Web app for individuals to track their own process

[apaleslimghost]

We have the spreadsheet integration, which is cool, but unless I'm missing something, once you've copied the spreadsheet your copy can become stale?

What I'm thinking is a webapp that:

• has google sign in
• pulls in data from the JSON API
• allows you to check off your completed competencies & provide evidence
• perhaps could talk to People API so it knows what levels you're looking at

This is something that, if there's appetite for it, I am extremely likely to work on as a 10% project. I mean, I'm probably going to work on it anyway because of who I am as a person but if there's some justification for it then great

[rowanmanning]

Bren, Bren, Bren. I've been waiting for this message to appear 😁

This is the kind of thing we envisaged when we made the decision to open up the data. You're correct in thinking that your spreadsheet becomes stale once you've copied it, and your idea would solve that.

The beauty of the data being open is that we don't get to say "yes, do this" or "no, don't do this" – you can decide to use this data to help track progress of you or a report in any way you like. If that method of tracking turns out to be useful to other people (my hunch is that it will) then I imagine it will naturally grow.

It's our intention to advertise other integrations on the website and repo, so if/once you have something then feel free to open a PR or ask one of us to add it. Also if it would be useful for a successful release of the competencies to ping a webhook in your application, we can add that in too.

[rowanmanning]

One thing that you'd definitely have to consider is that the data you'd be storing is probably considered sensitive. It may be worth speaking to somebody with a lot of GDPR expertise.

[j-mes]

One thing that you'd definitely have to consider is that the data you'd be storing is probably considered sensitive. It may be worth speaking to somebody with a lot of GDPR expertise.

I would suggest chatting to Compliance about this web app early as possible...

[apaleslimghost]

vvv good point about GDPR, i hadn't considered that, thanks. i'd likely only store competency IDs, completed, and evidence, linked to an internal user ID that could be mapped to an employee's email address, definitely could be sensitive. because i'm structuring it like that the webhook wouldn't be necessary.

i'm not sure how to handle versioning. i'm guessing IDs for competencies would be static between versions? i don't know how the UX would feel for a user to come back to the app and something they've checked off has changed

[rowanmanning]

Competency IDs remain the same between versions 👍 though they may be deleted, or new ones added so you'd have to handle that. (note: competency deletions are considered a MINOR change)

If you decided to store a copy of the competencies then you could possibly store a copy of every version that's released and then have a little notice to a user that says "switch to the latest version of the competencies". That feels like a bunch more work though.

[apaleslimghost]

is the current version available in the API? i don't see it anywhere. i can store the version number from when the user last made a change and notify if the version is different now. storing all old versions feels like a massive can of worms 😬

[rowanmanning]

The major version is in the URL (https://engineering-progression.ft.com/api/v1/competencies/all.json), but the full version isn't available right now. We could always add an endpoint for it if you'd find that useful.

[rowanmanning]

The version is now visible here:
https://engineering-progression.ft.com/api/v1/version.json

[mark-barnes]

@quarterto Bren - just had a brief chat about this with Alice ... feels like your initiative so if it's ok assigning to you.

[stale]

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