Let's Talk about Projects

You might as well just open an issue on GitHub instead of making politics here in the forum :wink:

Can we maybe return to this? If that is a viable alternative to the discountinued Projects feature, Iā€™d like to hear about how it works, too.

@just, @samb92?

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This is the way! :slight_smile:

Or maybe both. As a matter of fact, I did post GitHub issues when that was the logical thing to do. And where to make politics, if not on the forum? :wink:

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hey @mortee , as you know I value your feedback and as you know I am taking it internally, but I just wanted to add some feedback back so we can work more effectively together: maybe in the future in these type of threads you could phrase things in a positive or encouraging way. I promise to still try to act on the feedback where I can like Iā€™m doing here, and it would help me a lot because it might even be easier for me to have the internal discussions since my colleagues wonā€™t be pissed off while reading the conversations here, which means I will have to do less politics on my side to get things moving. Apart from the fact that it would be the good thing to do to be a constructive and positive person it would also increase our chance of succeeding together.

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@Daphne, I usually try to argue and reason, and not demean conversation partners. When thereā€™s real dialogue, I always try to be respectful and constructive. I intend to keep it that way.

On the other hand, everyone needs to understand that the reaction will be adjusted to the action, and I donā€™t find it practical to ignore or downplay things. Iā€™m really sorry if ceratin comments make team members ā€œpissed offā€; but then again, e.g. when a heavily used feature suddenly disappear, along with all data related to it, that pisses off affected users just as well. This is a two-way street.

Not to mention that in multiple instances, when I made relevant observations or suggestions, I was met with cynicism and dismissal. Only so that later down the line, things that I (and others) have pointed out turned out to be of such relevance that the team made specific effort and announcemets to address them. Itā€™s sometimes not really easy to remain calm and pragmatic in such circumstances, especially after Iā€™ve been proven right once, but the next time I encounter just the same dismissal.

All that said, my goal is definitely not to anger anyone or spread chaos, but to point out mistakes (especially when Iā€™m heavily affected), and work towards preventing future ones, and maybe undoing some of them.

4 posts were merged into an existing topic: OpenProject - Task Management software with Nextcloud integration

Some observations from my point of view.

Communication issue: I do agree that such a decision as the cancellation of the Projects functionality should have been communicated in advance and much louder. I do notice that there are a lot of efforts to improve in this direction and I appreciate the work of @Daphne and in general of Nextcloud on this

OpenProject as a replacement: I think that the requirement of installing another system is a hefty toll for the same(?) functionality

decision on Projects: I honestly cannot understand it. I do know that I did not see the data on the usage of this functionality that some people has, yet I cannot understand how the related resources functionality could replace it. As an example think to the new Photos app. The decision to use ā€œArtificial Intelligenceā€ is awesome and the new recognize functionality is impressive. Yet you can also create albums. This means that a good automatic categorization/association of your data is an added value, nonetheless you must have the possibility to categorize / associate them according to your conscious decisions that derive from needs that maybe cannot be extrapolated from information in the data.
In addition my impression has always been that the main obstacle to a full use of the Projects functionality has been a good UI to use it. I think that something like what described in the issue Integration of Projects and Teams into Dashboard #22897 would have boosted the Projects adoption

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Iā€™m not sure it does, which is why Iā€™m curious whether it supports

Well said! Iā€™d add further that the point of projects is that it was beginning to link together different Nextcloud apps, so far including Talk, Deck and Files. ā† Can this sort of development and greater integration continue without projects? I hope so.

edit: the Openproject discussion is now split to a linked discussion topic so it can continue independent of this discussion; turns out it is a totally different beast offering different functionality, despite a similar sounding name. Feel free to continue the conversation of OpenProject here. Thanks!

hi everyone, I brought this issue up in the engineering leads call (including all team leads of engineering teams, Andy, Frank). I asked them for future feature deprecations to ensure communication takes place and if reasonable, to also provide a migration path.

I will also ask the developer of the OpenProject integration to have a look at this topic.

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@Daphne, thank you for your efforts!

Is there any chance for the Projects feature to be resurrected? Apparently many of us think that itā€™s been really useful, and only really lacked in good UI (and maybe support for more types of apps/resources).

Also, OpenProjects, which has been suggested as a potential replacement, seems to be not fitting, and as @wielinde, the managing engineer for the OpenProject-Nextcloud integration let us know here, its aim is definitely not to provide a replacement for Projects.

This is the reason this thread began, because of wonder in how more apps in the ecosystem could be used together through sharing menu and beyond. Any these earlier discussion points would be laudable goals if there is future interest in implementing.

Original discussion points for projects

How I personally saw projects was as an expansion of the underlying uses of Nextcloud (sharing, files and folders, and then more additional apps) finally coming together into a more cohesive whole. It is a wonderful dream.

I also noticed this and didnā€™t feel ready to give detailed thoughts on it. Still donā€™t because it is a bummer. My understanding is we should continue that discussion through openproject, but I also got the understanding that they are not focused on developing integrations into additional Nextcloud apps, such as Deck or Talk or even Sharing.

The idea [in opeproject] appears to build out group coordination in general, which is important and different from what we were previously mulling over in regards to interoperability within Nextcloud itself.

Perhaps related resources will expand to allow some level of integration between apps down the line, so that is also worth consideration, but so far it is functionally a way around having integration afaik.

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Projects will probably not come back as developed by the core team, but it could absolutely come back as a community project as an app for example, if anyone is interested in developing this. I could ensure this person gets some high-level tips from a developer to go about it. It wonā€™t be easy but it is possible.

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If anyone wishes to continue using Projects as-is it can be re-enabled in your config file.

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Letā€™s hope noone does, it was way too confusing and thereā€™s so many other collaboration features already :slight_smile:

@rawtaz , I wonder what you mean by that. Others and myself have previously asked publicly what tools are recommended which can replace the Projects feature, but no viable alternative has been mentioned.

In this light, I wonder why itā€™s hoped that it wouldnā€™t get revived by someone for the benefit of those who did make use of it (not like it would become mandatory or anything), as opposed to being improved in UX and function.

It has already been clearly stated that volunteers can take over and continue development if they wish :heart:

@just , I know. In my most recent comment I was specifically addressing @rawtaz , wondering why they would consider reviving Projects explicitely undesirable.

10 posts were merged into an existing topic: Flagged post and why

Hi, I Just noticed that projects is still in the documentation, so I opened this remove section on projects? Ā· Issue #11176 Ā· nextcloud/documentation Ā· GitHub

Documentation should be removed, right?

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