Phase 3 Agency Outreach Recap, December 2023  ## Metadata - Author: [[Make WordPress Core]] - Full Title: Phase 3 Agency Outreach Recap, December 2023 - Category: #articles - Document Note: # Title: Insights on Enterprise Usage of WordPress Gutenberg Phase 3 - - - tags: #WordPress #Gutenberg #Enterprise #Collaboration #Revisions Author: Courtney Robertson Source: Personal Blog Reference: [Link](https://example.com/article) date created: 2024-01-21T09:15 - - - ## Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Challenges in Enterprise Adoption 3. The Role of Collaboration Tools 4. Revisions and Future Considerations 5. Conclusion 6. Future Research 7. Implications 8. References ## Index Creation: - Gutenberg - Enterprise - Collaboration - Revisions - WordPress ## 📝 Summary: Courtney Robertson, in her blog post, provides insights into the usage of WordPress Gutenberg Phase 3 in enterprise projects. She discusses the challenges faced in adoption, the role of collaboration tools, and the need for improvements in revisions. The article emphasizes the importance of collaboration beyond WordPress and the potential consequences of collaborative editing. ## 📖 Main Content: ### Introduction: Courtney embarked on a quest to understand how enterprise clients use Gutenberg Phase 3. She invited WordPress agencies specializing in enterprise projects to share their insights through informal show-and-tell sessions. Unfortunately, the response was underwhelming, highlighting the lack of communication channels between Core and enterprise agencies. ### Challenges in Enterprise Adoption: 1. **Slow Adoption**: Enterprise development evolves at a slow pace, with agencies and clients comfortable with Gutenberg Phase 1 blocks. 2. **Resistance to Change**: Agencies tend to stick with familiar models despite Phase 2 offering better customization options. 3. **Tech Stack Stability**: Enterprises revisit their tech stack every few years, often sticking to pre-Gutenberg workflows due to commercial incentives. ### The Role of Collaboration Tools: 1. **Enterprise Workflow**: Enterprise employees rely heavily on office suites, collaboration platforms, and industry-specific tools, making it challenging for WordPress to integrate. 2. **Pre-WordPress Collaboration**: Collaboration often occurs before content reaches WordPress, resulting in limited flexibility but efficient results. ### Revisions and Future Considerations: 1. **Outdated Revisions**: The current Revisions system is inadequate for Gutenberg Phase 3, with a need for block-compatible comparison. 2. **Attribution Challenges**: Collaborative editing might pose challenges in maintaining individual attribution, vital in regulated industries. ### Conclusion: Courtney concludes that Core lacks communication channels with enterprise agencies, and collaboration often occurs outside of WordPress. Collaborating across different post components is a priority. She also cautions about potential unintended consequences of collaborative editing. ## 🗒️ Notes: - Enterprise clients prefer familiar Gutenberg Phase 1 blocks. - Collaboration tools like Google Docs dominate enterprise workflows. - Pre-WordPress collaboration limits user flexibility but ensures consistent results. - The Revisions system needs an update for compatibility with Phase 3. - Maintaining attribution in collaborative editing is a concern. ## 📖 References: - [Press Gazette, 2023](https://example.com/press-gazette-2023) - [@annezazu’s earlier findings](https://example.com/annezazu-findings) - [@leogermani's GitHub discussion thread](https://example.com/leogermani-discussion) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. **Original**: Collaboration will inevitably happen outside WordPress. - *Paraphrase*: Collaboration is bound to occur beyond the WordPress platform. 2. **Original**: Beware of unintended consequences – for example, collaborative editing breaking our current Revisions model. - *Paraphrase*: We should be cautious about unintended outcomes, such as collaborative editing disrupting our existing Revisions system. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: ### 📊 Methodology: To explore the implications of collaborative editing and improve communication with enterprise agencies, future research could employ the following methodologies: - Conduct surveys and interviews with enterprise agencies to understand their collaboration preferences. - Analyze the effectiveness of integrating external collaboration tools into WordPress workflows. - Examine the impact of collaborative editing on attribution and its relevance in regulated industries. ### 💡 Implications: Future research in this area could advance knowledge by shedding light on effective collaboration strategies in enterprise WordPress projects. This knowledge could influence practice by guiding the development of collaboration tools within WordPress. Additionally, it could inform policy decisions related to content creation and collaboration in regulated industries. ### 🔮 Future Research: Potential areas for future research include: - Investigating strategies to improve communication channels between Core and enterprise agencies. - Exploring the integration of collaborative editing features within the WordPress