OpenPaaS Newsletter 2 - April 2017
Easter being here soon, here is the second edition of the OpenPaaS newsletter!
Inside, you will read about new admin role, improved Inbox module UX/UI, Calendar new delegation rights and last but not least, you will discover the new organization of our Social team.
Platform admin is the new role currently being added on OpenPaaS!
In addition to domain admin who can manage domain level configurations, users with platform admin role can manage domains and configurations at platform level. In other words, platform admin role is the most powerful application role.
Adding a new role requires an access control system. Investigations on Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) model, considered as “next generation” authorization model, is giving us great satisfaction!
ABAC model will allow us to more easily and confidently manage roles and permissions in the platform and our code base logic will be simpler and more robust.
With the ever-increasing number of external data sources aggregated in Unified Inbox we faced a challenge:
how to render a huge number of elements in the DOM without slowing the browser down?
We introduced a virtual scrolling component: md-virtual-repeat from Angular Material. This component works by rendering only the required number of DOM nodes so that the user can see a full “page” of elements, plus some additional nodes at the top and the bottom of the list.
The DOM nodes are then reused when the user scrolls, avoiding the cost of creating and destroying nodes, which is the most costly operation inside a browser.
Adding events in calendars is one thing, but being able to delegate things to other users is a real added value in business environments OpenPaaS targets. This is why we are working on this delegation feature for some weeks.
Since the end of last sprint, Calendar delegation system (i.e. let someone else manage/view your calendars) counts 4 types of access:
- Read: allow users to read your calendar and so to see your events details;
- Write: as for the read part, but also allows users to add and modify your events;
- Administration: as for the write part but also adds the power to change permissions on calendar;
- Free/Busy: give access to your calendar in ‘confidential’ mode. User will just see if you are free or busy without showing event details.
Also have a look to these 2 short videos demonstration about Sabre and OpenPaaS ;)
Today, the calendar team is still working on the delegation by improving it at several levels:
- the main one is to better handle all these delegation roles in the UI;
- adding some realtime features on delegated calendars thanks to our ‘realtime’ communication channels between CalDAV server and the calendar module.
Can you feel the power? :)
A 100% Tunisian Social Team
Less than one year after its creation, Tunisian OpenPaaS team flies the nest and takes the lead of the Social team.
“We’ve just started our first sprint! Social team effectiveness is going to improve significantly as we work live with proven methods such as pair programming.”
Mohamed-Ali Dridi, scrum master.
By the end of this sprint, OpenPaaS will be enriched with the following features:
- user status (online/offline) will be displayed on all users avatars in the whole OpenPaaS platform;
- in Chat Module a user could easily choose emoticons thanks to a new button showing emoticons popup and also, in a confidential conversation, he will know which members are participating and where is the beginning of this conversation.
As a Conclusion
We were so happy to show you last progresses on our beloved Admin, Mail, Calendar and Social OpenPaaS modules! See you very soon in our next OpenPaaS newsletter for even more news!
