Features We Had To Implement, and Wish Were Already Implemented.

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stimpy77 Posted: Mon, Jul 14 2008 5:46 PM

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I wanted to share a list of things we have been having to make in order to make CS 2008 usable for our own purposes. We're still not there yet but we're getting close, and I'm sharing this because, in my opinion, there is no louder message of "please add these features into your product" than the willing efforts made by the customers to do it on a proprietary basis. (Note that these customizations are not being redistributed.) Most of these I had to do single-handedly, and so far it has taken months of SDK tweaking.

1. Make the top navigation bar data-driven for sort order, data-driven for additional links to custom URLs, and administratable from the Control Panel. (We implemented.)
2. Auto-generate a blog for each user, and make certain that no errors occur if there are no posts. (We implemented.)
3. Auto-generate a media gallery for each user, and make certain that no errors occur if there are no posts. Note that the new "My Files" feature is not adequate for this purpose as it doesn't support ratings, comments, etc. (We implemented.)
4. Hide inappropriate admin options in the control panel from "normal users" in their personal Media Gallery settings, such as e-mail notifications.
5. Add a "My Blog Actions" component on the sidebar for the Blogs section, so that users can jump straight into managing their blog from the Blogs portal. (We implemented.)
   • Add A New Post
   • View All Posts
   • View Comments On My Posts
   • Manage My Blog
     
6. Add a "My Gallery Actions" component on the sidebar for the Media section, so that users can jump straight into managing their media gallery from the Media portal. (We implemented.)
   • Add A New Gallery Item
   • View My Gallery
   • View Comments on My Gallery
   • Manage My Gallery
     
7. Add a link to the user's blog from the user's profile. (We implemented.)
8. Add a link to the user's media gallery from the user's profile. (We implemented.)
9. Replace the general Media section on the user's page with a "My Media Gallery" section.
   
10. Wanted (we have not implemented): Albums inside a gallery.
11. Restore the drop-down menu for selecting what area to search. (Where'd this go?!)
12. When searching for users, always assume a wildcard (*) on prefix/suffix. (We implemented.)
13. Add prominent link to browse people from the user's portal. (We implemented. We added "Members" to the Welcome control on the top right, which links to ~/user/Members.aspx?search=1&t=&sb=1&so=1.)
14. Make gallery RSS feed PicLens-compliant. (See PicLens.com)
15. Replace the slide show with PicLens Lite.
16. Aggregate the media with statistical roll-ups:
    • Highest Rated[in the ..]
      
      • Last 24 hours
        
      • Last 7 days
      • Last month
      • Last year
      • All time
    • Most Talked About ...
      • Last 24 hours
      • .. etc
    • Most Viewed
      (We are implementing.)
      