platform. - Studying the impact of collaborative editing on attribution and its implications for content quality and regulation compliance. ### ❓ Implications: Future research in this area could have significant implications for improving collaboration in enterprise WordPress projects. It may lead to more efficient workflows, better user experiences, and enhanced content quality. Additionally, it could address the challenges of maintaining attribution in collaborative editing scenarios. ### ✅ Logical validity: The article presents a logical analysis of the challenges faced in enterprise adoption of Gutenberg Phase 3. It highlights the lack of communication channels and the need for collaboration tools. The arguments are logically coherent, and no fallacies are identified. The tone of the article is informative and objective. ## Conclusion: Courtney's article provides valuable insights into the enterprise usage of Gutenberg Phase 3 in WordPress. It highlights the challenges, the role of collaboration tools, and the need for revisions. The article calls for improved communication channels and warns of potential consequences in collaborative editing. Future research in this area holds promise for enhancing enterprise WordPress projects. - Summary: Phase 3 of Gutenberg, the WordPress block editor, focused on collaboration, revisions, and workflow for enterprise users. To gain insight into enterprise clients' requirements and how agencies address them, informal show-and-tell sessions were organized, but the turnout was disappointing. The observations from the sessions revealed that agencies and their clients are comfortable with blocks but have not fully embraced Phase 2-style site customization. Collaboration tends to happen outside of WordPress, using tools already integrated into the company-wide workflow. Real-time content collaboration and revisions need further improvement. The document concludes with a call for suggestions on ways to improve uptake for enterprise agencies. - URL: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/08/phase-3-agency-outreach-recap-december-2023/ Phase 3’s focus on collaboration, revisions and workflow takes Gutenberg further into enterprise territory. Inspired by [@annezazu](https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/)’s earlier outreach exercise, and following up on [my own proposal](https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/10/23/summary-and-insights-of-phase-3-related-conversations/#comment-45779), I took the opportunity of availability during December 2023 to reach out to WordPress agencies specialising in enterprise projects, inviting them to a series of informal show-and-tell sessions. The aim was to gain an insight into enterprise clients’ requirements, and how agencies currently address them. Sessions were offered on a semi-confidential ‘[Chatham House Rule](https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/chatham-house-rule)’ basis, to avoid any concerns around client confidentiality; but I committed to publishing a summary of what we saw and learned. #### Take-up was disappointing. Invites were sent via several different outreach channels, chosen primarily based on the personal connections of the people involved: WordPress VIP’s partner network, the Enterprise channel in Core Slack, and the News Nerdery community. This ought to have touched around 100 enterprise-centric agencies. I scheduled 9 one-hour sessions over a 10-day period, at times to suit all timezones. There was capacity for around 40 agencies to participate; but in the end, fewer than 5 agencies signed up. A few others indicated an interest, but did not get round to signing up. There are many possible explanations. Perhaps December was simply poor timing. Our call for presentations was kept deliberately open and vague; perhaps it should have been more specific. Informal walkthroughs were requested, to minimise the burden of planning and preparation, but perhaps folks would have been more comfortable giving formal presentations. What is clear is that Core currently lacks warm and clear communication channels with the agency ecosystem – at a time when such channels would be particularly useful for both parties. It also follows that the following observations are based on a smaller snapshot of enterprise usage than was hoped for. #### Enterprise development practice moves slowly. Agencies and their clients now seem comfortable with blocks, as delivered in Phase 1: this is largely backed up by data in the recent [SOEWP survey](https://soewp.com). But we saw no examples yet of Phase 2-style ‘site customisation’: agencies are still sticking with familiar models based on site metadata and Settings pages, even when Phase 2 functionality would probably deliver a better outcome. An enterprise may only revisit its tech stack every 3 or 4 years, with no reason to fix what isn’t broken. Agencies are probably working on multiple enterprise contracts simultaneously, theoretically giving them more opportunities to embrace new possibilities; but with a decade of pre-Gutenberg ‘muscle memory’, they have a commercial incentive to stick with what they know until proven otherwise. #### Collaboration will inevitably happen outside WordPress. Enterprise