Video tips

[adrianthedev]

Hey everyone.

We were repeatedly asked to create videos of how to do something with Avo.
We'd love to do that more and go into it a little bit in depth, so please tell us what kind of content you would like to see.

Please make these examples as concrete as possible so we don't go and wonder off into the wrong direction.

From some initial conversations, we found these as nice to have:

• multi-tenancy
• role-based authorization
• import and export records; from CSV and JSON; and maybe async...
• number formatting according to country
• calendar formatting according to country

[adrianthedev]

The first one will be on multi-tenancy.

[Bergrebell]

For the role-based authorization - I think it would be great to see how Avo handles cases that are a little more complex than the normal User / Moderator / Admin case.

For example what can you do if one of the User-roles has a lot of specific attributes? There are a lot of articles on the web on that topic but (without a hint of Adrian) I would have gone into the completely wrong direction (STI or multiple user-models with devise).

[Bergrebell]

Another topic that interests me is managing money and currencies. This is likely a common challenge for many people, and it's an area where we could explore some useful features of Avo, such as creating a custom field for money with currency. We could also design a custom page to display a basic double-entry accounting table. Additionally, we might look into integrating the money-gem or demonstrating how to present appealing graphs on a dashboard.

[Bergrebell]

Another request I've encountered several times involves creating a table on a dashboard, such as a 'List of Top 10 Managers.' I believe it's feasible to integrate this with avo-components using field wrappers. However, the documentation regarding this process is somewhat unclear. For instance, it doesn't thoroughly explain how to construct a table (without sorting etc.) while still utilizing the same components as the rest of Avo.

[sedubois]

I would love to see a demonstration of plugging Avo to start managing content in an existing e-learning app. I mean an app with courses having audios, videos, articles, etc that users are meant to listen/watch/read one by one and where their progress might be tracked; there might be variable amounts of nesting in the content; each content may also belong to various collections/tags/topics to be discoverable in several ways.

• multi-language; also allow translating rich text; allow to localize a whole content or only some attributes (e.g. title needs to be translated, but poster image is ideally the same accross all locales)
• track changes (what was changed by whom and when); also track changes to translated attributes and/or rich text; allow to view version history; allow to roll back to specific version
• role-based authorization (need different access levels to edit content, to change publishing status, to view version history, etc)
• allow to preview how content will render in the real site before making the changes public (visitors see the latest published version while editors can also render specific older or newer versions in the site)
• managing Active Storage assets (e.g. poster images) with a media gallery
• SEO title, description, image, URL, etc (all localized)
• add all kinds of AI tools such as auto-generating new translations, summarize the article text, generate text using prompt

I could go on by making the feature wishlist longer but the above is a good start!

I would like the video to demonstrate how to add Avo as a content admin interface to a pre-existing Rails app which already has data models/controllers/views in place. This would differentiate it from other content management systems such as Spina (or Maglev), which require a specific data modelling and even database (Spina seems to require Postgresql), meaning that they require significant migration when added into existing apps.

[adrianthedev]

I know we spoke a little bit about these features, but I wanted to note them down and address them one by one.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see you'd lean more towards Avo being a more integrated solution like Spina, rather than having too much plug-and-play support and having to build them yourself.

a demonstration of plugging Avo to start managing content in an existing e-learning app

I would need the app populated with content to be able to do that.

You can see me add it to rubyandrails.info. That's an already populated app.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkaKArBlGqY

multi-language

We have a recipe here that enables multi-lingual support.
We'll add native support for that at some point. #1323

but poster image is ideally the same accross all locales

If you add the poster image as a file that won't change. If you need it inside trix, then, that's a little bit trickier.

track changes with translated attributes

We have a PR open. I know you sent some feedback here as well.
#1328

role-based authorization

We have a customer that uses rolify for that. We might be able to do a video with that.

managing Active Storage assets (e.g. poster images) with a media gallery

That's a feature in itself. A very useful one nonetheless.

SEO title, description, image, URL, etc (all localized)

These can be achieved with attributes on the models.

add all kinds of AI tools such as auto-generating new translations, summarize the article text, generate text using prompt

The reason I made this post was to get some concrete examples so I know what developers need more of; "all kinds" is very broad 😅. Give me something more concrete and of value and I'll do it!

[sedubois]

I see you'd lean more towards Avo being a more integrated solution like Spina, rather than having too much plug-and-play support and having to build them yourself.

Overall I actually prefer plug and play to avoid being locked in one system. I see the dependence on a very specific data modelling or database type as an obstacle, so I prefer Avo's approach in this regard. Ideally Avo could be added to any modern Rails/Hotwire app. At the same time it is missing essential content management features such as localization or media gallery.

I would need the app populated with content to be able to do that.

I've been using hierarchies with closure tables for infinite depth and multiple parents, but perhaps that's too complex (cumbersome?) and would distract from Avo's actual features. It would be interesting however to see examples of the standard Rails modelling such as HABTM, has many through, STI, delegated types. Here is an incomplete demo idea to start.

