Discussion: Design Overhaul - Update Project to SAP Fiori Design Languange or keep Material Design

[Michadelic]

Hello Community,

SAP has released the Project Portal for InnerSource with the Material design and Vanilla JavaScript to keep it independent and easily adjustable. The same approach was used internally until we harmonized the internal tooling to use the official SAP Fiori design language a while ago.

Meanwhile our internal version uses the SAP Fundamental Styles Open Source project and a slightly different HTML structure to present the page. Also the JavaScript part was updated a bit to reflect the changes.

Preview

Now to the discussion part:
Would you like to see the external version reflect these design changes as well or would you rather keep it independent in the Material design? We are very open to the outcome of this discussion and would like to know if and how you adjust the design to your needs.

Let us know what you think!

Kind Regards,

Michael from the SAP InnerSource Working Group

[dellagustin-sap]

Hello @spier , @JustinGOSSES , @privero-meli, @dchucks , @cchandl18, @ahieser-se, @marcodadamo, @cwege, @sbelten, @r-arav1nd, you have either contributed code to this project or been involved as a user (until now).

I'd like to call your attention to this discussion, as the fact that we currently maintain two versions of the project is hindering its progress, as it is more difficult for us to integrate new features (e.g., #49), considering it has to be harmonized across our internal version and external version. It would make it easier for us as maintainers to harmonize the public (open source) version with our internal version, but this would require a shift from the more generic Material design to the more SAP specific SAP Fiori design language.

We would like to give you the opportunity to voice your feedback before we take a decision.

[cchandl18]

We are no longer using the app, so no objections from my side.

Best of luck and appreciate the energy of the project!

[dellagustin-sap]

@cchandl18 Thank you for your reply, if I may ask, have you replaced it with another solution? A popular choice here is backstage, I have seen a lot of people presenting about it in the context of InnerSource.

[cchandl18]

@cchandl18 Thank you for your reply, if I may ask, have you replaced it with another solution? A popular choice here is backstage, I have seen a lot of people presenting about it in the context of InnerSource.

We opted to go with a pattern where all innersource projects live in a given GitLab subgroup. Definitely lacks the discoverability that the Innersource Portal provides, but fewer moving parts, which is key given the small size of our team.

In short, nothing lacking about the app or solution 😄

Hope that helps!

[dellagustin-sap]

@cchandl18 , got it! Keeping complexity low is sometimes a challenge. Well, if you need a portal again, you know where to find us 😄 , best of luck on your projects and your InnerSource journey.

[cwege]

@dellagustin-sap thanks for including us in this decision. We are happy users of the portal and would love to use the version where you invest your resources. We only did a little change in the old version that we could replicate in the new version. So we will then withdraw our PR #49 and create a new PR once we have applied the same change to the new version. We are excited to see the new version published.

[ahieser-se]

Please go ahead and keep the open source repository updated! Good to hear that your still actively working on it internally. If we like the new changes, we will go ahead an update it as well.