17. Show randomized gallery items on sidebar based on statistical aggregate roll-up data. (We are implementing.)
18. Add "Share with friend" functionality to media galleries. (We implemented.)
19. Each group/hub gets an events calendar. (We are implementing.)
    • Users can "subscribe" to events to receive an e-mail reminder 24 hours prior to group events. (We are implementing.)
20. Add the following options (and implement what they infer) to the Edit Profile page:
    • Share Friends (Yes/No)
    • Show Profile Comments (Yes/No)
    • Share Blog Link (Yes/No)
    • Share Gallery Link (Yes / No)
    • Share My Activity Logs (Yes / No)
    • Share My Files (Yes / No)
    • Share My Bio (Yes / No)
    • Show My Announcements (Yes / No)
    • Share My Groups (Yes / No)
      (We implemented.)
21. Make profile comments and announcements distinct, so that the comments can be treated like a thread and the profile owner can actually respond to a comment without it being a broadcasted announcement. (Think FB 'wall'!!) (We implemented.)
22. Flag new conversation messages as unread. Any unread messages enables a "new mail" icon to appear in the Welcome control on the top right. Mark the message as read by the recipient when the user accesses the actual conversation message, so the icon disappears. (We implemented.)
23. Support site-wide survey questions that show up in the user's profile as an additional tab. (We implemented.) These questions are data-driven, and the site administrator can create questions that consist of:
    • Drop-down menus
    • Multi-select list box
    • Textbox
    • Textarea
    • Radio buttons
    • Checkboxes
24. Support hub-wide survey questions that show up in the group as a Q/A or Polls section. These questions are data-driven, and the hub administrator can create questions of the same types that are supported in the site-wide survey (previous item). (We implemented.)
25. Support multiple TOS agreements. Make TOS data-driven to point to either a URL or full text field, with a TOS modify date, display each of the TOS agreements in a seperate IFRAME with an "I agree to these terms" checkbox below each, and log the user agreeing to the TOS with timestamp, so that if a TOS modify date ever changes, and any member accesses any member-only section of the site (such as Add a New Post), the user must agree to the latest TOS. Same behavior as World of Warcraft. :) (We implemented.)
26. Fully integrate live chat support, and link out to a chat room from groups/hubs. (Each group gets a chat room.) (We implemented.)
    • Log chat room activity such that a user can mark a chat room as a favorite and a "Recent chat rooms", "Favorite chat rooms", and "Group chat rooms" are aggregated on the user's portal page with a quick link into the chat room (We implemented.)
27. Restore into Hawaii the statistical and history data for forums that was enjoyed in the Calypso theme. (We implemented.)
28. "Write a New Post", "Mark All As Read", and "Reply" need glyphs! (We implemented.)
29. Make the Control Panel themeable, and make the theme managed by the site theme directory. (We implemented.)
30. Implement site aggregation in an alternate portal page, magazine-style.

Lots more, but these are enough to mention.

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Alex Crome replied on Tue, Jul 15 2008 4:39 AM

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Btw, Auto blog generation is included out of the box - goto Blog Administration > Configuration > Default Settings and set Auto Create to on, and I think (but am not certain) that that also adds the link to the blog into the user's profile.

for the Calendar, 4-roads have an addon for CS2007 which you may be able to talk to them about ge tting for CS2008, although you may now be too far into implementing that to make this a worthwile option.

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Dave replied on Tue, Jul 15 2008 5:52 AM

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afscrome:

Btw, Auto blog generation is included out of the box - goto Blog Administration > Configuration > Default Settings and set Auto Create to on, and I think (but am not certain) that that also adds the link to the blog into the user's profile.

That's quite buggy though

Stimpy, i'm surprised you haven't mentioned anything about updating the search page options

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primedia_jdavis replied on Tue, Jul 15 2008 12:51 PM

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We're likely replacing Seach outright. It seems that telligent threw some of Search's functionality out in v2008 or else I have personally suffered a PEBKAC error in overlooking where the app filter went. But we might keep CS's ES indexing, if I can just get the @#$% thing to work.

http://dev.communityserver.com/forums/p/500572/625850.aspx#625850 

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primedia_jdavis replied on Tue, Jul 15 2008 12:53 PM

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afscrome:

for the Calendar, 4-roads have an addon for CS2007 which you may be able to talk to them about ge tting for CS2008, although you may now be too far into implementing that to make this a worthwile option. 

In a community system where groups/hubs are available, calendars belong in hubs.

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stimpy77 replied on Tue, Jul 15 2008 12:58 PM

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Dave:

Stimpy, i'm surprised you haven't mentioned anything about updating the search page options

We couldn't get past our irritation with the initial search form!

Restore the drop-down menu for selecting what area to search. (Where'd this go?!)

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primedia_jdavis replied on Wed, Jul 16 2008 7:22 PM

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From http://dev.communityserver.com/forums/AddPost.aspx?ReplyToPostID=625964&Quote=False

Jesse Kliza:

I got a reply regarding the lack of scope roll-up in search here:

http://dev.communityserver.com/forums/p/488435/625817.aspx#625817

It looks like you can add it back into your theme, though we've not done it yet ourselves.

Jesse