# Schema: contents[ id, instructor_id, contentable_type, contentable_id ]
class Content < ApplicationRecord
  extend Mobility
  translates :title
  belongs_to :instructor
  delegated_type :contentable, types: %w[ Course AudioSession Article ]
end

module Contentable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    has_one :content, as: :contentable, touch: true
  end
end

class Course < ApplicationRecord
  include Contentable
  translates :description, backend: :action_text # if using mobility-actiontext gem 
end

class AudioSession < ApplicationRecord
  include Contentable
  # instead of hard-coding an audio URL, how to attach an ActiveStorage blob which differs for each locale?
  translates :audio_url
  translates :duration
end

class Article < ApplicationRecord
  include Contentable
  translates :body, backend: :action_text # if using mobility-actiontext gem
end

One reason it might be interesting to use a delegated type is to e.g. let users mark various contents as favorites, or to track their completion of each content, or to add tags or notes to the various contents, and list all of that together on the same page in a single query.

To keep in mind:

• localization (Mobility or other) of plain text, rich text, blobs (e.g. audio file)
• reposition contents within a collection using drag and drop, "move first", "move last"
• pagination
• version tracking of plain text, rich text, blobs, etc

You can see me add it to rubyandrails.info.

Thanks for the helpful video.

add all kinds of AI tools such as auto-generating new translations, summarize the article text, generate text using prompt

The reason I made this post was to get some concrete examples so I know what developers need more of; "all kinds" is very broad 😅. Give me something more concrete and of value and I'll do it!

For example:

• after preparing an article in one language, it would be helpful to have an easy way to publish it in another language: it should be possible to (re-)generate all text fields by machine translation (while allowing manual editing too)
• allow creating text through AI based on a free prompt, or "make this text under X characters", or "use a more familar tone", or "correct the spelling and grammar mistakes"
• some prompts could be built-in to be usable with one click
• make recently used prompts available for reuse

I think if Avo can demonstrate an easy integration with AI tools, it might help a lot with marketing as well. It could be presented and demonstrated in blog posts, videos, the website etc, which would be good for SEO.

[Paul-Bob]

I notice some confusion around panels and main panels and how avo computes them (related issue #2435).

Would be great to explain and show how it happens and explain some of the "behind the scenes".

[sedubois]

I would like to see a demo of composing and sending simple email newsletters from a Rails web app, with the email being composed through an Avo GUI. Something that allows regular text, bold/italics styling, headers, inline images, e.g. perhaps with Trix. Provide a basic preview. Choose recipients. Then send it using Action Mailer (MailPace, ...). Bonus points to support embedding user-specific info such as their name, email address, etc in the body of the email, and localising the email based on each user's language.

Alternatives known to me are to first define the email template in code (ERB view); or to compose and send an email from any email editor to the web app using Action Mailbox, where it would then get re-sent to app recipients; or to integrate a third-party tool like SendGrid/Mandrill. But I would be interested in a simple GUI solution using just Rails and Avo.

[sedubois]

I would love to see videos / documentation of Avo used as a CMS alongside a modern website builder. For instance:

• the open-source Webstudio when the CMS integration becomes available in the pro version
• Webflow if possible

NB: these are not Ruby/Rails but they could hopefully integrate through an API. Bonus points would be to be able to put such pages alongside other standard Rails in the same domain.

Secondly there could also be a video showcasing Maglev + Avo, see demo integration with Avo.
NB: I didn't progress with maglev because of two issues.
NB2: I don't see Maglev as a full alternative to Webstudio/Webflow because the actual code for the different "sections" still needs to be written by hand in advance, but it is still a great improvement in the Rails ecosystem to enable non-coders to edit landing pages, blog posts, etc.

The Rails ecosystem is great to build custom full-stack apps through code but I don't know many options enabling non-coders and designers to do visual building (a.k.a "no code", "low code"). I would love to see more material bridging that gap.

As with the trending topic of generative AI, if Avo could publish materials on how to integrate with solutions in the domain of no code / low code and front-end design, it may help with its SEO/marketing. Avo could even perhaps demonstrate this itself by using such a website builder for the avohq.io landing pages.

[coatezy]

I was wondering if there were any videos or guides created for delegated types in the end, @Paul-Bob?

[coatezy]

I was wondering if there were any videos or guides created for delegated types in the end, @Paul-Bob?

I just spotted issue #3162 which would indicate it is not currently supported?

I'd be happy to support with building this feature.

[Paul-Bob]

I was wondering if there were any videos or guides created for delegated types in the end, @Paul-Bob?

There are none yet.

I just spotted issue #3162 which would indicate it is not currently supported?

Yes, It's not natively supported yet.

I'd be happy to support with building this feature.

Thank you, that's awesome! We'll get in touch.

[adrianthedev]

Hey @coatezy.
That's awesome! Thanks for that.
I couldn't find your email. Can you please send me an email at [email protected]?