Client Dashboard

Over at Koumbit we are working towards a fully functional client dashboard based in aegir. The idea is to give clients access to every service we offer via a single location embedded in the aegir frontend. We're thinking this functionality is not just of interest to us, so we are documenting the work here, and open to feedback.

Some questions we have:
* What to call domain name management? We want it to make sense to relatively non-technical users, but the term sites could cause confusion given the use of the term in Aegir...
* What are we going to call Aegir hosting? Many of our clients do not know/care what Aegir is. Right now we are playing around with "Drupal hosting" or "managed Drupal hosting", but we are not sure this is any clearer (or accurate, in the long term)

Dashboard Layout

For the time being we have only a basic dashboard layout, and are working from it to storyboard tasks and use cases. Here's what we've got so far:

Center Region: News Feed and Customization

This region will include a view to pull alerts posted by our sysadmins, based on whether they are tagged as affecting one of the client's enabled services. Automated alerts will be generated for membership and domain name expiration.

Left Region: Tasks

• Purchase: Quick links to Ubercart based products available for purchase

  • Shared hosting: generalized hosting offer based on AlternC
  • Drupal hosting: Aegir hosting packages
  • Domain name registration: Default should probably just be a link to our favorite registrar, but integration with Registrar API is being worked on.

• Domain names/Sites: Link list of domains for this client, with an add link. Access to the creation of subdomains and various forms of domain name forwarding, as well as manipulation of CX records. Creation of a subdomain will default to the creation of an aegir site when the client has an aegir hosting package. In cases where the client has a quota on domains, this block will display the quota and the number of existing domains or sites. One approach would be integrating with an updated version of Bind module with a proper API (Although this looks unlikely given the module maintainers disappearance).

• Other tasks: A bunch of other tasks, each with Add and View tasks. Each one will display the quotas and number of available widgets where pertinent. By default, none of these tasks appear - they can be enabled as needed by each client, via the Features tool.

  • SSL Certificates
  • FTP/SFTP accounts
  • Databases: Here we add a quick link to create backups
  • Email Accounts
  • Mailing Lists

• Backups: Links to run or schedule file, database, or sitewide backups

Right Region: Information

• Quotas: Information about overall quotas (aegir sites created, bandwidth and drivespace used per hosting package)
• Help: Quick links to different resources for technical support, including filing issues with our request tracker, accessing forums, and viewing our FAQ.
• My Tickets: A feed of tickets filed in our client-facing request tracker (currently RT from Best Practical)
• Membership: Up to date membership information from our CiviCRM install.
• Statistics: Access to our statistical tools, when they have been enabled for a given site. Possibly to include summarized statistics for each site.

Contextual Help

• Each postit is marked with a green question mark, symbolizing our hopes for a contextual help feature.