Main Improvements, Features and Fixes for Q1-Q2 '10

This page lists the different tasks that Melange will focus on during the upcoming months. Note that this list is far from complete in terms of other improvements we might make and that not everything on this list (prio medium or lower) might make it into Melange before the next months are over.

Short NameDescriptionSchelduledPriorityPrimary Contributors
Complete the Module OverhaulThe new module system requires significant changes to our datamodels. These changes need to be rolled out using the GAE Task API on the live socghop server.December 15, 2009Very HighSverre Rabbelier and Lennard de Rijk
Putting Old Programs in Freeze modeAlthough currently the inactive state is available for a program it does not yet put everything that has to do with the program into a state where the data can no longer be changed. Thought needs to go out to making sure the data is still available but not editable.December 28, 2009Very HighDaniel Hans and Lennard de Rijk
New Organization Application FormatExtending the current Survey implementation with a new type of Survey to handle Organization Applications.January 18, 2010Very HighLennard de Rijk
~~~Issue 201 (on Google Code)~~~Implementing a searchable list that allows the user to fetch more then 1000 entities and sort on any column. Also this list should allow post operations on certain rows of the table.January 18, 2010HighSverre Rabbelier and Mario Ferraro
Taggable OrganizationsAdd tags to Organizations. At least two different tags are needed, programming language tags and arbitrary tags. The programming language tags might have to be preset or have some form of autocompletion to ensure that organizations fall under the same tag wether they use C++ or c++ as spelling. This also includes adding a page on which the organizations are grouped under their tags.February 15, 2010MediumDaniel Hans
Finding duplicate accepted proposals using the Task APICurrently duplicate finding happens using async HTTP requests, this can now be done using the GAE Task API. This also makes it possible to automatically schedule the duplicate finding task to happen and semi-live update the lists for organizations. So that they can have more direct feedback on their students. (Note that this latter needs to be checked with LH).February 15, 2009HighMadhusudan C.S.
Org Application Processing using Task APIThe current OrgApplication processing happens using async HTTP requests. Thanks to the introduction of the GAE Task API this can now be done more user friendly :).February 22, 2010HighLennard de Rijk
Slot Assignment using Task APIThe current slot assignment algorithm does not use the GAE Task API, this needs to be rewritten. The slot assignment algorithm helps to determine the amount of slots each organization will get.February 22, 2010HighSverre Rabbelier
Project Acceptance using Task APIAccepting proposals and turning them into projects required use of the remote API. The Task API will allow us to get rid of using the remote API and allow this to happen with a press of a single button.February 22, 2010HighSverre Rabbelier
GSoC Testing PeriodAs requested by the Organizations we will run the complete GSoC in 2 weeks to gather feedback and see if the system is ready.February 22, 2010Very HighSverre Rabbelier and Lennard de Rijk
StudentProposal Scoring ImprovementsAllow the Org admins to lock out mentors from scoring proposals and add a way to directly influence the rank of a StudentProposal on the page that lists all these applications instead of only on the per-proposal page. This last might be achieved by using up/down arrows.February 22, 2010MediumDaniel Hans
Make GradingSurveyGroup available to HostsAdd the GradingSurveyGroup pages to the menu structure and ensure that Hosts are able to view them correctly.July 1, 2010MediumLennard de Rijk
Improve the navigational structureThe current sidebar has grown over the last year to become a huge list. New (realistic) ideas are welcome on how to improve the navigational structure to accommodate for the large functionality we offer.Discussion TopicMedium
Per Org URL for ApplyingThe current StudentApplication uses the student as scope. This gives non-shareable URL’s for organizations to apply on. Unless changing the datamodel to become based around Orgs becomes viable for GSoC10 (a lot of dependencies with access and accepting/rejecting applications), a good solution would also be to introduce a URL that is not user-dependent but Organization dependent.Low
Statistics Module IntegrationIntegrate the statistics module backend to work with the new module system. Also includes integrating the frontends for the hosts and users.LowDaniel Hans
Use HTTPS protocol for certain pagesThis means enabling HTTPS for a certain set of pages such as edit pages for roles. See also Issue 445 (on Google Code).Low
Enhance NotificationsThis includes posting the complete notification in the email sent to the user and perhaps add the possibility to read them using an RSS feed (NewsFeed framework from James Levy)Low
Add Surveys to the Statistics moduleThe Statistics modules seems like the perfect place to also handle the statistics that can be gathered from the Surveys collected within Melange.Low
InternationalizationThe text in Melange has now become quite stable and we do have a large user base within the Asian community. We should look into the possibility of adding and enabling translations. Research might be required into languages that read from right to left.Low
Display changes in StudentProposalsA StudentProposal usually has multiple iterations. A request from the organizations was to make these changes more visible by somehow displaying the history of a proposal (diffs or complete histories are an idea)GSoC 2010Very Low