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Forms & Polls
Hey guys. In polls we are at a point, where we could cause conflicts about user expectations. As both apps are rather similar users could expect to have the same features in both apps behaving the same way.
At least in polls we have feature requests, which ask for exactly what you are developing (survey forms). Wouldn't it be smarter to merge both apps and have more man power in developing one app, than having two forks which are separated?
Otherwise I fear, that you have users, who say "polls has this and that feature" and vice versa. In the end both teams may feel pushed by the users due to a competitive environment and both apps behave on their own.
What are your thoughts? @v1r0x: What do you think?
Hey dartcafe,
interesting point, but i didn't see the apps as competing so far... While polls includes the doodle-functionality & UI, Forms includes the (Google-)Form functionality. Two different things, that i would personally use for different use-cases. So i think i didn't want to miss one of the functionalities & UIs.
So to merge to have one app, but in fact to maintain both functionalities in parallel - Concerning advantage vs. complexity, i'm not sure if this would be useful...?
Greets, Jonas
Hey folks,
in polls we have several requests to extend polls to be the swiss army knife. Merging both apps would be easier for users to file their requests. But I think it's hard to have all our current and future features in one big app. I'd suggest to make it clear to users that polls is a doodle replacement with goodies and forms is a g forms replacement as @jotoeri already said.
For now I'd keep it that way, but maybe we can work closer together and exchange experiences, feature requests, ideas?
My arguments are from the user's view. Since forms seems to base on polls, it could be good to have a unique presentation, at least regarding some functionality (i.e. sharing, notifications, circles integration, vue components, ...). It would be a pity, if we waste power in developing these things separated, rather than sharing this progresses and make both apps better.
Cooperation is a very good aproach. My goal is not to merge the projects under any circumstances; there are good points to keep them separated. I am searching for aproaches, to have the possibility to benefit from each other.
interesting point, but i didn't see the apps as competing so far
To be not misunderstood: I don't see us competing, but we both could run into a situation, where users request features from the other project. I am sure we could foresee and prepare for this, so that implementing features could be more efficient and cheaper.
I'll try to provide a suggestion, but keep in mind that this is just food for thought, as I am not a developer.
It could be useful if you share a discussion and then write down the functions of the two apps in one or two phrases.
This could be useful both for the developers and for the users that make feature request to better understand what belongs to which app.
This maybe could even help to define the commonalities and so give some indications on the components useful to share.
Hope that helps and keep up the good work!!!
I wouldn't mind having the two apps merged if technically reachable. You could either create a form or a poll; I see no massive confusion if done right.
In any case, a similar admin display would be a good start for users.
As always, we need to think from a user perspective. People don’t want more apps, they want to solve problems.
The things Polls does are quite short-lived results, very quick-fire sort of planning, and it is a mix of different things. It’s not necessarily something I would see as an app of its own, but tightly integrated into other parts of Nextcloud:
- The Doodle/Dudle part I see belonging in Calendar, as you need to first check with your own events for possible conflicts, others can check too (especially if they are on the same instance) and then when it’s decided, it’s painless to add the event to your Nextcloud Calendar. Very related also to Calendly-like scheduling of meetings: https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/issues/1023 @nextcloud/calendar
- The quick voting / Strawpoll-like part would be super nice to do in Nextcloud Talk directly. Right now there is only a text-based poll command available, and it would be nice to do this more easily usable, like polls on Twitter for example. @nickvergessen
- Sharing text polls outside of your instance, as well as other surveys, are then covered by the Forms app.
So yes, I totally agree that collaboration is key – and we also need to really look at what we should be collaborating on. :) What do you think? cc @nextcloud/forms @skjnldsv @jotoeri
I'm 100% in, but I would have loved to hear that before I spend 100h+ to fix & improve forms! :sweat_smile:
I'm 100% in, but I would have loved to hear that before I spend 100h+ to fix & improve forms! :sweat_smile:
Read my full comment. ;) Forms makes sense to have standalone, as it is used for longer-term purposes like surveys, and will eventually also integrate with other parts like possibly saving responses to spreadsheets etc.
