[FR] Better Collaboration

[gthbusrr]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Right now, only Trips can be shared but Places (POI) cannot. When I create a bunch of places and associate it to the trip, the collaborator cannot see any detail and/or edit the place. This makes collaboration impossible.

(We cannot see details of places in the trip view page either)

Describe the solution you'd like

1. Adding a user a collaborator in a trip should also share the places
   a. Option to share as "view only", "view and edit" or "co-owner" will be perfect
   b. a caveat is that a collaborator might lose access to a place if he accidentally disassociate the place from the trip.
2. Shared places should be visible in the map view (places view) as well.
3. Ability to share places without associating with the trip will be perfect
4. Categories should also be shared (Possibly co-owner of a category)
   a. Another solution is that Admin (first user) should be able to set categories as global.

Additional context

No response

[itskovacs]

Hi @gthbusrr 👋,

Indeed, and this is by design, because a Place is owned by a User and only him can edit it. There is as well no View Place details yet, this is workable, just not the edit bit.

And to add context to your proposed solutions:

• a Place is owned by a User, not by a Trip, so the Place listing is not made from the Trip but from its user, scope issue here. The user can however individually associate their Place to the Trip
• Shared Places (associated to the Trip) are visible in the Trip map, as well as Trip list? I don't understand this part
• Again, a Place is owned by a User, not a Group or something with a higher scope, so sharing is not possible due to model scoping
• I don't agree considering that, by default, everyone has the same categories, meaning that a User chose to change them

Thanks for the time and feedback! Hope it makes things clearer 👍

[gthbusrr]

Hi @itskovacs,

Thanks for the quick and thoughtful response. I just realised I never properly thanked you for creating this project. It’s genuinely impressive work. I’ve been searching for something like Trip for ages, so truly, thank you for building it!

Allow me to explain the ideal solution before jumping into a more realistic solution that doesn't require major overhaul of the application:

• Places are independent of users (All users will see the same Big Ben, we share the same world... for now). Think of it as a POI on Google Map.
  • Name / Latitude / Longitude / Place / Image / Description / Allow Dog / GPX? Should be universal
• Each user could then “join” or “subscribe” to a Place, creating a UserPlace (or PlaceMember) relationship. This record would allow users to customise their personal view of the place, e.g.:
• Setting their own description, category, duration, price, visited flag, or even overriding the display name or image.
• Only the latitude and longitude (from the foreign relationship to Places) remain constant across users.
• The relationship between Places and Categories should ideally be many-to-many and contextual. A user can categorize Big Ben as "Monument", but my group of friends in the trip classify it as "Tour". They are both right. So depending on which screen you're looking at, places might have a different category.
  • either show both categories at the same time: Trip Category and User Category
  • Or show Trip Category on the Trip Page, and User Category on the user page
  • When the user adds a place to a trip, this will create a "TripPlaceLink". However, I'll also allow overriding the attributes (similar to how "PlaceMember" is implemented). By default, the user adding the place will also clone their "PlaceMember" attributes. I've thought of making it a polymorphic ownership, but both works.
• Categories I would make them polymorphic ownership. i.e. instead of a foreign key "User_ID", I'd set owner_type and owner_id. Categories can be owned by a trip, or a user. That way, if I have different group of friends, we can categorise places slightly differently.
• Finally, When a the user adds a place to a trip, all members now will see the place in the trip's page. Members can either add it to their map as well (so that it'll show in place page), or optionally add a filter so that user can view the places that they have access via trips.

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Now, this proposal will require refactor of the data model so let's be realistic, here's my actual proposal so that it requires less change:

• Keep Place belonging to a User.
• Introduce a mechanism for sharing Places when users collaborate on a Trip.
  • Collaborator can edit, and view existing places, and add new places. Say I'm a collaborator, if I am not able to add / edit / view a place, it's gonna be hard to collaborate.
  • Either share via trip (proxy membership), or actual sharing of the place.
• If we're sharing a trip, we probably want to share the categories as well. (You don't want to have 2 different classification of "Hotel" right?)
• To make things simple (and allow user to use different categories than the default one), allow admin to make categories universal. Given the nature of this product (self-hosted), it's kinda ok to give the server admin this "God" power, dictating what category users should be able to use.

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Here's how I (intend to) use Trip, the suggestions I gave all comes from my workflow, if this doesn't adhere to the desired user behaviour, please let me know:

1. Create a Trip
2. Add Collaborators
3. Collaborators independently add POIs to the trip
4. Based on the geolocation, opening hours, and whether or not everybody wants to go there, we put the POIs to the planner (timetable)

At the moment, steps 3 and 4 are difficult because collaborators cannot view or access each other’s Places.
The inability to share and edit POIs breaks the collaborative flow that the Trip sharing feature otherwise enables beautifully.

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Again, thank you for taking the time to consider this, and for maintaining such a clean, promising project. I truly believe expanding the sharing model — even incrementally — will make Trip a genuinely powerful collaborative tool for group planning.

I’d love to contribute to implementing this, but I’m primarily a Laravel developer, and since Trip is built in Python, I might not be much help on the code side. Still, I’d be happy to assist in design discussions or data model planning if that’s useful.

[itskovacs]

Hi 👋,
Just wanted to let you know I've seen your message! I don't have much time right now, so I'll wait a bit to read it carefully and give it the attention it deserves 🙌
Thank you very much for your valuable feedback and your time 🤝

[itskovacs]

Thank you very much! 🤝

Introduce a mechanism for sharing Places when users collaborate on a Trip

At the moment, steps 3 and 4 are difficult because collaborators cannot view or access each other’s Places.

I'm not sure I understand this point. Every collaborator on a Trip can see Places linked by others. However, for security reasons, editing someone else's Place is not allowed.

But, this workflow is already working in TRIP:

• You create Trip A
• You add collaborator Member A to Trip A
• Member A links some of its POI to Trip A
• You create plans using Member A linked places

If we're sharing a trip, we probably want to share the categories as well. (You don't want to have 2 different classification of "Hotel" right?)

That's true, but I can't track or infer if someone modifies their categories, and I don't want to limit category editing. So, ultimately, users are responsible for managing their own categories: there's no enforced synchronization

[MattHodge]

I'd add a use case I'd love to leverage TRIP for which shares similarities into this collaboration model with a shared Places list:

• A family is able to add its common list of places, so anyone in the family can add interesting places they'd like to go to
• On a weekend, we can collectively look at the map with all the places added from each family member and come up with a weekend plan
• Everyone in the family can see what other people added to the places list

In this case, there is no "trip" being created, it's just the ability to see everyone in the families places.