On-boarding and test enterprises

I’d like to collaborate around more ‘organized’ ‘on-boarding’ processes and testing. Right now in Canada (I think everywhere?) there is one server that is ‘live’ for trading and also for ‘tests’ . That, coupled with an inability to ‘delete’ our test enterprises means that we have lots of ‘waste’ or ‘ghost’ enterprises starting to accumulate. It is really just an issue for super-admins - because we can become the owners of all of these, so we are the only ones who have to deal with the clutter. BUT - when you are bulk editing products or doing E2E permissions, or anything like that - these really get in the way.

We can name these ghosts, and strip their products so they are (to a degree) easier to ignore. Is that the best we can do? Any other suggestions?

Second idea: I’m just heading into my first on-boarding workshop with 5 hubs (all pretty complex hubs so I’m scared to death). I plan on using this first workshop as a process to develop a set of demo enterprises that I can keep re-using in future on-boarding work (ie: hangouts and face to face workshops). But first - has anyone done this yet? Once done - is there an easy way I can share them with others to save you the trouble? Is there a way to have - globally - a common ‘testing and training’ area? It’ll get messy and will take some time to keep tidy - just trying to figure out the best way to do this.

@NickWeir @MyriamBoure @CynthiaReynolds @sstead - who else to ping? (sorry I don’t have a list of all super-admins)

@tschumilas having similar issues here too. Especially with the default E2E permissions.
Another way I am just trying to attempt is to create separate user id’s based on different email id’s xxx@openfoodnetwork.in and use them. But doesn’t sound practical for me yet, as would need lot of remembering and logging in and out, But would give the real time experience !!

for the second idea, in India I tried creating until now real data for organizations with whom I would have a conversation, but off late it gets very repetitive and crazy, and also many people think that these farmers/farmer orgs are already using OFN. So I would also love a global ‘testing & Training’ area , but also think better way would be to build locally suitable diverse demo usecases covering all features of OFN, and use them.
I believe OFN UK does that too.

Cheers

Thank you @tschumilas,we do have the same case in France as well. We have a staging server so at the beginining we were using this one as a playgroun, but we realized that hubs were putting time to put info and then if they decide to use it for real they needed to redo everything in the production environment, so my idea on this is: I think that’s ok if all the tests are done in the real platform as long as they remain “unvisible”.
So I won’t recommend a global playground at least we didn’t find the local one practical in France :wink:

Then I see 2 situations:

  • you have created an account for a hub to demo it, or the hub has created his account during a demo workshops. If after that they don’t decide to move forward, you can delete the info in the database (@Kirsten that’s what I understood when I asked that some months/years ago) It’s a bit tricky as you need to have someone who can go into the database and deleter entries, and not really “clean” either… maybe we could have an “archive” option that would not delete but make all the info disappear from all lists, etc. (and be stored somewhere in the database as “archived”). That could be applied to users as well btw, we had an issue with a user asking to be erase from our servers, we had no option than go into the database and make a hard suppression. Would this be possible technically @maikel @RohanM
  • visitors learning about OFN connect and decide to try out the interface, so they create a profil, try some stuff and never move forward. Here I would suggest more a “welcome process” management as suggested Managing new user accounts, so if you follow the different “leads”, you contact them and maybe after some time of inactivity and no anwer you can set up a process where you archive the account.

Do you see any other @tschumilas?
Probably @sstead will have inputs on that :slight_smile:

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I agree that some kind of email notification so that a super-admin (or other delegate) can see a newcomer and email them with a welcome and encouragement to ‘play’ and invitation to contact them if they have questions.
I have been doing this - but now it is getting busier and I’m worried I miss people for a few weeks before I notice they are there ‘playing’. (Maybe I just need to be on the platform every day - which I’m not right now)

I also agree that having them ‘play’ (creating profiles, shops, maybe a trial hub) is great - but that then when they choose not to become OFN regular users, they leave behind this ‘clutter’. I love the idea of an archive if it is not possible to delete it. this clutter is really annoying for Super Admins because we see all of it. BUT - it is also distracting for new users who might have some of their trial things still there when they start to be ‘real’ users. I’ve already had one hub ask me if I can ‘clean their slate’ so they can start fresh because they made mistakes and they can’t seem to ignore them.

