Improving ease of use?

[mjasay]

I wrote this post on my CNET blog, in response to an excellent article highlighting one Linux kernel developer's perspective on the disconnect between developers and "real" users: http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9751283-16.html?tag=head.  It seems to be endemic to software (and hardware), generally.

Why do we, as an industry, write such lame software?  Why is it so hard to make things easy to use and nice to look at?

I think Alfresco has done a good job in both respects, but here are some things that I'd personally love to see done better:

* Tight email integration.  A start would be the ability to automatically suck in attachments and what-not, but the end goal would be to allow me to use Alfresco without ever leaving my email program (Outlook, Apple Mail, or whatever).

*  More Ajax.  The Alfresco guys will laugh at me for saying this, since I fought it originally.  But seeing the Ajax in 2.1 convinces me that I was a fool to fight it.  It looks brilliant.  Now we just need more.

*  Presence.  I'd love to have integration with my IM.  Our US team is completely driven by email and IM.   It would be nice to have the system work on our terms.

Those are a few of my ideas.  I love the Alfresco system.  These would make it even better.  As ever, it's a matter of priorities and resources.  This is why I'd love to see someone kick off email integration, for example, as a community-led project.

[alexander]

Matt,

Regarding email client integration - do you think providing IMAP interface will do the trick?

Thanks
Alexander

[mjasay]

…could be.  I'm not technically smart enough to know.   But it feels like more would be needed and, unfortunately, that "more" likely requires being an add-on to Outlook and other major email systems.  In other words, I don't think it's just a server-side problem, but also a client side UI problem to resolve.

[rdanner]

I wrote this post on my CNET blog, in response to an excellent article highlighting one Linux kernel developer's perspective on the disconnect between developers and "real" users: http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9751283-16.html?tag=head.  It seems to be endemic to software (and hardware), generally.

There are a couple of points in your blog ease-of-use related an not in your blog that stand out to me.

First, that it has to be easy to communicate with the community.  Impedance doesn’t help anyone.  We really need to keep our ears and minds open.  The Darwinian nature of open source suggests that if you feel strongly about something try it – if it is a good idea it will live.  I think this is true but when you reach the enterprise application layer software is complex and good can take a lot of effort.  I think we need to effectively use our tools (the forums, the forge, the wiki etc) so that groups of people can work on features and issues – and I think that is happening to some degree – go look at the forge. But  – beyond that, people need to know that if they are going to invest themselves it’s going to be fruitful.  I think this is where the community and the core engineering team need to play the role of the farmer – preparing the soil.  I think this means listening and mentoring, suggesting, and participating.

One question I’d love to have everyone’s perspective on is – who in fact makes up the community of Alfresco?  Is it developers or is it business users or both?   I hope both.  If we want to engage business users we need to find a place where they can feel safe engaging.  They are not going to participate in forums bustling with Exceptions and Stack traces. If you care about ECM then you care about the actual user, and if that is so, then give them your ears and put your minds and will to solving the crisis that they face.  How do we make a place for them in the Alfresco Community?‍‍

The second thing I see is that we need some way to include only what matters.  Bloated products are feature rich but loose out on the benefits that lean systems have.  AMP architecture is a step in the right direction.  We need to be able to start with a base system and then plug in only what matters.   The system should remain as lean as possible.  More features are not what make systems more useful.  There is a line that is crossed at some point where ease of use begins to suffer with more. Less is more.  Unless of course it is too little; and what is too little to someone over here, is just perfect for the guy over there.  I don’t think that a monolithic approach is a good approach in ECM.  Look under the hood of Alfresco and you will see a resistance to monolithic architecture. We need to continue pushing this further in at the domain specific level. Plugability matters to ease of use and to winning in the game of evolution. 

Simplicity is not so simple.  Think about how easy it is to create a Google Map mashup! Simple!! Well, there is a lot going on behind the scenes there that is not so simple.  I’ve even found sites that my grandma could use to build a Google Map.  Today we have web scripts and they are pretty easy to develop.  Easy enough for a guy who knows Excel?  The users of content management and the content itself are not the technical people that install the systems.  We need to continue to push the bar on making it easy for users to mash up content use and even their content collaboration environment.  Ease of Innovation.

Last but not least, is user interface.  Wow how this matters!  All the engineering in the world has an uphill battle for adoption without the polish of an easy to use UI.  If it is easy to use then it is easy to understand.  If it is easy to understand then the question “does it solve my problemâ€

[ronnyt]

XeniT and Opsera are building an IMAP interface to Alfresco.
Let me know if you are interested.
IT allows to drag & drop email in Alfresco via your outlook or IMAP capable client, as any other IMAP provider.

[gravitonian]

Opsera, a leading provider of Open Source software and services, recently launched OpsMailmanager: a solution that enables organisations to integrate the storage and search of email messages in an Alfresco repository.

OpsMailmanager stores email using the open Internet standard MIME, and use the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) standard for managing the transfer of email messages.

This enables OpsMailmanager to provide easy integration with all leading email clients, including:

Outlook
Lotus Notes
Novell GroupWise
Thunderbird

as well as any other email client that supports the IMAP standard.

For further information please visit our website at: http://www.opsera.com/jsp/opsera_product/OpsMailmanager.jsp