On an instance with multiple wikis, it can be interesting to gather a few wiki references at the bottom of the drawer, next to the link to the wiki index:
This is the idea that was first proposed in Loading...
Proposal
The admin of a wiki farm can select up to 5 wikis on the farm to be highlighted in the drawer. This admin configuration has a UI under the Wiki section of AdminPreferences:
By default, no wiki is highlighted. If no wiki is highlighted, only the Wiki Index is shown in the drawer (under the same conditions as before…).
If one or multiple wikis are highlighted, a new section title will be added to the drawer. The wikis will be displayed in the drawer with the same order as what the Admin set. The link to the wiki index will come after those (again, only if the conditions to show it are respected ofc). See the screenshot at the top of this post to get an idea of what that would look like.
The wiki links will be loaded only when the drawer is first opened, so that it doesn’t slow down the first page draw.
Clarification
Technically the implementation will probably not have a hard limit on the number of highlighted Wikis, but I think it’s what we should advise so that the UI stays useable. This way we also reduce the constraint we’d have to satisfy when eventually updating this element in the future: no need to ask ourselves: “and what if the admin highlighted 200 wikis”…
We could give access to other strategies to get the list of recommended wikis. But 1. this increases significantly the computing time for those wiki links. 2. This creates complexity in a feature that is not related to actual user needs. If the need to have some more flexible and powerful wiki highlights rises in the future, we can still improve and build upon this system, taking the proposed behaviour here as the default configuration.
Conclusion
What do you think of adding direct references to selected wikis in the drawer?
Whatever the result of this proposal is, we should be closer to a resolution of Loading... once it’s discussed
I don’t like too much that because some “favorite wikis” were selected in the UI we move the “Wiki Index” entry. I think it should stay under the Global section.
And the new “Wikis” section should be “Favorite Wikis” IMO since otherwise it’s misleading (as it could be understood as listing all wikis).
Would be interesting to see what the UI proposal is for the Admin UI
I don’t think everyone should see the same wikis. For example in a company, it may depend in which group you’re working on. You may be using a few wikis all the time and another group could be using other wikis all the time.
So IMO this feature is not so much an Admin feature as a User feature. I see it as a shortcut to easily access the wikis you frequently work on, i.e. a Favorite Wikis feature.
Thanks for proposal, but I’m afraid this could cause confusion for users, as is currently happening with the Languages ​​section in Drawer.
Also, what’s not clear what wikis - are listed there (existent, one that user is a member, favorite wikis, one that user is allowed to access)?
In my opinion, the best option is the User Profile section. However, there may be a conflict since users could be members of multiple wikis or have specific rights to access wikis. This could make implementation complex at the moment.
I think I’m -0 for this for the following reasons:
I’m not sure what the actual need is, and this makes it difficult to evaluate what we should display.
The mentioned options for selecting the wikis to display might be complex to implement, costly in terms of performance and might still not meet the requirements of actual users.
A static admin-defined list might also not be matching actual user needs as it’s not unlikely that the displayed wikis should depend on the user.
I think before we add more things to the drawer, we should also think about the role of the drawer and what we want to have there. I have the impression that currently it is a relatively random list of items (administration, page and application index, language switcher, what’s new, wiki index).
Ultimately, what would be great in my opinion is if admins could easily control:
if the drawer is displayed at all (with the possibility to provide a Velocity snippet that decides if the drawer will be displayed)
which items should be displayed, with options to:
easily add new items and sections with arbitrary link targets and the possibility to use translations for the displayed text
add a Velocity to snippet to both existing and new items to control their visibility
add items that would display several items, like a list of wikis.
I think technically, what I describe should already mostly be possible as there is a UIXP that allows defining drawer items, but we have no UI that allows defining or updating them easily.
This was discussed and decided in the past but it can be rediscussed for sure if we think there are discrepancies/problems. AFAIR it’s a location to quickly access actions related to the whole wiki (or whole farm).
Providing more control to admins to what is displayed in the Drawer is an interesting idea but I don’t see the need ATM. I would prefer that we have valid use cases asked by several users before deciding to do something about it. I don’t recall that need expressed (at least not frequently). And as you said, the fact that we already provide a UIXP probably already allows solving most needs.
You’re also -0 for what I proposed, i.e. letting the user decide what wikis they would like to see in a “Favorite Wikis” section in the drawer? I guess this raises the question you asked about what should be put there.
Note that an alternative is to have a dropdown on “Wiki Index” (with an arrow to open it) and the favorite wikis would be listed under it. In this manner it wouldn’t change what is displayed in the Drawer. I think I like this even more (even if requires an additional click).
Do we have anyone who requested this? Seems to me more like a workaround than a nice feature: Normally, the admin should know who needs to access which wikis and could define rules for that. Now, instead of doing that, the admin will provide instructions for every user how to add the wikis they need to access.
So yes, I’m -0 on this, too, this seems like feature bloat to me.
That’s a good question. It would be interesting to know why Caty and Thiago proposed to list the wikis, i.e. if there were real needs expressed or if it’s something we just imagine being nice to increase usability/productivity (which is still valuable).
However, it’s true that right now it’s very painful to switch wikis. So I’m sure there’s a need. However, in lots of cases you shouldn’t need to switch wikis. But it can happen. Right now I guess users who need to work on multiple wikis will need to create themselves a Panel for that (or keep bookmarks in their browsers, or use a domain-based setup and use their browser search bar to navigate using the domain name - This is what I do for xwiki.org), and it’s a bit painful that they have to do this.
I don’t agree with you that the Admin knows better than the user what wikis they need to access. That’s very anti-wiki BTW (top down decision) and I really don’t see why users wouldn’t be able to say for what wikis they’d like easy navigation to. Ofc nothing prevents from having a default defined by the Admins. But that’s more work.
I think a feature I would see more is to have a way for users to create a list of bookmarks for frequent access. However, the question would also be where to store this as the user profile is public by default, but users might not want/expect such a list to be public. Another question would be where to display them, a panel would be easy but might not be visible everywhere. Maybe an item in the top bar that opens the content in a view similar to the notifications? But this way, the top bar also gets crowded quite quickly…