One suggestion from @sstead that they do in AUS - is to re-name these abandoned enterprises - perhaps in a common way so that they can be more easily ignored. so - I’m going to call them x - 001, x - 002… So then they are easy to ignore. And - I THINK as super admin - I can modify the shop owner - and put my name there instead (or create an x-something email for all of this?) - so then I am the only one bothered. (And really if my house is any indication, I live with a lot of clutter and distraction :slight_smile:)

Question to everyone on this: what about deleting orders that were placed in trial OCs? Am I able to delete those? haven’t figured out how.

Totally feel your pain about the cluttered SuperAdmin view, but you can work around it.

  • Unfortunately a global demo server would be costly, and it probably wouldn’t solve the problem, because what language would it be in?
  • I’ll often setup a very basic demo shopfront for interested hub/market users. Users will not expect you to setup full functionality for a demo. You can set this to invisible so it’s not shown on the homepage. If they are interested in proceeding, I’ll setup more of their actual data, so the demo can transition to the real shop eventually.
  • I agree with Myriam regarding abandoned accounts. If someone abandons a shop you can switch it to ‘profile only’ and if someone abandons an incomplete profile you can switch it to non-visible. This keeps the homepages clean.
  • You can cancel orders, but they’ll linger as ‘cancelled’.
    Good luck with the onboarding workshop Theresa! You’re doing great!

We have a demo shopfront on our production server which we use for onboarding. I am happy to give you a login to that @tschumilas
@mags produces this report from our production server each month that shows which new producers and shopfronts have set up that month. We then follow each one up by email or phone to check if they need support.

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great report - just the structure I need - thanks
and if it is no trouble, I think I’d benefit from a login to the demo.

Thanks

I have set you up as a manager of our demo shopfront. i will email you the login details

Though I have a few hubs setup in OFN India , still need not lot of refinement, so would be nice to have a login to the demo hub Nick.
Cheers.

As a developer I often miss the delete feature as well. I believe that every action should be reversible, because everybody makes mistakes. But there are good reasons to keep records as well. For example orders, even if they were only test orders, it is nice to keep a record, at least for some time. I would love a feature to clean the database and delete all old data that is not needed any more. It is actually part of the Privacy Act in Australia and also in Germany that you are required to delete data which you don’t need any more. That means, a ten year old order should be deleted.

Implementing these delete features would take some time. For example the current account balances add up all payments that have been made in the past. If we delete old payment information, we have to capture the sum in a replacement payment or store a current balance value in the database. I guess, banks have good processes for that. Each transaction contains the amount and the resulting balance. That makes it easy to track errors or plot the balance over time as well.

There might be more cases in which the system assumes that nothing is deleted. These have to be solved before we can actually delete things.

Deleting old data would also reduce the data to process and speed-up the system as well.

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As a Super Admin on UK production, I would LOVE to be able to delete ghost enterprises! We have over two years worth of data on our production site now and it’s starting to get pretty messy and slow in Super Admin. I have made all the abandoned enterprises invisible, but I like the idea of turning them into ‘ghost’ enterprises, stripping out their products and other info, etc. Will try and put some time into this next week.

Does anyone have tips for dealing with abandoned order cycles? We have a long list of these that appear at the top of my order cycle page now, and you have to scroll down a really long way to get to the live order cycles. Only some of them come with a button to delete and even these don’t seem to go away when you try that.

Even if it’s going to be a big job, it sounds like we need to start working on a delete or archiving feature soon to make sure we are complying with data protection.

I have not been able to figure out why some order cycles can be deleted and others cannot. Can anyone help @sstead ? For exmaple - if I make all orders completed from a trial order cycle and then delete the orders - can I delete the trial order cycle?

In the meantime, I have backdated all the abandoned order cycles to the 1st Jan 2016, this has tidied them up and removed them off my Order Cycle page for now!

Good strategy - So - is there a way you can see those backdated order cycles if you want them back?

Yes, you just click ‘show more’ in order cycles and the archived OCs will show. Although in Aus we have such a large backlog of historical OCs that when the system tries to display them all it can crash. I’m not sure if Canada/UK will have this problem yet. Also, the standing orders work includes the ability to search/filter OCs, which, when released, will make it easier to find back dated OCs.

Also, I believe you can only delete an OC if it has never had any orders placed in it.