@jancborchardt I like the concept! I think your intuition is right.
If things move in that direction, I suggest (from a non-tech user perspective) to make sure that there is, as much as possible, a distinctive (development?) approach between public (non-user) polls/calendar and internal polls/calendar.
On the long run, for internal polls/calendar, you may want to be able to add the final result of a "date poll" directly to a group or participant calendar. Likewise, where non-users are to be checked with for a date poll (and this is often the case in my experience), they should be able to receive a confirmation in an easy and handy manner (e.g. final email confirmation with a possibility to add the event to their own external calendar).
@skjnldsv Yes, thank you very much for your contribution! Forms has still a great deal of reasons to exist and evolve on its own, don't worry! IMO, it could go as far as to enable the upload of documents to NextCloud folders, e.g. for job or membership applications.
@jancborchardt Couldn't the poll app be the tool to use the Dudle and the Calendly-like functionalities?
Especially if https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/20154 becomes available?
Maybe @georgehrke and @dartcafe could find a way to collaborate on this....
@jancborchardt Couldn't the poll app be the tool to use the Dudle and the Calendly-like functionalities?
I'm not sure about this. Dudle and https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/issues/1023 are very different features.
In a Dudle, you want to find an appointment that fits most participants.
https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/issues/1023 is for booking individual slots. The organiser is assigning slots for booking and individual users are booking them, let it be for consultation in university, job-interviews, etc.
As for the poll thing it was just meant to be an example for talk commands. I can totally see it being stopped if any other app integrates into talk provide this.
I don't see polls to be stopped and split into different apps. As @georgehrke said:
In a Dudle, you want to find an appointment that fits most participants.
Polls app is a feature that we use quite often on our instance (for a club). Mostly not all users taking part are registered, nearly none of our registered users uses the cloud-calendar (everybody has his/her own calendar outside the club) and i wouldn't like to replace it with forms, as to make such an appointment is sth. different than collecting some data here... I see polls as it is as an app that absolutely has its rights to exist.
And especially from users side here - i like more to have an app, that replaces Doodle, one app for forms and further apps for talk and calendar. Some features we use on our cloud, some we don't, so i can pick just what we need and when making e.g an appointment-poll i just use the appropriate app where i don't have to think about, if all users do surely have their cloud-account, can see the talk or ....
Further:
- As @Spartachetto said concerning the API, it will surely be a nice thing to provide a connection to create a date from polls into calendar (if used!). Possible polls-feature.
- Calendly for Calendar sounds great to me, but is a calendar-feature and to me sth. different than polls.
- Quick-Polls in talk is surely a nice thing in a chat, but nothing i would make an appointment with, if it's not just for the next day.
Greets, Jonas :)
As a user of both polls & forms, and somebody who works professionally in this field (Data Analyst), what I would suggest is to merge the two codes bases but to keep the UIs separate. That would mean you would have two different UIs:
- Polls-style UI for Doodle-style polls
- Forms-style UI for building surveys
Possibly this is isn't a pair of UIs but rather a option when creating the poll/survey. Allowing built-in "survey types" can also be extended with other default types as needed
The poll app have especially great features to manage sharing with external users, reminder, individual share links. I actually use framaform/yakform for survey because of a more advanced feature but i would be very happy to find something similar in forms with nextcloud (predefined values, formula, conditionnal fields validation, mail confirmation)
I think it is better to work together on a single app adding different features than keeping two apps and thinking if they overlap. Today it took me a few hours to see if polls app is suitable for me (I have never heard of doodle-like thing), then somehow found forms app to see that it fits my requirements better. But still this is not something that can substitute my simple google forms form that we use to check people skills. And I would definitltly switch to forms/poll option 🙂 And yes, I know the starting idea behind both apps is different. It is still time to join forces 🙂
