Alistair,
Thanks for these comments, and in the most part, I have to agree with the
points you make. I'm not entirely sure though, what you're referring to as
the 'dead end page', in the second section. It is possible to set the
organisation cookie, *and* send the user to a list of resources in one step,
but perhaps this information has not been elaborated properly.
Regarding the issues of cookies, then we have two different uses for them in
the context of the gateway: 1) To identify the user's chosen organisation and
2) To maintain the users SSO session. This may conflict with the gateway in
two ways. Firstly, if the user has set their organisation, but wishes to
login with a 'classic' account because it is not compatible with the gateway.
This is catered for via the (admittedly confusingly worded) 'Alternative
login procedures' link which gives them the option to login via an Athens
account. We are already working to substantially streamline and rework this
procedure so that far less onus is on the user to 'know' what they're
supposed to do in this situation. The other conflict is when you have a
gateway SSO session, and attempt to access a resource. This attempt will
fail. This is more tricky from a usability point of view. We are working on a
feature to allow a one-time access URL to be constructed to force access to a
specific gateway resource via a classic account. The issue with this is how
users get to it.
Believe me, we are aware of these issues, but do still view this as a pilot
phase, where we are expecting to encounter these sort of issues. We have also
placed emphasis on maintaining a consistent and uninterrupted page-flow for
the majority of our users, who do still come through classic Athens. Our
present reworking of the HDDS is definitely shifting this more in favour of
alternative access routes such as via the gateway.
David
On Friday 11 November 2005 13:20, Alistair Young wrote:
> We've been poking around the gateway and these are the Guanxi project
> conclusions:
>
> http://www.weblogs.uhi.ac.uk/sm00ay/?p=153
>
> Alistair
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