2021-02-11 Meeting notes Email & Landing Page Builder

Date

Feb 11, 2021

Participants

  • @Ruth Cheesley

  • @Alex Hammerschmied

  • @Alan Hartless

  • @Jozsef Keller

  • @Nico Grienauer

Goals

  • Update on current status with regards bug fixing before the 3.3 release

  • Get the plugin to a condition where we can release it (Release Candidate freeze is on Monday)

Discussion topics

Notes

Notes

  • We are exploring other options for getting the outstanding issues resolved as @Alex Hammerschmied 's team are not able to do this in time. @Jozsef Keller is speaking with some Mautic developers in Hungary who might be able to help. Worst case, we can have this go out with the 3.3 Release Candidate and aim to fix the bugs in the week between the Release Candidate and General Availability.

  • We need to update the readme to give information about how to install it for testing - there are broken links and incorrect information on the readme currently

  • We need to write the documentation on how to enable the plugin, how to disable it and go back to the legacy builder (and any steps you have to take like rebuilding assets, clearing cache). @Alex Hammerschmied will update the readme and start the documentation

  • We talked about the 2.x branch and we will not be supporting the 2.x branch. We will put a note in the repo Readme file to say we will be removing that branch when the 3.3 General Availability release is made.

  • We need to test and get merged the PR’s from Alan:
    https://github.com/mautic/mautic/pull/9654
    https://github.com/mautic/plugin-grapesjs-builder/pull/42
    https://github.com/mautic/developer-documentation/pull/185

  • We need to make the PR to include this plugin in Mautic Core. @Alex Hammerschmied is going to look into this on Fri/Sat but may need some guidance on how to do this in Github. @Zdeno Kuzmany would you be able to assist?

  • We talked about existing emails and landing pages which, once you turn on the new builder, will no longer be able to ‘see’ the old templates. We need to test this behaviour. We will have to inform folk that they will need to add into their theme config file a line to be able to work with the themes in the new builder:

    Go to the config.json file of the theme and add "builder": "grapesjsbuilder" to the json object

  • @Alan Hartless found that it looks like when you edit an existing resource, you can make changes and save them, however the wrong template will show in the dropdown because the one that was used originally is not available (assuming they did not add the line in the config file for the template). We need to document this if that is the case and make sure that people are aware, before they start working with the builder. We should also test what happens if you edit with GrapeJS and then go back to the default builder. This will only be relevant until 4.0 but we should still make sure that it does not break the world.

  • We have been asked to support @Jozsef Keller with the release marketing materials for 3.3 - we should make a big splash about this being available for beta testing and make sure that we are up front about anything they need to consider before enabling it (e.g. the point above).

  • @Alex Hammerschmied asked how best to share the changes he has made using the GrapesJS builder in production. We suggested making one PR for each feature or fix, so that we can decide on a case by case basis what is needed.

  • @Alex Hammerschmied asked if we should have the root JS file and the minified files in the repo - currently we have the minified file which makes it difficult to work with when making changes. We think we should for now have both, and PR’s should affect both files, but going forward we should maybe find a way to only have the root file and not commit the minified files as it leaves it open to making mistakes which could break the builder.

  • @Jozsef Keller is going to submit some new themes which will be compatible with the new builder and will be optimised for best practice.

  • @Alex Hammerschmied is making some resources on the new builder but it is in German, however he may be able to create the basic videos and share them with us in English. We can add any fancy visuals if needed post-production.

 

Action items

Update the Readme file @Alex Hammerschmied as soon as possible (Friday at the latest for the testing sprint please!)
Start on documentation - please create a Google Doc in the community Drive and share the link - @Alex Hammerschmied will make a start on this and we can all contribute. Must include what is needed to make templates support this builder If you can write it in markdown it makes it much quicker to port over to the docs.
Test the behaviour with emails and landing pages when GrapesJS builder is enabled and an existing resource is edited and saved. Also test what happens if you edit and save, and then go back to the Legacy builder and open/edit the resource again - @Alan Hartless has done some testing but we need to test it much more widely
Work on resources for the Marketing Team to tell the world about the Email and Landing Page builder and how they can test it. Also include tutorials / reviews etc. Maybe work with other language communities to get them translated into other languages.
@Alex Hammerschmied will push over separate PR’s for each feature or enhancement/fix that they have created while in use in production so that they can be reviewed and merged as appropriate.
@Alex Hammerschmied to submit a PR to include the root files in addition to the minified files
@Jozsef Keller is going to make some PR’s this weekend to add the new templates that will ship with Mautic Core and support the GrapeJS builder.
Test and merge the PR’s
Make a PR to include the builder in the 3.3 release

Decisions

  1. We will add a note on the Readme to say that we are NOT supporting 2.x and we will remove that branch when we launch 3.3 General Availability