Roadmap

[RLKRo]

RoadMap

DFF Improvements

Note 1: Most of these are documentation related. I feel like that is the framework's
weakest part. It seems that most of the feedback we're getting includes something
about documentation.

Note 2: Estimated Time to Completion and Review times both
assume that not all of the time is spent on the task.

Tags:

• D: Documentation
• G: General
• F: Feature

[D] Getting Started / README improvement

Our doc system is confusing (with tutorials, user guides, examples) and we need to have
an explanation about these parts of documentation in Getting Started / README.

• ETC: 2 days
• Review: 1 week

[D] Context User Guide

Context is one of the most fundamental parts of DFF and yet the most untouched one in docs.
There isn't even a tutorial about it.

The user guide should include a description of all fields, their caveats, when they are modified, e.t.c.

• ETC: 1 week
• Review: 2 weeks

[D] Tutorial Improvements

15 out of 48 tutorials have one or less markdown cell in them.

E.g. this one.

We are basically dumping a lot of code most of which is not relevant to the topic of the tutorial
without any explanation (not even links to API ref).

Even defined functions are not documented.

• ETC: 1 week
• Review: 2 weeks

[G] Feedback Organization

We have some feedback regarding our documentation and features but it is scattered across
trello, spreadsheets, telegram. That makes it difficult to gather what users want.

[D] User Guide about Side Features

Note: this user guide could be merged with the next one as a 
"Best Practices" user guide.

We have user guides about features provided by the framework but there are so many
ways to improve the bot written with the help of our framework by using side features.

For example, leveraging rabbitmq to improve model performance.

• Research best practices.

• Create a user guide about said features.

  • Optionally: with comparisons before/after.

• Create a demo using said features.

• ETC: 3 weeks

• Review: 6 weeks

[D] User Guide about DFF Projects

Note: this user guide could be merged with the previous one as a 
"Best Practices" user guide.

Need to have a step-by-step user guide about creating a bot using the framework and
a demo project.

It should touch upon

1. Script design (how to divide a script into flows)
2. Models (caching, storing and processing data (for few shot models))
3. Using Docker
4. Bot directory structure
5. Load-/Testing
6. Use stats, briefly mention them but refer to stats tutorial
7. Choosing DB
8. Setting up venv
9. Updating script in production

• ETC: 3 weeks
• Review: 6 weeks

[F] Integrations with Different Services

Needs more research. And more users to gather what they're interested in.

Time Frame

Reference

Time for review process:

• Stats Stats with Opentelemetry #141 - ~ 2500 lines - 6 weeks
• Telegram Merge telegram into main repository #13 - 2500 lines - 8 weeks
• Docs update Docs/update #69 - 500 lines - 3 weeks
• User Guide User guides #177 - 500 lines - 1 week

2 Months

Mostly done (need to review/fix):

• Update dashboard Fix/dashboard #227 (~ 1 week)
• Guide update Feat/update guide #209 (~ 1 week)
• Messenger Interface tutorial fix custom messenger interface #206 (~ 1 week)
• Draw IO draw.io build make target added #205 (~ 2 weeks) (low priority)
• Poetry Feat/build with poetry #132 (~ 3 weeks) (low priority)

Plans:

• [D] Getting Started / README improvement (~ 1 week)
• [D] Context User Guide (~ 3 weeks)
• [D] Tutorial Improvements (~ 3 weeks)
• [G] Feedback Organization (Me, probably, ~ 1 week)

6 Months

• Partial context updates Partial context updates #93 (~ 8 weeks)
• Slots Merge slots #36 (~ 8 weeks)
• Extended Conditions Merge extended_conditions into main repository #35 (~ 12 weeks)
• [D] User Guide about Side Features (~ 10 weeks) + Message Queue Class (~ 5 weeks)
• [D] User Guide about DFF Projects (~ 10 weeks)

1 Year

• Parser feat: parser #59
• Script Viewer Merge script viewer #42

Never :(

• Matrix Integration
• mypy Add mypy checks #5
• High Quality Parser
• Telegram testing

[RLKRo]

Feedback Notes

This list of tasks is composed after analyzing received feedback. They are currently not in the "Time Frame" as they are not of higher priority.

