Hello!
This is a discussion thread for the proposed FEP-3264: Federated Work Coordination.
Please use this thread to discuss the proposed FEP and any potential problems
or improvements that can be addressed.
Summary
This document describes an implementation of project planning and work coordination based on ActivityPub protocol and Valueflows vocabulary. It includes planning what people want to do, and (optionally) recording what is done.
This sounds really interesting. Would this be something that is implemented in a project management system, or is there some other use case?
CC’ing @lynnfoster regarding your question, the FEP’s author.
This could definitely be used for project management. Really anything where people come together to coordinate their work. Some examples: manufacturing, regional supply chain networks, fab labs, providing services, organizing events, community gardens…
Possibly useful Valueflows link, although more broad than this FEP.
Thank you. I built a personal information management (PIM) software / project management software for my own use and plan on adapting it to the fediverse so that it can federate.
Looks like there is also FEP-c5a1 To Do Lists which work with FEP-3264.
Looks very interesting. It appears I will have to learn a new vocabulary. I assume “commitment” means a task. I’ll have to read the specs to be sure. But this is very useful. Thank you again.
Hi @WisTex , a number of us would love to see something like that in the fediverse! These FEPs are part of a desire to see federated economic activity added on top of the existing social activity, using the Valueflows vocabulary to extend ActivityPub/ActivityStreams. Economic in the broadest sense.
Which FEP you use depends on how involved your project management software is. I’m guessing this is the best one. The To Do Lists FEP is basically just a list of tasks, which don’t necessarily connect in the ways you would see in a gantt chart or whatever PM visual you prefer. But if separate tasks are what you need, then maybe the to-do’s are enough. You can mix and match of course, it’s all from the same vocabulary. Not sure about the “personal information” part, so can’t comment on that.
Yes, “commitment” is a task. When you do the task, it is an “economic event” that fulfills the commitment.
This FEP supports processes which can be loosely connected through economic resources or types of resources (goods or services or currencies or knowledge, etc.) It is an input-process-output model where if the result of an output is the same as what the input flow wants, then they are connected. Here’s probably the simplest explanation of the base model: Core Concepts - Valueflows. Here is a more fun story that covers all of the core Valueflows model: https://www.valueflo.ws/assets/ValueFlows-Story.pdf. It is more about making something (apple pies), but the same thought process works for things you might do in coordinating a project.
P.S. You would be the first to try out this FEP afaik, although there is working software using Valueflows outside the fediverse. So you would be contributing too, wanted to warn you ahead of time. 
I’m happy to spend time to help you figure out how the FEP maps to your current data model if you like. And also to help if you run into something that doesn’t seem to work right.
The challenge is that neither FEP really covers everything we are looking for. The TO DO one is too simple, and the ValueFlows one is overkill for typical use cases I have in mind, which, to be fair, is consistent with most task management systems out there. Either too complex or too simple. That is one of the main reasons I created my own system.
Since I am not building an enterprise project management system, things related to a supply chain aren’t tracked. In our case, the only resources a person typically has are things like conference rooms and vendors. If they are collaborating on a project, they might add collaborators and independent contractors as a possible resource. Or they may want to track payments to a specific vendor, like their electric company or landlord. If they delegate tasks to other people, information like this has to be transferred over. based on permission levels.
But I can see how this would be useful, and want to make my system as compatible with others as possible. For example, putting the URL to the vendor’s home page in a field would be an easy way to specify an outside vendor in a manner that does not have to be looked up. The goal would be to eliminate the need for looking up data in a central database. So Home Depot would be represented by https://homedepot.com for example. We don’t have to tell someone else’s system what https://homedepot.com means since it is self-evident. And we don’t really care where Home Depot sourced their materials.
This FEP is making me rethink how we handle tasks however and I would love to collaborate to see how we can make our systems compatible in communications.
Perhaps we should create a new thread that talks about it, if you are interested.
Very sorry, missed this when you posted it. I’d be very happy to work through details on your “in between” use case. There’s actually no magic delineation between those 2 FEPs, we could see what we could figure out together that works best for you.
Feel free to start a new thread if you think that would be better, and I’ll join you there. (I don’t have an opinion, either is fine with me.)