CloudServices/Roadmaps/Sync/Client/Sequence

Summary

This wiki is meant to capture the expanded sequence of work for the 2011 Sync Client Roadmap. It will also serve as a way to see what is in progress or available.

Definitions

• Road map: A product theme or set of themes, broken down into units of work that are shippable. Product progress is tracked against the road map.
• Road map item: a single item that be delivered independently. It can have dependencies. The work is significant enough to warrant several days (3+ days) or weeks. Due to rapid release train model, may want to keep roadmap items to a max of a few weeks of work (< 6weeks).
• Feature: one or more road map items that have a user experience impact, most commonly they are user visible. For more information on what a feature is go here.
• Project: like a feature, but not user-facing. (Jen says, "perhaps call this type of work "Enhancement")
• Work item: a task within a road map item
• Feature page: is where a feature is defined, spec'ed, staffed, and tracked. Each feature or project should have a feature page associated with it.

Sequence

This table has all the current road map items for Sync. The status field should be filled "Untriaged" for new items, "Not started", "In Progress", "Blocked", and "Completed". The owner can be TBD if no has claimed it.

Roadmap Year	Type	Roadmap Item	Owner	Status
2011	Feature	Add-on EOL - Phase 1	Jennifer	Completed
2011	Feature	Death to Unknown Error	Marina	Completed
2011	Feature	Sync Setup Improvements	Ally, Philipp
2011	Project	Sync Mobile Client Port to Java	TBD
2011	Feature	Automatic sync error reporting	Chenxia	In Progress
2011	Feature	Push to device	Greg	In Progress
2011	Feature	Favicon Sync	rnewman	In Progress
2011	Feature	Add-on Sync	Greg	In Progress
2011	Project	TPS: Failure handling & recovery	Greg	Not Started
2011	Project	Provide an async engine API (repository, synchronizer)	Philipp and Richard	In Progress
2011	Project	Port the tabs engine to async APIs	TBD	Not Started
2011	Project	Port the clients engine to async APIs	TBD	Not Started
2011	Project	Port the prefs engine to async APIs	TBD	Not Started
2011	Project	Port the bookmarks engine to async APIs	TBD	Not Started
2011	Project	Port the passwords engine to async APIs	TBD	Not Started
2011	Project	Port the forms engine to async APIs	TBD	Not Started
2011	Project	Port the history engine to async APIs	TBD	Not Started
2011	Project	TPS: Rudimentary performance instrumentation	Greg	Not Started
TBD	Feature	Site-specific prefs Sync	TBD	Not Started
TBD	Feature	Search Engine Sync	TBD	Not Started
TBD	Feature	Client Certificate Sync	TBD	Not Started
2011	Feature	Local Storage Sync	TBD	Not Started
TBD	Project	TPS: Automatic Profiling of Sync	TBD	Not Started

Inbox

This is a place to put any Sync ideas. We'll review these periodically.

Type	Item	Requestor	Comments
Feature	Key Escrow	Various groups	10/18: Jen will go speak to the other product managers interested (Identity, Pancake, etc) to understand their drivers and time lines. Ibai will also help identify user issues with this and what possible flow might look.
Feature	Syncing Prefs across apps. bug 652631	Security: Sid	10/18: Pr-requisite is to understand how prefs are going to be handled in Fennec
Feature	App Tabs Syncing bug 651817	Security: From Bugzilla	10/18: Jennifer with circle back with FF PM team
Project	New Sync Protocol version	Everyone	Long backlog of changes requested for the HTTP protocol. Services/Sync/Protocol_2.0.
Feature	Device Management Dashboard bug 694272 and bug 694276	SUMO
Feature	Add last Sync'ed message to the error messages	SUMO	Users really dislike the errors. It would be good to at least put last time sync'ed so the user knows how old their current data is. Let's look at this after "Death to Unknown Error" code is in GA. Then we can measure if the complaints of error bar have gone done enough that we don't have to do any more.
Feature	Get rid of Sync Now in tool bar, and put "Last Synced" time in there.	SUMO	Users really dislike the errors. It would be good to at least put last time sync'ed so the user knows how old their current data is.
Feature	Error message that points to FAQ on error on SUMO	SUMO	If we can identify all the errors some how then we could point the users to the information that can help them better understand what is going on. And if they can solve their own problem even better!
Feature	Firefox Home maintenance	Several folks	SUMO reports there are more inquiries on this every week.
Feature	Sync Sub-Set of Bookmarks	SUMO	Provide the option to Sync just a group of bookmarks. This can be done in different ways (only sync bookmarks with certain label or in certain folder or with a certain parameter changed to positive) but the goal is to simply allow users not to sync all their bookmarks but just a set of their collection.
Feature	Automatic reset-prompted backup	atoll, rnewman	Firefox should be capable of writing a profile backup to the Downloads directory, and ask the user to approve such a backup a couple times a year, and as part of doing various deadly Sync Reset options. "Why is this important?" clickable to SUMO. I know everybody will whinge to infinity about how backups are hard, but until we can make it trivially simple to do this, it's never going to happen, and users are going to continue to lose their data. Users sure aren't willing to do the hard work. Maybe we are.