"What's new" feature feedback request

Help / Discuss
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#1

Dear XWiki users,

Not long ago we introduced a new feature in XWiki: the ability to get a stream of news inside your XWiki instance. This was introduced in XWiki 15.2 (see What's New Application (XWiki.org))

image

I wanted to check with you, to understand if some of you are using it or find it useful.

We’re also planning to improve its UI by restyling it and adding images to it, but it’s important for us to know how much effort we should put into it and know if it’s used or ont :slight_smile:

Let us know!

Example content:

Screenshot 2023-10-25 at 14.59.07

Thanks

#2

We’re still on 14.x so I totally missed it.
I’m commenting just by reading the page and checking the images, so forgive me if they’re not that useful. And keep in mind that we’re using XWiki in an highly technical context, we probably ignore many features that an average user would instead be interested in.

Does it show any What’s New info, or is it in any way tailored to the specific instance?
I.e.:

  • does it show info only about installed extensions?
  • is it limited (as an upper limit) to the XWiki instance version it runs on?
  • likewise, is it limited (lower limit) to the version of the running instance before the latest installed update?
    • to put it in another way: is it only showing the new features of the instance versions as opposed to the previous one?

What is its target audience? Administrators, to suggest them to update? Users, to show them the latest features available?

#3

I think that nearly all of our users aren’t interested in that kind of news I can read in your screenshot. We admins read this forum nearly daily and feel well informed.

We ourselves in our wiki have an article linked in our top menu with all the news regarding our users like „we made a macro doing this“ or „installed an extension doing that“ or „we upgraded to xy - these are the new features you can use“.

#4

Hello @watery Thanks for the feedback!

I’ve tried to answer the questions on What's New Application (XWiki.org)

Regarding the UI improvements planned, see What's new UI Proposal & HTML, CSS code

We’re also planning to move the news to the drawer by opening a secondary drawer when you click on “what’s new” instead of navigating away to a new page.

Let me know what you think and what are the options you’d be interested in.

Thx

#5

Hi @Simpel Thanks for the feedback.

Actually the news are no longer on this forum :slight_smile: They’re now on the XWiki.org blog.

This feature is about bringing these news to the XWiki instance as we believe that the vast majority of our users don’t follow the xwiki.org blog or this forum.

I can understand that asking this question here is possibly not the best since those who will answer are advanced XWiki users following closely the news already :slight_smile:

BTW this “what’s new” feature is customizable and you can use it publish your own news. See What's New API (XWiki.org)

I need to write a tutorial to explain how to do this but basically you just need to implement a NewsSourceFactory component with your own hint (say mynews), and then configure it in xwiki.properties, as in What's New API (XWiki.org)

If you use another XWiki instance with the XWiki blog extension installed, you can even use it directly as a what’s new news source and you don’t need to implement NewsSourceFactory. In this case, all you need is to configure it:

whatsnew.sources = mycompany = xwikiblog
whatsnew.source.mycompany.rssURL = https://(xwiki server domain)/xwiki/bin/view/Blog/CategoryRss?xpage=plain

Thanks

1 Like
#6

I have now documented this at What's New API (XWiki.org)

#7

Thanks.

I knew that, in fact this is how I regularly check for new releases:

image

no kidding :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I second that and what Simpel said about it.

Nice. I didn’t read the details yet, so sorry for asking: can the same XWiki instance be used like source (provided the Blog Application is installed)? I guess it would be the best: an admin can publish news when he had updated the wiki or any extension etc, much like what Simpel said.

I have poor UI / graphics skills, so I don’t really have much to say - consider that I’m waiting for the whole Minimalist Skin effort to reach any beta stage instead of adding a custom CSS to review the current layouts :grimacing:

What I could be interested in is that when there’s a new What’s new entry (pardon the pun) something in the UI would highlight - e.g. the notification bell could work - so that each user can see there’s news to read.

#8

Thanks for remembering. *clicks subscription for https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Blog and it’s children*

#9

Or use the What’s New feature inside of XWiki :slight_smile:

BTW, I guess one idea would be to provide What’s New news as opt-in XWiki Notifications so that you can see them inside your wiki or get them by email. Honestly, I don’t remember why we haven’t done it like this for (I don’t see it proposed in UC1 at What's New Feature (Proposal.WhatsNewFeature) - XWiki ). It has the huge advantage of not having to provide a new UI. I’ll discuss it with the others → Sent at What's New change to use notifications?