Feature Request: Booktype Collaboration
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Ala MoanaAla Moana
    Posts: 6Member

    Currently the collaboration is rather incomplete.

    1. We need to be able to invite other people based on name/alias, not email. Disclosing emails and using them to invite others is a privacy issue.

    2.  We need to be able to invite people to help with a particular book, not a general invite. The invited people must see only the books invited.

    3. People must be able to create sub-profiles, i.e. the users can be “authors”, “beta-readers”, and “editors”. When I want to invite someone to help me with the book, I want to be able to pick, say, an editor, and once I am ready with he book, go find beta readers for feedback.

    4. In the sub-profiles people must be able to put their qualifications, genre, sub-genre, etc. and when I am about to invite an editor, I go to the list of editors, scroll/browse/search and find these that are in my genre.

    5. More in the line of social reading, we need to be able to create public and private collections, and I can expose the public collections to others.

  • 9 Comments sorted by
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Daniel JamesDaniel James
    Posts: 844Member, Sourcefabric Team
    Hi Ala,

    Thanks for the feedback! I'll respond to these suggestions by number...

    1. As an author, you can add users by name or alias to a specific book without knowing their email address. Depending on the configuration of the Booktype instance, users might be allowed to register themselves.

    The Invite button on the Dashboard is intended for people who aren't users yet to create accounts. Without an email address, it would not be possible to send the invite or password reset links, of course.

    In the Control Centre, superusers can create accounts for others, but an email address is required, for the same reason. Superusers can also see the email addresses of all user accounts, as can the root user or database administrator of the server, which is normal.

    2. Users can only work on books where they have been given permission. If you want to hide all books from the general user, you can switch off default visibility in the Control Centre.
     
    3. In Booktype, the sub-profiles are called Roles. See http://sourcefabric.booktype.pro/booktype-20-for-authors-and-publishers/settings/

    4. Each user has a Description field for qualifications etc. User search is a good idea for a large Booktype instance such as Omnibook, please open a feature ticket at https://dev.sourcefabric.org using your Sourcefabric forum login.

    5. Book visibility is handled via Roles. For example, you can have an anonymous reader role for the general public which allows anyone to read without logging in. That role might only be given to certain books.

    I hope that is a useful answer. If you have any more details of your use case that you are able to share, please do.

    Cheers!

    Daniel


  • Vote Up0Vote Down Micz FlorMicz Flor
    Posts: 184Administrator
    Dear Ala Moana,

    great to see that you are really giving Booktype a solid test drive. 

    I want to use this opportunity that we are also doing custom development. This development will then be made available again to the community under the open license.

    Booktype is an open source project. We believe that software should be open and free. We also believe that developers of open source projects should be paid. Selling development time to interested parties (like your project) is one way to assure that Booktype keeps growing.

    So if you do the maths, the pros and cons and realise how powerful Booktype already is, it is just missing this "one thing", approach us for an estimate. You will make your project fly. And the community happy. And the developers pay their rent :)

    As you can see from Daniels reply, the issues that might need custom development are actually less than you may have thought.

    So keep test driving, collecting issues, and let us know how we could make Booktype work for you together.

    All the best, micz
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Ala MoanaAla Moana
    Posts: 6Member
    Thank you. I can create use cases, no problem. But this text box is insufficient. Any other way to communicate the use cases? I see booktype's potential more as a social platform for collaborative writing and book sharing, rather than a simple yet another book editing platform. I need to present exact use cases for the features. I see file attachments, would anyone be interested in reviewing them?

    Ala Moana

  • Vote Up0Vote Down Ala MoanaAla Moana
    Posts: 6Member
    micz:

    How do I approach you about development time?

    Ala Moana
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Micz FlorMicz Flor
    Posts: 184Administrator
    Hi Ala,

    The place to write use cases, stories and epics is not in the forum, that's for sure.

    There is a JIRA for Booktype where you should have access with the same login that you are using for this forum. Try going to this page:
    On the top right you can "Sign In".

    It would be great to hear your suggestions in JIRA. I think it is great to take the leap from forum to ticket system. One step closer every day :)
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Ala MoanaAla Moana
    Posts: 6Member
    Micz:
    On it.
    Ala Moana
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Ala MoanaAla Moana
    Posts: 6Member
    Question: What is the preferred format for your use cases? If none, I'll use my own style compiled to a PDF document.
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Ala MoanaAla Moana
    Posts: 6Member
    Micz: Issue BK-1894 created. Before I go wild and put in a hundred of these, could you please review? Also, What is the work-cycle for the issues?
    Thanks,
    Ala Moana
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Micz FlorMicz Flor
    Posts: 184Administrator
    Hi Ala,

    the ticket looks good to me. As you saw in Daniel's post, the role management already allows to invite other users to books. You suggestion is a good, new approach to improve the usability of that feature, It's a great idea.

    To answer your "work-cycle" question: We currently have three developers working on Booktype full-time. And we are currently maxed out with client work, most of which are using the editor as part of larger systems - and are not very interested in the community aspect of Booktype. So the community features are not on the top of our list. A paying client can change that and make them top of the list - and by doing so, will make them available to the open source code base. (as I explained before).

    So if you are pressed with time, and have a business backing you up, the best approach would be to make it our business. If you have developers yourself, we can also find a way that our team lead will manage and supervise code contributions via GitHub. Either way, get in touch via contact@booktype.pro to discuss this.

    Getting the features into JIRA now is the best start, though, because "eventually" they will have an influence on how the community aspect improves. And secondly, if we get into business, we already have the features for estimates.

    All the best, micz
Add a Comment