Share and reuse interoperability solutions for public administrations

1. Introduction

The Joinup team wants to ensure that Joinup is a valuable tool for professionals to share and reuse interoperability solutions for public administrations. In January 2012, a Joinup User Survey was conducted to evaluate your overall satisfaction and get your input on new features for the next development iterations of Joinup. This page contains a high-level summary of your feedback and explains what we have done to improve the Joinup platform.

Do not hesitate to contact us should you have any comment or question.

The Joinup team

2. How we took your feedback into account

Following your requests received via the user survey, contact form, and Joinup forum, we have formulated change requests to develop or improve the functionality and user interface in the next releases of Joinup. This section contains an overview of the most important improvements that have been implemented for Joinup v1.2 (released on March 9 2012) or will be included with Joinup v1.3 (May 2012).

2.1. User Interface Requirements

2.1.1. Additional metrics

Your request: Provide additional metrics

Change request (Joinup v1.2): On Joinup, you can consult detailed project metrics and platform-wide metrics.

The detailed project metrics page shows data and graphs informing about the:

• Evolution of the number of groups (Communities, Semantic assets, Software), items (News, Blogs, Events), e-Library items (Documents, Cases, Factsheets, Videos) and Users
• Repartition of the number of groups (Communities, Semantic assets, Software), items (News, Blogs, Events) and e-Library items (Documents, Cases, Factsheets, Videos)
• Geographical distribution of blogs, cases, documents, events, news and users
• Surveys (Results of the survey that have been conducted)
• Releases (Number of downloads per release and Number of issues per release)

The platform-wide metrics page shows data and graphs informing about the:

• Evolution of the number of groups (Communities, Semantic assets, Software), items (News, Blogs, Events), e-Library items (Documents, Cases, Factsheets, Videos) and Users
• Repartition of the number of groups (Communities, Semantic assets, Software), items (News, Blogs, Events) and e-Library items (Documents, Cases, Factsheets, Videos)
• Geographical distribution of blogs, cases, documents, events, news and users.

2.1.2. HTML editor

Your request: It is difficult to edit tests on Joinup, for instance it is difficult to include pictures.

Change request (Joinup v1.3): Joinup provides a better HTML editor which enables you to:

• More easily include pictures
• Create tables
• Create content templates
• Modify colours

2.1.3. Examples of usability improvements

Your request: Improve usability of Joinup

Change request (Joinup v1.2): The usability of Joinup has improved. Below are some relevant examples of improvement:

• Your are no longer redirected to “My Page” after login
• Your are not required to fill in all mandatory fields when deleting documents
• When navigating on Joinup, you can use multi-page list navigation

2.1.4. Presentation viewer in the e-Library

User request: It should be possible to share presentations on Joinup. Joinup should provide an embedded viewer.

Change request (Joinup v1.3): You can propose a presentation in the e-Library. Joinup supports the embedded viewer in the e-Library.

2.2. Functional Requirements

2.2.1. Project release package

Your request: It should be possible to structure project releases by component / package.

Change request (Joinup v1.3): Joinup supports the notion of release package. You can now create a release package and categorise your releases accordingly. Each package can therefore have multiple releases.

2.2.2. Contributor Agreement

User request: It should be possible to have project contributors sign a contributor agreement electronically via Joinup.

Change request (Joinup v1.3): Joinup supports the notion of legal document. A project owner or facilitator can create a project-specific document which can contain any legal text, for example a Contributor Agreement. As a member of a Project (Software or Semantic Asset Project or Community), you can sign this legal document.

2.2.3. Control over content/group subscription and notification

Your request: Joinup sends too many e-mail notifications. It should be possible to have better control over content/group subscriptions.

Change request (Joinup v1.3): By default, Joinup will now only send you a daily digest of notifications (if any). It should be possible to unsubscribe from notifications via unsubscribe links in the e-mail messages.

2.2.4. Comment on documents and wiki pages

Your request: It should be possible to increase discussion and social dialogue in communities and projects. The forum topics are not doing the job.

Change request (Joinup v1.3): You can comment on other content, such as documents and wiki pages, within your project or community.

3. Survey results

In total, 41 users have responded to the survey. A summary of the survey results is presented below.

2.1. User Profile

2.2. Top 10 used features used on Joinup

2.3. Top 15 requested new features