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Bug 377426

Summary:	rework orion.help.tasks plugin API
Product:	[ECD] Orion	Reporter:	Susan McCourt <susan>
Component:	Client	Assignee:	Susan McCourt <susan>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	P3	CC:	john.arthorne
Version:	0.5
Target Milestone:	0.5 M2
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Windows 7
Whiteboard:

Description Susan McCourt

2012-04-23 12:12:18 EDT

We currently use "orion.help.tasks" to populate the landing page with getting started information.

In bug 345622 we are changing the UI so that the tasks previously in the landing page would appear instead in the navigator when the workspace was empty.  

Independent of the UI shuffle, we should look closely at the API.

- Are all "orion.help.tasks" things that populate your workspace?  That is how we used it, but the name is quite generic.  We may want to distinguish "folder creation stuff" from just "generally helpful stuff."  Perhaps we have well-known categories of tasks that we use to decide where things appear on a page.

- Can we think of a time when "orion.help.tasks" appear on other pages.  Can the user open up the "tasks" UI from any page?

For 0.5, if we are focused primarily on project creation tasks, we may want to make this an explicit category of tasks, even if it's the only one supported in the short run.

We also need to review the property names and make sure they are consistent with everything else.

Comment 1 Susan McCourt

2012-05-01 01:11:55 EDT

>Perhaps we have
> well-known categories of tasks that we use to decide where things appear on a
> page.

This seems like the right direction.  The workspace population ones that we provide can be categorized, and others could add to this category if desired.

> 
> - Can we think of a time when "orion.help.tasks" appear on other pages.  Can
> the user open up the "tasks" UI from any page?

Maqetta is using this extension point as a "hook" to go to maqetta from Orion.  In their scenario, there's not necessarily an Orion folder created (though that could be future direction).  But in a sense they are using it to "advertise" some integration between Orion and their tool.  

This makes me think we might want some kind of help->tasks page that could show all the grouped tasks, but we show the "Content creation" category up front in the nav when content is empty.

As far as API goes, we should change
step.href-> step.uriTemplate
step.linkName-> step.name

Comment 2 Susan McCourt

2012-05-07 18:16:37 EDT

I confirmed with Brad from Maqetta that they would much rather have a content creation hook than "getting started" steps.  And for our work for making the new user workflow easier, we automated the steps (auto content generation) rather than having steps the user had to follow.

So....it seems we have no need for this API right now.  I removed orion.help.task from the developer guide and am closing this bug.

Long term we can discuss how plugins contribute content into a project in bug 378749.

If we ever want to revisit the "guide the user through steps" idea we can do so in bug 344205 and perhaps come up with a plugin API for it.