Solution Submission Guide

A “solution” on opendxl.com represents a commercial or open source product. Submitting solutions is an excellent way to showcase DXL-integrated products and projects to the OpenDXL community. The solutions are not hosted on this site, but instead reside on the vendor’s site for commercial projects. For open source projects the solutions are typically hosted in a source code repository (For example, GitHub).


Solutions are categorized for easy searching. Additionally, during submission, “tags” and rich text descriptions can be provided to describe the capabilities of the solution. A solution can be updated by the submitter at any time, and as new versions of a solution are released, a “version” can be added to that solution that includes version-specific details (a version-specific URL, release notes, etc.).


Solution Submission Requirements


Only registered users can submit solutions to the community. If you are not a registered user, you can sign up here.

Solutions are moderated and must meet the criteria below to be approved.


Documentation

  • Documentation suitable to install and use the solution
  • An introductory description of the Solution in the beginning of the documentation
  • Clearly defined installation requirements and dependencies
  • Examples of functionality, and necessary steps to customize features (such as message payloads)
  • Correct grammar and spelling

Dependencies

  • When possible, the solution should include the ability to automatically resolve required dependencies. For example, Python-based solutions should include an automated method for installing the Python dependencies (via setup.py, requirements.txt, etc.).

Icon

  • Icons submitted with solutions should be 144x144 in size
  • Any text or image(s) in the icon should be clear and legible (no obvious scaling)

Releases

  • Solutions should be submitted based on an official released or tagged version. For example, an open-source project on GitHub should utilize a GitHub Project Release


Please refer to existing solutions on the OpenDXL GitHub as examples for meeting all of the above criteria:

Submitting a Solution

Once a solution meets the solution submission requirements, submitting the solution to the OpenDXL community is straight-forward.


First, go to the Solutions page and select "Add Solution".




Then fill in the Solution Submission form fields listed below.

Solution Submission Form Fields

Version URL - Provide a link to the location where users can obtain the latest version of the Solution.

Category - Choose a category for the Solution from the list of categories.

Icon - Upload a Solution icon.
Title - Provide a title for the Solution. This will be displayed as the title in the Solutions page.

Version - Specify a version. This is the version corresponding to the link in the “Version URL” field of this form.

Summary - Provide a short description about the Solution.
  
Tags - Specify Tags for the Solution.

Website - Specify the general page for the Solution (not version-specific).

Additional Authors - This is optional. Use it to specify other Authors.

Commercial Solution - Select this if it is a commercial Solution.
Description - Add Description for the Solution. The rich text editor allow for descriptions with images and rich text.


See the "Solution Information Display" section below for a sample of a submitted solution and how the information entered will appear to users browsing the site.

Solution Information Display

After submission, the Solution is displayed as shown below.





Solution Forum

After a Solution is submitted and approved, a Forum thread is automatically created for discussions in the Solution Releases section. This facilitates discussions regarding the posted solution.



Adding New Versions

After a Solution has been added, it can be updated later to announce additional versions. To be able to add a new version to an existing solution, the user must be signed in as the Solution submitter or an “additional author” as assigned by that submitter.


Open your Solution’s details page and choose the “Add Version” button at the bottom of the screen.



  • Specify the URL for the version being submitted.
  • Specify the version in the Version column.
  • Provide the description of the version in the Description column.

Solution Moderation

Solution submissions are moderated to ensure quality. Solution submissions are not visible to all users until they have been approved by the opendxl.com moderation team. This is indicated by the “eye with a slash” symbol (indicating the solution is not visible) either replacing or overlaying the submitted Solution’s icon:


Solution Moderation


Once a solution has been submitted and approved, it is made public for the OpenDXL community.