I would like Social Office to be enhanced to include the ability for any person to update their personal status and have that status appear in the Activity Feed.

What I'm thinking at present is a Status Update box would be located on the User's home page maybe beneath the Weather Portlet. When a person updates their status it would appear on the Me tab of the Activities feed. A status feed for every person that you have friended would appear on the My Friends tab.

I'm just trying to brainstorm on some ideas for this so if anyone has any ideas please share them.

This is also reflected in JIRA: SOS-71

Hi Jamie

I think an easy to access status change option is a must.
It may however clutter your activity list if added to activities

I presume this status update would also affect the person's status for chat. Maybe the place to put it then is at the bottom of the screen with the chat bar, the same way as if you opened a chat session with some-one else.

Yourname then resides at bottom of screen (maybe far left or far right) with typographic indicator for status e.g. bold for available, italics for busy and normal for not available. Colours could also potentially be used to indicate status.

Another thought

It would be very handy if a small icon appears anywhere next to a persons name or photo to indicate his/her availability status.
A funky electric switch (with horizontal posistions top, centre, bottom) could do the trick e.g.

"green switch top" - online available
"orange switch centre" - online busy
"grey switch bottom" - off line not available

Hi Hennie,

I think maybe we are talking about 2 different things. It sounds to me you are talking about their on-line presence via the Chat application?

When I was referring to Status I was talking about when a person type's out what they are doing at any given time and having that appear in the Feeds for people you have friended similar to to Twitter or Facebook updates.

Hi Jamie

I understand. Was thinking more in terms of gmail online status etc. I Facebook, but mostly to get the kids hugs etc.

What happens in the latest beat when you assign a task to me and I complete it?. Does it get listed under my activities view?

If not it would make a lot of sense to do so and likewise show it on your side.

Hi Hennie,

It does show you when someone closes a task that you assigned to them which is nice.

I was going for more of an open ended way to state what you were working on. I also suggested a while back that maybe there could be a way for a person to flag a task as currently being worked on and have that show in the Activity Feed as well.

Hi Jamie

I very much like the idea in concept. Over and above displaying the activity, much more can evolve from this. From a productivity management perspective it would be ideal that an actual task is created to activiate this rather than a simple post or alternatively a post be converted to t task and prompt for the basic details, such as project, tags, due date, manager etc.

Since the originator in this case is responsible but possibly reporting to a manager, a "reverse task assignment" may have value. e.g.
- You (my manager) created a task assigned to me "develop new user interface" - project client A - tag Liferay - duedate - responsible Hennie.
- To do the above I create my own sub task "research user interfaces" linked to your task.
- By default the system then shows my task created as a thread under your task "develop new user interface"
- Once I start on it, it shows on my activity board, but also change the status viewable by yourself as in progress.

In essence this implies "reverse engineering" task owner/create and responsibility assignment. I am responsible but you effectively is the project owner. Currently there are two tags under tasks being "tasks assigned to you" and "task you assigned to others". We possible need "Tasks under my management" or something alike to display a task created by a junior, but essentially within your realm of accountability.

Over and above tagging, task project grouping and threading to reflect a mini project administration environment will be a winner.

A next step could be to launch a start / stop clock associated with the action, it automatically can become a time sheet entry. Add a project tag to it and you can report back on your weekly activities with the click of a button. This way a completed task can then be listed as a time sheet entry or be move to say the time sheet tab and the ability to view all collectively at a glance would certainly make sense.

Export of these records to a client billing system can furthermore enhance use. There will have to a bit of work flow required such as manager sign-off etc.

The functionality around the current action list is a bit limited to group, sort and arrange tasks e.g. priority etc. I think what you've start may just add enhance this much further.

Hi Hennie,

That's very similar to the conversation I had with Bryan in the Forum back in April: Social Office Update

In that posting I was wondering if it should have an open ended status or be controlled by the Tasks application. So maybe the best approach is to start with a controlled system using Tasks and see what kind of feedback we get from that.

I may go ahead and ask that the original JIRA ticket I had for Facebook style status be closed and open a new one about adding new features to the Tasks portlet.

Hi Jamie

In my opinion, it is much more sensible to expand the current action management functionality around the Task Portlet to evolve it into more of a "mini" project administrator.

To me the value in having Facebook style status resides in providing business managers and project teams the ability to instantaneously see what is happening now in their department or project. It has a significant psychological impact to know rather than to wonder.

I will elaborate more in a new posting.