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...).
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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.
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