New User Roles

[vikasrohit]

We need to introduce new user roles and corresponding member roles to the project team to allow better targeted notifications and features. New user roles are (with mapping to the corresponding member role in Connect team):

Business Development Representative => Account Manager (Should be treated as current Account Manager role for all privileges in the application)
Presales => Account Manager
Account Executive => Account Executive (Should be treated as current Account Manager role for all privileges in the application)
Program Manager => Program Manager (Should be treated as current Manager role for all privileges in the application)
Solution Architect => Solution Architect (Should be treated as current Manager role for all privileges in the application)
Project Manager => Project Manager (Should be treated as current Manager role for all privileges in the application)

[vikasrohit]

@maxceem I guess we need changes in both connect-app and project service for this, right?

[maxceem]

Yes, we would have to make updates into both services.

It's quite straightforward to update such permissions in the code. Though now, we also have permissions defined in DB records, see comment topcoder-platform/tc-project-service#346 (comment).
Though, so far we have only demo data on DEV in these tables, so I guess we don't need to write migration scripts for permissions in DB.

So yep, we only have to update code of the both apps: Connect and Project Service.

[maxceem]

Just would like to note, that I've mentioned in this comment topcoder-platform/tc-project-service#346 (comment) in the future if we add new roles, we would have to write migration scripts to update data in DB and maybe in ES if we put any permissions there.

[vikasrohit]

Yep, agreed about the need of migration scripts and I think I am good with that even for the near future and as of now we don't yet have any permissions in database (because we are not going to release the work management yet), so we are safe with that regard.
Coming back, I think we also need changes in the tc-notifications as well for modifying the notifications targets.

[vikasrohit]

@maxceem we need to wrap this one as it is also P0 for us for the next release (tentatively 26 Sept).

[maxceem]

@vikasrohit got it, thanks for emphasising it.

[maxceem]

1. @vikasrohit we have the next switches of user role in Topcoder Team dialog:

   

   They already take quite a lot of space and if add two more options Account Executive and Solution Architect. This switch would take almost the whole width of the dialog. Should we replace these switches with a regular select?

   

   • Regular select also supports disabling options with a tooltip, which we use for Copilot.

2. I've noticed a new role Project Manager additionally to Manager role. What would be the difference between them? They sound like the same role.

[maxceem]

3. @vikasrohit is it possible to get users with new roles for testing on DEV? As I don't have access to admin UI I cannot create them myself.

[vikasrohit]

1. I think we have more than two new options for roles Program Manager/Account Executive/Solution Architect/Project Manager. And to accommodate them, we can try moving the selector in the next row so that it can take full horizontal space. For mobile devices (which I don't think we support now for this UI and I don't think we need to implement it right away), we can stack these options vertically. If that also does not solves the problem, let me know. I need to confirm if we can show the regular select instead. I am trying to keep the design as close to as it is right now, dropdowns are usually avoided in our designs.
   May be we can remove Observer and Manager roles from the selector now. Only thing is that how to show the users in these roles for the old projects.

2. Yep, they are more or less same, we are keeping Manager role for backward compatibility.

3. I would create roles in some time. Let me know on Slack which users you want to add user in those roles.

[maxceem]

1. And to accommodate them, we can try moving the selector in the next row so that it can take full horizontal space.

   1. Yes, I think can do that way, though IMHO it's better to replace this UI component with something more compact, as we would repeat the same list of roles many times, while we are only interested in the current role of the user.

   2. Regarding mobile devices. While we don't put efforts for supporting them, many things still work on mobile. Stacking these options vertically IMHO would make the user list too high.

   3. May be we can remove Observer and Manager roles from the selector now. Only thing is that how to show the users in these roles for the old projects.

      If we don't want these roles to be used anymore, we can hide them unless they are selected. So we would still show them if some users have these roles, but we wouldn't let users to choose them anymore. Also, then we should remove these options from the select below:

      

[vikasrohit]

i. Agreed. But for now, I am trying to not invest time in UI designs, if possible. Please feel free to switch to the dropdown, if you see any issue in fitting the role options in the single row.

ii. I guess vertical stacking for mobile is good even if it too high as vertical scrolling is expected in the mobile devices. This does not makes sense, if we finally use dropdown though. :)

iii. Yes, if we use dropdown, we can remove the Manager and Observer roles from the list if there is no user in the project with these roles.

[maxceem]

1. @vikasrohit there is a place where we send an event to the analytics with the current user role: https://github.com/appirio-tech/connect-app/blob/feature/new-roles/src/actions/loadUser.js#L58-L68

   In this code we have some logic to determine what is main user role. I'm not sure how should we update this code after adding new roles because I don't know what the analytics system expects to get. Should we send the new roles to the analytics system? Or should we treat new "manger" roles as ROLE_CONNECT_MANAGER?
   Note, that in the current logic we don't have a separate case for Account Manager which we probably also want to fix.

[maxceem]

2. @vikasrohit it looks like we have to replace the UI for choosing member role with Select as even on Desktop there is not enough space.

   

[maxceem]

@vikasrohit

3. We send different type of events depend on the role of user which joins the project: https://github.com/topcoder-platform/tc-project-service/blob/feature/new-roles/src/events/busApi.js#L125-L135

   Should we send a separate new event types for new user roles? Or should we send BUS_API_EVENT.MEMBER_JOINED_MANAGER for new "manager" roles? Or maybe we should send default BUS_API_EVENT.MEMBER_JOINED as it's done now.

4. So far in Project Service any user with Topcoder MANAGER level role can join project as Project MANAGER role https://github.com/topcoder-platform/tc-project-service/blob/feature/new-roles/src/routes/projectMemberInvites/create.js#L290-L307
   Just would like to confirm that with the introduction of new roles, this is still a desired behaviour.