When you create a Project in Hackystat, you are its owner and can modify its contents or delete the Project. As the Project owner, your sensor data that satisfies the constraints imposed by the Project definition becomes available to Project-related analyses. Clearly, that's what you want, otherwise you wouldn't be creating a Project.
However, let's consider the situation of other Hackystat users who you specify as members of the Project. When someone is a Project member, that makes their sensor data available for use in Project-related analyses. Depending upon the nature of the analysis, that can reveal information to everyone listed in the Project about their activities with respect to the artifacts in the Project workspaces over the specified time interval. This may or may not be acceptable, and so Hackystat requires non-owner members to explicitly confirm their Project membership before their data is made available to analyses.
Project member confirmation works as follows. When you create a new Project that lists additional member emails other than your own, Hackystat generates an email to those members "inviting" them to participate in the Project. Figure 3.11, “ A Project invitation email ” illustrates an invitation email automatically generated and sent by the Hackystat server when a new Project is created with non-owner members.
This email indicates that a Project called "AntAutoUpdate" was created by the user hackystat-l@hawaii.edu, and that johnson@hawaii.edu was invited to join this Project. To accept this invitation, the user can simply click on the supplied link (note that the actual user key has been replaced by "xxxxx" in the above figure) which takes them to the Project Management page. At this point, the user must scroll past the table containing the list of Projects that they own to the next table, which lists the Projects for which they are a (pending or confirmed) member. Figure 3.12, “ The Pending AntAutoUpdate Project Membership ” illustrates the portion of Project Management page containing the pending request for membership in the AntAutoUpdate project.
This screen illustrates the table containing Projects that you do not own, but which some other Hackystat user has created and listed you as a member. There are three Projects listed: LOCC, hackyCocomo, and AntAutoUpdate. Notice that the first two Projects have only a "Decline" button associated with them, while the last Project, "AntAutoUpdate", has both a "Confirm" and a "Decline" button associated with it. The "Status" field explains this: for the first two Projects, this user has already confirmed their membership, and thus their status is "Confirmed". For the AntAutoUpdate Project, this user has not yet confirmed or declined their membership, so the status is "Pending".
If this user presses the "Confirm" button, then their status for the AntAutoUpdate Project will be changed to confirmed, and their data will now be made available in Project-related analyses associated with this Project. If they press "Decline", then they will be removed from the Project membership and their data will not be available. Of course, their data is not made available while their status is Pending.
Finally, notice that the "Decline" button is always available for all Projects you are a member of, even after you have confirmed membership. This enables you to end your participation in a Project (and thus the availability of your data for use in Project-related analyses) at any time.