to de-clutter, if we're not interested in it
any longer. A chance to save a modest amount of disk space, build time,
and ongoing maintenance & documentation efforts.
We have many more bundled portlets these days than originally, with the
likelihood of more in the future.
The Bookmarks portlet is in competition with tools like delicious,
pinterest, social networks, and the browser itself. Feature-wise, it
doesn't measure up. I just don't see many folks wanting to enter their
bookmarks into their school portal.
And yet it's on the Welcome tab of the quickstart data. I would be
delighted to learn that I have it all wrong -- but I'm concerned that
we're not putting our best foot forward by giving real estate to this
empty tool when it comes to new folks evaluating the portal. I'd be
happier giving the real estate to portlets like Notification, Calendar,
Courses, Email, Contacts, etc., where it's easy to showcase
pre-configured content, and it's easier to provide valuable content in
the portlet the first time a user logs in.
And so I suppose we could consider taking it off the Welcome tab, but
not de-bundling it. But we know only a fraction of users find portlets
that are not on their original layout (their fragments). In a way that
approach would exacerbate the issue -- what portion of the user
population would both (1) find the Bookmarks if it weren't on their
layout originally and (2) be interested in entering their data?
drew
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