employees spend their entire day in office suites like Google Docs or Microsoft 365; social media planning solutions; general collaboration platforms like Jira or Asana; industry specific tools like Desk-Net for newsrooms; technical platforms like GitHub. If businesses already have these tools, integrated into their company-wide workflow, for tasks beyond website management, it’s a bigger challenge for WordPress to force its way into the picture. Collaboration also happens before WordPress arrives on the scene, in the definition of a ‘house style’, or page templates, which are then hard-coded into the WordPress workflow. Web content creators get limited flexibility, or perhaps none at all, simply filling in boxes. This may seem like the antithesis of user empowerment. But: * The business gets predictable, consistent results, always on-brand, delivered efficiently. * Employees’ main concern is to get the job done quickly, and move on to their next task. * Agencies can tailor UI and UX to very specific outcomes, minimising the support burden. #### Real-time content collaboration is not a current user priority. We saw no ‘cowpaths to be paved’ when it comes to real-time collaboration on normal content. The closest we have come has been from an agency working with large news organisations: they described multiple people swarming on a single piece of content, but working on different aspects of it. There would only be one author writing in ‘the content area’: but they would be supported by a picture editor, an SEO manager, a headline manager, a ‘homepage manager’ deciding where it will appear. (This is broadly in line with [@annezazu](https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/)’s earlier findings.) But some content types are, by definition, real-time and multi-author. One agency brought up the example of ‘live blogs’. If a news site runs ‘live blogs’, typically for major ‘breaking news’ events or sports coverage, these will usually be among their most popular articles of the day. ([Source: Press Gazette, 2023.](https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-journalism/live-blogs-bbc-guardian-sky-news/)) Publishers dislike ‘live blog’ solutions embedded from third-party platforms, which do not deliver search-engine benefits. We saw one custom WP-based solution running in the back end, which suffered from the current inability to have multiple authors on the same edit screen. We also know of front-end based, Gutenberg-compatible liveblogs which allow for multiple authors and more creative content entry methods. We certainly heard a desire for multiple users to collaborate around a single content item. But ‘Google Docs in the editor component’ is not the only possible meaning of collaborative creation… and may not even be the main one. #### Revisions need work. The current implementation of Revisions predates blocks, and is barely usable given the amount of code now held in post\_content. One agency demonstrated work they have done for a major European newspaper, refined over several years, which offers block-compatible WYSIWYG comparison, with red and green highlighting of changes. They are open to the idea of sharing their code with Core; and are investigating how this might happen. It was noted that collaborative editing may have unintended consequences for the current Revisions model. Right now, when only one user can edit and save at any one time, we know exactly who made each change, and when. This can be important for corporations in regulated industries. We lose that simple attribution to an individual, if multiple users are editing simultaneously. (Also noted in [@leogermani](https://profiles.wordpress.org/leogermani/)‘s [GitHub discussion thread](https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/discussions/56954).) #### In conclusion * Core currently lacks channels for communicating and engaging with the agency ecosystem. * Collaboration on aspects of the website often happens away from the website, and involves people who never touch the website. * WordPress cannot realistically be the sole collaboration space for many enterprises and publishers, even as relates to a WordPress-based publishing workflow. * The ability to collaborate across different components of a post is currently a greater priority than collaborating within the post\_content itself. * Beware of unintended consequences – for example, collaborative editing breaking our current Revisions model. #### Where next? Outside of immediate steps I can take, like supporting the agency mentioned to package its work on revisions for Core or arranging future sessions with agencies who expressed interest, we wanted to open the floor to hear from others around ways to improve uptake for enterprise agencies. * What do you think would help? * What should we try next to spark these conversations and bring feedback into this next phase? *My thanks to* [@annezazu](https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/) *and various members of the Core team for participating in this initiative; and to enterprise agency Big Bite for sponsoring my time in organising and running these sessions.*, Phase 3 Agency Outreach Recap, December 2023, Make WordPress Core, 01hkq9tp8xky4hrdwa9h9acgzf.