The mailing list for users of the eduroam Configuration Assistant Tool (CAT)

[Paul Menzel <pmenzel AT molgen.mpg.de>]

Dear Stefan,


Thank you for your reply.

Am 18.07.23 um 09:52 schrieb Stefan Winter:

> Thanks for your comments. Most of them are indeed something to improve 
> upon.

Thank you for your detailed reply.

> FWIW, we are looking at a major redesign of the software for its next 
> major release 3.0, so these suggestions come at a good time.

Nice. It’d be great if you could share the design and specifications 
document.

> FYI: these changes might easily end in a design like: end users are
> supposed to exclusively interact with native apps on OSes, with an
> embedded institution search; and do not interact with the website at
> all. This approach would make a good part of your suggestions not
> applicable any more, by design.

I am not a fan at all of “apps” as you need to install them. A Web site 
can be opened by any browser. At least for GNU/Linux and ChromeOS, I 
know best, opening a Web page with the configuration file and 
instructions are much preferred by myself.

> We are also always looking for developers that would participate in the 
> development effort. If you are interested in getting involved beyond UX 
> reports, please let us know...

Nice try. ;-)

But excuse my ignorance, with so many users I would assume the project 
is sufficiently funded to contract such work. If for the redesign more 
resources/money is needed, I’d imagine the members being able to raise 
these amounts. My uninformed guess would not more than 50.000 € are 
needed for such a (Web page) project.

> Now, at least for two points I have a concrete immediate response:
>
> > 4.  Due to the variety of Android versions, there are always users 
> > with phones where the procedure does not work, and need help from the IT 
> > staff.
>
> That's a universal truth in Android. Since we cannot make the variety of 
> Android versions stop to exist: yes, that's how it is. There is still a 
> reason for existence of the IT helpdesk. Nothing we can do in CAT can 
> change that fact of life.

Yes and no. As written, the instructions and usability could be improved 
a lot.

Can you point me to an Android issue/ticket, where the feature to 
support configuring this via a configuration file is requested?

> > 10.  My institute name is spelled differently in German and English, 
> > so sometimes it’s not found in the apps. Sometimes it’s not found at all.
>
> Multi-lingual support is built into CAT. In the organisation settings, 
> you can add multiple variants of your institution name, and tag them 
> with multiple languages. Your institution can then be found by typing 
> any one of the variants.

Thank you. I have no access to the backend, but will talk to my colleagues.


Kind regards,

Paul