RVWG 2020-04-28 Meeting Notes

Dashboard sub-group

• Update for the group of proposed project by ESP solutions and INSITE

This topic expanded to fill the entire meeting time, and was extremely valuable. 

Overview of proposed project by ESP

• ESP (Glynn and Jim) provided a summary of a proposed "spike" project to explore moving the existing Dashboard to a modern UI framework
  • This project proposal that came out of ESP doing research into how to scope and estimate "uplifting" the existing Ed-Fi Dashboards.
  • The consultant ESP engaged with proposed a 4 week "spike" project that focuses on moving the Dashboard UI to a modern framework
    • 4 Week (~160 hrs) project centered around UI improvements to a current metric/display in the Core Dashboard.
    • Propose re-implementing a Student Detail page (that surfaces scrolling issues, whitespace issues, lots of info in a small space)
    • Recommend using KendoUI and React as the framework
    • The focus would be to around improving usability and and look and feel
    • The back-end would not be touched, i.e. develop against the existing DDS (Dashboard Data Store)
    • The goals of the project would be to:
      • Explore “What could be done?” from a UX perspective
      • Provide a basis for estimating the cost of upgrading the Dashboard as a whole
    • From discussion, it was also proposed to add into scope an objective around how customizable the resulting UX was
  • The proposed approach is to undertake this spike over 4 weeks.
  • In order for it to move forward, the Alliance would need to provide funding for the work.

Overview of planned project by INSITE

• Rosh summarized a project that INSITE is starting up, that is looking at "Dashboard replacement" strategy.
  • Similar to the proposed ESP project, it will adopt a modern UI framework (Fusion Charts), but also investigate backend alternatives.
  • In particular, the project will focus on how to source data directly from the ODS database (or Analytics Middle Tier), and an architecture for implementing role-based security.
  • The focus of the work is primarily to solve a problem for the INSITE collaborative , but INSITE would be happy to share progress with the RVWG and make artifacts available via the Ed-Fi Exchange.

Open discussion followed:

There was a lot of discussion about the pro's and con's of various front-end tool kits and scope of the proposed projects

• Notes from chat log (Chris Sprague) 
  • UI framework is less important - React, Kendo+React, Angular, Vue, HTML/CSS/JS - can all do the job.
  • We used React in our project with Dallas County Promise
  • UI Framework alone does not solve how easy it is to customize - we need to get into what depth stakeholders need to customize and their access to those resources...React is the biggest ecosystem, Kendo is a subset and as Douglas mentioned, more restrictive but potentially more productive for some cases. Responsiveness and charts etc. solve problems i nan JS toolset
  • Client-side framework does not solve or touch upon real Ferpa/role-based security - that happens on the backend. In our case we did reuse roles in the ODS
  • Agree that for next dashboards, ease of customization is a great goal, but we need concrete use cases to design the right solution.
• Notes from chat log (Doug Loyo) : 
  • Has generally shied away from Telerik in general in the past - they have great components, but sometimes making them do what you need them to do is a little tricky
  • HighCharts is awesome, but pricey
• Summary of Billy's input:
  • We need to be mindful of software that requires licensing fees for its use in any solution adopted by the alliance (i.e., avoid anyone getting a cease and desist letter for unknowingly violating a license).
  • Also mentioned the Semiotic library for anyone considering using React for D3.js integration.
  • Also wanted to point out that some SEAs/LEAs could be customizing things on their own, instead of it falling solely on a third party to provide services.  So it would be useful to evaluate potential solutions for ease of use across different potential implementers (e.g., LEAs/SEAs, Ed-Fi partners/integration services, etc...).

Should the RVWG group goals and cadence be adjusted – i.e. are members of the WG able to commit time?

There was strong consensus from folks on the call that participants wanted to continue the RVWG work and goals. With this in mind, refinements planned are:

• Update the RVWG charter to reflect focus and goals for 2020 (as previously discussed)
• Move away from holding both plenerary and 3 sub-group meetings - and convene a single meeting cadence to focus on the revised goals. From the most current meeting, it looks like we will have critical mass and interest using this approach.

• Schedule a follow up meeting for May
• Carry forward topics we did not get time to discuss
  • RVWG charter is out of date – RVWG leads have not found time to formalize proposed changes for review by GAT. ETA for this?
  • Discussion : How does the announcement of Ed-Fi’s move to open source impact Ed-Fi Dashboards future?
  • Other?
• Take next steps on proposed scope of work from ESP proposal and determine any planned intersection between INSITE project