[Design] [Cosmo] Login-related workflows update

[Ted Leung]

On Nov 17, 2006, at 11:20 AM, Mimi Yin wrote:

>
>>> In proposal 4: the user comes to osaf.us and there are links they  
>>> can click on to go to separate log in pages, 1 for admin and 1  
>>> for browsing the home directory.
>>
>> This makes the initial login experience much more complicated.
>
> I think this is a case where complexity is in the eye of the  
> beholder :)

That's probably true -- I'm mostly trying to think of other  
applications/web applications where you'd see this kind of  
behavior.   I can't think of any off the top of my head -- that  
doesn't mean that there aren't any, but it does make me think that  
this sort of thing is relatively rare.   Either that or my memory is  
really going downhill...

>
>>> This way, admins and people using Cosmo for filesharing don't  
>>> have to tangle with the end-user Casual Collaborator UI to get  
>>> where they want to go.
>>
>> It seems like achieving this separation is the primary goal  
>> here.    But I'm not sure that this is desirable.
>>
>> For admins: in most web applications that I've used where I had  
>> administrator privileges, you accessed that via a link which only  
>> appeared if you had admin privileges.   You logged into the  
>> application like any other user and then you clicked that admin  
>> link to get to the administrator function.
>>
>> For filesharers:  If I was going to file share using Cosmo, most  
>> of the time I would just  be mounting a Cosmo collection directly  
>> via the WebDAV functionality of my desktop OS.   If I needed the  
>> home collection browser, I would be fine logging into Cosmo and  
>> clicking a link (even if it were some what hard to get to).
>
> ic. So let me repeat what you're saying to make sure I understand it.
> + Cosmo file sharers won't be using the homedir browser very much,  
> so it's okay if their experience isn't the most streamlined in the  
> world

Right.  I'm not sure that Brian would agree with me, though.

> + Similarly admin's also won't mind needing to go through the end- 
> user UI to get to the admin UI

Yep.

>
>> Also there's another use case for the home collection browser --  
>> it is a valuable tool for us to help debug problems that end users  
>> are having, so I think that Casual Collaborators will also have a  
>> need (not that often I hope) to access the home collection browser.
>
> I imagine that if we have a user who is helping us debug, we would  
> be in contact with them? and could point them to a url?

Yes, we would probably be in contact with them and could point them  
to a url.    That wouldn't be the case for people with their own  
private cosmo installations, though.