Integrations Hell

Lately I feel irritated by neverending complexities, costs and maintainance overhead that comes from 3rd party software integrations, including SaaS and downloadable components. 

Say, first it feels really cool to use something like Ingercom to immediately access onboarding tools, help desk, etc. After days and days of integrations, reintegrations, user confusion on what’s part of site and what’s not, heavy JS libraries that slow down the site, poor compliance policies and tracking concerns, etc it feels like it would have been easier to just develop a new UNA module and have our own thing. 

Same feelings about many other tools that we use, like ReCapthcha (support overhead for explaining everyone how to configure it), Froala and TinyMCe (design integration issues and odd UX concepts), Calendly (pricy for what it does), GTM and GAnalytics (complicated integration, sampling, non-compliance with GDPR), even thinking of getting rid of Gsuite/Gmail, Teamwork and Slack. Eventually we will have own modules for email, CRM, helpdesk, traffic analytics, onboarding, auto-messages, paywall, captcha, wysiwyg editor and whatever else is required. Our support team will be happier for sure, since now majority of problems comes from putting all the integration pieces together. 

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    • For email we semi-integrated Horde.
      Because of the Facebook and Gmail signups and logins I thought that email system needs to have it's unique login creditentals.
      If we dont use FB and GG it may be fully integrated.

      Now I am again recalling some words of Baloo , he said me sometime ago that he don't want to be dependent to FB or GG for the logins. Now I realised that he is right. Because at first it seems attractive, but then there are additional problems and limitations coming from them.

      Yes UNA may have most of the things in house.

      But I believe that the urgent thing for UNA is not integrations to this or that which will not benefit in general to all users, but the Android and IOS apps. 

      • Andrew Boon I know how you feel. I got out of the IT industry in 2008 and have recently returned. When I first started back into Visual studio I was inundated with nuget packages and dependencies and I really felt out of place.

        When I started programming in the 80s we cared about each bit of memory we used. strongly typed variables etc was a thing.  It seems now like programming has turned into a big house of cards. everything is dependent on everything.  to be honest it makes me very nervous as a coder. 

        It's nice to grab someones mod that has a lot of bells and whistles but there is always that little bit of doubt that they won't continue with updates and like you said many don't follow good design practices.

        I'm happy what's going on with UNA. I'm glad to hear that you have a similar mind set of independence and I look forward to whatever is to come.

        Thank you all for your hard work.

        • Integration? I don't see why it is necessary to ride on the back of others, when you have a perfectly good horse right here. UNA is unique and that is what can make it a giant. I know several governments talking about backing out of Google and FaceBook and are looking for an alternative. I see UNA to be that alternative.
          It's not easy to make a difference in the world today - but you have. What you have done matters.
          My only concern is that we are running out of oil in some 40 years and it will be difficult to make oil based products like plastics. Electricity becomes a problem as well, which means less users over all, but a steady growing population.
          worldometers.info

          • Leaving Google and Facebook behind makes perfect sense - at least from a European and GDPR perspective. They cannot be trusted. The time is with UNA. Privacy concerns are on top of people's mind and you cannot login with e.g. facebook and have your privacy preserved.

            Stay independent

            • In fact we have three different government projects reps researching UNA as a platform for their “our own Facebook alternative”. Not so good if it’s just a state controlled social network, but great for various government projects like social initiatives, support networks, immigration assimilation networks, educational and informational hubs. 

              • Correct. We are actually now working on alternative to Google Analytics for UNA and will eventually weed out Google Maps and ReCaptcha. Without social logins that would make UNA google-free. GDPR-compliant tools are the priority for us now. 

                • Denmark is an example of such a government controlled network and it sucks. What I want (and what the Cambodian govt has agreed to), is a network, which is a service to the govt and to the people, but stays within the country borders. It is the bridge between the people and the govt which makes it possible for the two to work together.
                  But I think we think in the same page, you and I. I was approached by Denmark, Germany and France to use their concepts and I rejected them. Countries like Cambodia are easy, because they are building up after social disasters. It leaves room for new approaches and ideas. Simplicity and mutual communication is the key.
                  I made a rough draft in Wordpress some time ago.
                  The Education section gives basic physics, chemistry, biology, etc. It can be expanded as needed
                  The Police section is primarily about letting the people know what the police can do and what they cannot do. This is an attempt to limit corruption.
                  In addition people can report crimes. See most wanted, etc. (Later I will add "Vigilant people project" which is a network where people help fighting organized crime.)
                  The Business Index also have peoples reviews of each business. This is also to limit corruption.
                  The govt section will have polls, where people can like/dislike a suggestion, so that nothing is passed without people have had the opportunity to express their opinion about it. Otherwise it will offer downloads of forms and documents ad general news of changes and how the govt is structured and who is who.
                   
                  The Social Network itself, is more or less just entertainment. But now you should have a feeling of where I am headed.
                  My project is a bridge between the people and the govt, but supported and supervised by the govt. 

                  • Yeah I noticed that Google Maps API is no longer free. OpenGeo? geoext.org (Still not allowed to post links - lol)
                    I think Metropolitan networks like FB makes people loose ability of social connection in real life and feel lost in the mass of meat. I think we need to take a step back and think in village concepts, where the existence of individuals come to matter. People gain a greater sense of connection and purpose in small communities.

                    • We use Matomo (Open Source) instead of Analytics. It is much better, more flexible and we are not feeding googles revenue stream for nothing. 

                      • Pethol - this sound like a fascinating project. I see vast potential in merging social communities with purposeful activities - particularly eductation, but there could be many others, such as project management, and as you suggest, accessing Govt services.
                        This is where we see UNA going in the next 12 months. Using education as an example - imagine Moodle meets Facebook - in a developing country like Cambodia, the school curriculum, or parts of it, could be published and accessed via the social network, we, so if I was a HS student, I could join the Year 9 Group and the activity from my school curriculum, would come into my social feed, along with all the regular social stuff - promoting  participation, interaction & conversation. I could then seamlessly then jump into this area, talk to fellow students, submit assignments, complete quizzes, check results etc...
                        This is just a rough sketch of the idea, but we hope to focus our attention on creating something like this in 2019.

                        • This is very interesting. And I am so lucky that I can apply the concepts so we can see how govt and the people react to it.
                          We have a little war going on in Cambodia, between the Govt and a 'rebel' faction(CNRP). We just found out that the rebel faction has people working in FaceBook and they are disabling targeted profiles. I was deleted from FB just an hour ago. This is one of the reasons a closed national network is important. It minimizes cyber terrorism.

                          The story of Cambodia is complicated and there is a lot of propaganda bullshit out. What I discovered was that organized crime wanted political control of Cambodia and still does a great effort to do so. So they make big waves in the international waters. Lately several depots of weapons and explosives has been uncovered. The 'rebels' are arming up for civil war.
                          What I hope, is that this network bridge, will be part of the solution to stabilize Cambodia and avoid another civil war.
                          At the end - maybe - UNA is what caused world peace...

                          • Thanks Mark, for the link to the server load thing. I'll read it tonight. :)

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