Project Group field and search widget on project registration page need to be better explained

Thanks for the bug.

This is a workflow problem on project initiation. The registration page at this point introduces the notion of project groups. The page is setup for the situation where the person creating the project knows the name of the project but the page also provides the popup to allow search for a project.

The user only needs one entry box from which they can:
  - register to be part of an existing meta-project
  - discover related meta projects
  - request the creation of a new meta project
      (ideally also: convert this project to be the meta project request)
So, a bit more work will make the popup superfluous and simplify user workflow at the cost of either:
 - some javascript which alters the original page
 - a bit more UI on the original page

Possible workflows:
The user may know of a project group and want to add their project to it
    (current)
    but needs improvement by confirmation against the database, eg. search
The user may want to add their project to a group but not know the exact name
    (current search)
  => note that some users will not yet know *how* to search in the search popup
        because we user doesn't yet quite understand what meta-projects are.
          Do I type in 'eclipse' to search for all projects related to eclipse?
          What are these meta-projects?
          How many exist?
The user may not have any idea what a meta-project is
  (current info)
  => needs a bit more
  BTW, the text is out of date, the mozilla foundation having become a corporation
            and that having spun off thunderbird.
The user may want to add this project to a group which does not yet exist
  =>They need a way to request the creation of such a group.
The user may realize that the data they have filled in should be for the meta-project itself
         Actually, in my case I realized that I wanted this project to be the definition of the
         group since this project depends on the following svn sources:
            JSR-108 units -> sf.net
            jts, jcs -> ?
            geoapi -> sf.net
            geotools -> geotools.org
            eclipse sdk
            udig -> geotools.org/refractions.net
            yudig (here)
         so eventually, I want to create all those projects and access them in one place
(What the user really wants is to create a virtual meta-project for their community)

Perhaps though I have misunderstood launchpad, these being my very first days thinking about how we could switch to bzr.

Thanks again for all the great work,
--adrian

I have just run into this problem when attempting to register a new project. I would like to set up a project group, as I have multiple programs that are being developed as part of one overall project. I am considering singing up with my individual projects and then asking for a group to be created around them later on. Hopefully this will work.

Perhaps it would be good if we could have an ``I'd like a group created for me'' facility where we can request this from an admin at the time of project registration?

On Sat, Oct 20, 2007 at 04:28:02PM -0000, Matthew Tylee Atkinson wrote:
> I have just run into this problem when attempting to register a new
> project. I would like to set up a project group, as I have multiple
> programs that are being developed as part of one overall project. I am
> considering singing up with my individual projects and then asking for a
> group to be created around them later on. Hopefully this will work.
>

That should be fine. When you're ready to ask for a project group to be
created you should raise a question about it at
http://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+addquestion.

> Perhaps it would be good if we could have an ``I'd like a group created
> for me'' facility where we can request this from an admin at the time of
> project registration?

I think that linking to the ask a question form would fulfill this
function, provided that there were sufficient instructions to go with
the link.

Graham Binns wrote:
> I think that linking to the ask a question form would fulfill this
> function, provided that there were sufficient instructions to go with
> the link.

Agreed.

--
Matthew Tylee Atkinson <email address hidden>

The caption should make clear that you can have the project group registered later, you don't need to have it set up already.