sure it would be worth thinking about this feature..

how exactly do you expect it to work ? is it more than a wiki snip which includes
other snips which can be added in-place ?

for example.. you have a snip called 'Dashboard' where you write {include
snip="FirstSnip"} {include snip="SecondSnip"} ... which then renders the contents of
the snip + edit links into the 'Dashboard' wiki snip ?

could you give me a live example of it ? the only thing i saw was this screenshot:
http://www.socialtext.com/s2img/socialtext-dashboard-430.png (but to be honest i
wasn't looking too hard :) )

Ah, good!

Well, so let me explain what it does and at the end I will paste a link for you to 
try.

The first wiki we tried was twiki, wich is complex and confusing. Then I found 
SocialText which looked as the perfect solution.

It gives you dashboards (that is almost like you described with snips) and we could 
create as many dashboards we want and give public, restricted or personal access for 
edit and comment. So, we could create a company dashboard, programming dashboard, 
sales dashboard (e.g.: www.mywiki.com/company_dashboard).  -see attached image

So, instead of creating a "marketing page", it is a dashboard, wich creates a 
standard and organized overview of the related pages. Each dashboard has a central 
page wich is an ordinary wiki page and all other pages. Simple as that.

Other cool feature is the possibility to add a page as "favourite", so you can see 
your "favorite" pages in the dashboard, and all the other dashboards you belongs to.

The only problem with SocialText is that it is so resources consuming that with a 
shared server it becomes really slooow. And the manager shout that it is impossible 
and he won't put 4GB RAM to use a Wiki.

If you want to play with SocialText, it is here:

http://www.socialtext.net/anderson_sandbox/index.cgi





The SocialText dashboard can be

socialtext_dashboard.png 260 KB   Download

to make a first version as easy as it gets.. how about this ..
i guess to make dashboard somehow useful .. they need to be separated by user group
(as you said . a company dashboard, programming dashboard, sales dashboard) .. so
there needs to be some relation between dashboard and user groups ..

i would like to somehow stay away from creating a special type of page for
dashboards.. but simply reusing wiki snips .. so what is the most important feature
of those dashboards ? probably that information is aggregated from different other
wiki snips and applications .. - another important feature is probably that those
user groups get their dashboard as their start page after login .. and as some kind
of quick link ?

the easiest type of aggregated information are other wiki snips .. these can be
simple include macros .. which renders the contents of other snips ..
other macros needed are probably some kind of news and the 'recently changed' list of
wiki snips ..


do you think it would be possible to mainly provide this functionality using wiki
macros .. or is there more integration needed ? any thoughts ?

Funny, I was trying to find this post right now when I got your reply.

I really need to take a look in Wiki code to understand the whole project, but I do 
believe that if we pass an url parameter like /dashboard/sales we can easily render 
the snips passing to them the rendered "dashboard object/model/list/whatever".

If we think about SocialText dashboard, it seems that it's nothing more than 
"included pages" in Wiki pages. A snip of a "notepad page", a snip of a "recent 
updated pages", a snip of a "your dashboards page" (so, I think the user group would 
be useful, on social text you have to add each user to the dashboard, and it's 
boring) and so on. 
I don't know how macros works, but I don't believe it's harder then this. So, yes, I 
think you got the idea  =D

So, let me say, I have a couple of websites that will need a forum and a wiki, so 
you will hear a lot from me soon. In fact I am working on a bigger project since I 
will need a lot of stuff that will be reused  =)

(is it better talk by here or by sphene website forum?)

Regards


Anderson

since it seems we need a lot of discussion to define the needs for the dashboard
feature.. i would prefer if we could use the SCT board .. i have created a forum
thread: http://sct.sphene.net/board/thread/254/ - maybe we should switch discussion
there.. (i haven't written much there yet since i have not much time right now.. i's
already midnight here ;) )

> So, let me say, I have a couple of websites that will need a forum and a wiki, so 
> you will hear a lot from me soon. In fact I am working on a bigger project since I 
> will need a lot of stuff that will be reused  =)

great ;) just let me know if/how i can help you .. probably also in the board or by
email :)