[D] Tips & Tricks tutorials

Currently, most of our tutorials only showcase specific functionality of framework
(e.g. how to use postgres or pre-response functions).
We should also create tutorials that give some tips on using the framework:

• A tutorial on having a separate fallback node for every flow (2 requests for this tutorial).

[D] User-defined functions user guide

We need to have a user guide about using custom functions with the bot.

The information should include:

• All possible function signatures (including *args,**kwargs)
• Its purpose
• When the function is supposed to be called (including validation stage)
• What happens when the function raises an exception or returns garbage (or accepts invalid number of arguments)

Such functions include:

• Actor handlers
• pre_transitions_processing
• condition
• label
• pre_response_processing
• response
• extra_handler (before & after)
• Service handler
• Service start condition (would be nice to mention its usage with pipeline and actor services (for example forbid using it with them))
  (Also, I noticed that start condition is checked for the pipeline service group but not for actor)
• Condition handler (and also question its necessity)
• Stats extractors
• Maybe PipelineRunnerFunction?

[D] Update demos

When updating FAQ guide:

• Change FAQ to questions about DFF / deeppavlov
• merge two versions (tg and web) into one with a single script and diff interfaces (and potentially running at the same time)

[D] Update contributing.md

• Update docker list
• Investigate the issue with host.docker.internal and add information if necessary
• Mention common issues with docker and how to fix them (but only in case they generate hard to understand exceptions):
  • port already in use
  • .env_file or dff/utils/otel/ not found
• Add instructions on project setup (git clone, mention checkout, venv + pip install .[...] vs. make venv)

Tasks with little description

These are some of the notes I gathered while working on feedback. They are not all directly requested by users.

High Priority

• Mention LOCAL in GLOBAL tutorial.

• 2_conditions: "See tutorial 1 of pipeline (pipeline/1_basics) to learn more about Actor." -- not relevant

• Recommendations about using stats with multiple bots (perhaps about how to edit dashboard yaml config to add a dashboard for a new bot)

• Add telegram testing

Mid Priority

• Incomplete Any -> Message transition.
  Some doc still says that anything is accepted as user requests.

  E.g. PipelineRunnerFunction.

• Maybe move all utils to one section in API ref?

• Rename user guides/tutorials/examples to guides/examples/projects ?? -- needs discussion

• Telegram messenger interface ignores timeout parameter

• Research most common exceptions (e.g. context storage errors) & process them (by returning a clear error message)

• Needs more research: Add a decorator that specifies how pipeline should handle exceptions raised by the function

• Needs more research: Add a single function responsible for calling user defined functions (modify wrap_sync_function_in_async)

Low Priority

• Add parse_mode to Message (plain text/html/md) -- this feature would be useful for most interfaces

• Remove empty subpackages (e.g. dff.scripts.extras.conditions)

• Pull package versions for InstallationCell pattern in tutorials from setup.py (pyproject.toml)

[RLKRo]

Roadmap v2

2 Months

• Poetry Feat/build with poetry #132 (1 week)
• Parser feat: parser #59 (8 weeks) -- high priority
• Update API Update API #253 (4 weeks)
• Slots Merge slots #36 (6 weeks)
• Demo projects in main repo && user guides Examples merged into main repo #286 (6 weeks)
• [D] User Guide about Side Features + Message Queue Class (review after 2 months, probably)

6 Months

• Release v1.0
• Partial Context Updates Partial context updates #93 (8 weeks)
• Extended Conditions Merge extended_conditions into main repository #35 (12 weeks)
• Multidoc -- documentation versioning

1 Year

• Script Viewer Merge script viewer #42 (?? -- superseded by chatterpillar)