Web Advisory Committee (WAC) Meeting Wednesday, December 14, 2011 – Needles Hall 3004 – 3:00 pm

Present:

Amy Aldus, Marta Bailey, Janice Cooke, Sharon Dahmer (secretary), Michelle Douglas-Mills, Don Duff-McCracken, Chris Francis, Eva Grabinski, Chris Gray, John Kemp, Pat Lafranier, Collin MacIntyre, Isaac Morland, Liam Morland, Wendy Philpott, Terry Stewart (Chair), Kelly Teahen and Heather Wey (Guest)

Absent:

Sarah Forgrave, Guillermo Fuentes, Marlon Griffith, Tammy Marcinko, Paul Miskovsky and Jonathan Woodcock

  1. Chair’s remarks

    • Nigel Henriques will be representing Office of Development and Alumni Affairs (ODAA) on WAC. Andrew Smith is replacing Jaymis Goertz for MUR.
    • Congratulations to Kelley Teahen on her new position at Ontario College of Art Design (OCAD) University.
    • .xxx domains. Information Systems and Technology (IST) purchased uwaterloo.xxx several months ago. It is parked to prevent use by other parties. The University has also trademarked "uwaterloo".
  2. Minutes of November 16, 2011 - Approved

  3. Waterloo Content Management Systems (WCMS) Update

    • Liam has been working on accessible web forms. They should be ready for use in early January. The web-forms functionality will include email notifications and spreadsheet data for download. Fill-able PDFs are being worked on (i.e. PDFs that can be filled out online – and then printed for signature(s) when required)
    • Events functionality has been updated
    • Drupal will be updated to version 7.10
    • Photo gallery functionality is being developed
    • Archiving functionality for unpublished documents is being worked on
    • A problem with the WYSIWYG user interface for Internet Explorer (IE) has been fixed. The problem occurred because IE was not able to handle more than 32 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) files.
    • Rotatable banners functionality will be added. (See University of British Columbia (UBC) home page for an example of a rotatable banner)
    • More custom content types are being developed.
    • Applied Health Sciences (AHS) Faculty web site was launched in Content Management System (CMS) system on Dec 13.
    • Web Resources will be launched on Dec 15; Natasha (new to the WCMS team) has added lots of learning materials, including videos.
    • Migration of websites: Engineering is currently working on the WCMS staging server. Office for Persons with Disabilities (OPD), Waterloo International, Exchange programs are all scheduled to begin in January. Co-op students will join the WCMS team and go through the training early January. The WCMS team has met with Graduate Studies, Student Success Office (SSO), Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment (MUR), Alumni Affairs and Co-operative Education and Career Action Services (CECS). Following these are the academic departments and then remaining units.
    • The Web Resources site with WCMS training information will be available on Monday. Send any feedback back to Heather Wey.
    • Michelle Douglas Mills reported on Applied Health Sciences site migration experience:
      • The AHS site migration was about 300 web pages in total. Department and Research Centre pages were not included in the process.
      • Michelle spent about three months reorganizing and writing content (approximately 75% of her time)
      • Actual migration took place over approximately 5 weeks
      • The last two weeks were used for testing and quality assurance
      • It is important to have just one individual as the point person on a migration
      • Keep track of timelines when involving others and know your information architecture and content
      • Tracking web redirects is important and time consuming
      • The web administrator for your current site will need to allocate time to get all the redirects in place (it is unlikely that this can be done centrally unless you are migrating all pages and sites from your current server)
    • Migration options for when your site is ready: 1. Have co-ops move current site and edit later; 2. build out a staging area and then migrate; 3. some combination of 1 and 2.
    • Primary point of Contact for the WCMS. Please direct all requests to: request@uwaterloo.ca. This includes functionality and feature requests, training and support issues.
    • Secondary points of Contact for the WCMS. While we prefer that functionality / feature requests and training-and-support requests are submitted via request@uwaterloo.ca, if you feel more comfortable communicating with the WCMS team, the official points of contact are:
      • Kris Olafson or x31135. Please contact Kris about any questions or requests regarding WCMS features / functionality.
      • Heather Wey or x35878. Please contact Heather about any questions or requests regarding training and support.
      • *Additional Point of Contact* Eva Grabinski or x38956. If you have any questions or concerns about the WCMS project that are not related features/functionality or training and support, please contact Eva.
    • Assessment Criteria for New Features / Functionality
      1. Business Need. Is the feature/functionality required for an area to meet its business objectives? That is, will the unavailability of the functionality interfere with the area’s ability to perform or meet its business objectives? Is the WCMS the correct technology to meet the business need?
      2. User Need. Is the feature/functionality required to meet the website visitor’s need to get the information s/he requires? Or is the feature/functionality a user-experience enhancement to existing content? Can accessibility legislative requirements be met with the desired feature/functionality?
      3. Breadth of Implementation. Is the desired feature/functionality something that will be used by only one area? Or is the desired feature/functionality something that many areas from across the university would benefit from?
  4. Web redesign

    • Reminder that web content strategy and wireframes for the direction of the new web design are available at web.uwaterloo.ca
    • The most recent version of the homepage design concept(a design flat) was shown and feedback received
  5. Accessibility

      Liam reviewed the requirements of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) with the group. The legal requirements for the University are as follows:
      • By January 1, 2014, all websites created or significantly refreshed after January 1, 2012 must conform to WCAG 2.0 Level A.
      • By January 1, 2021, all websites must conform to WCAG 2.0 Level AA (with two exceptions relating to captions and audio descriptions for video).
    • Full details are at: web.uwaterloo.ca.
      Liam reminded the group that it is important that we make things accessible now as we make new web sites since retrofitting existing sites is very time-consuming. The lazy way is to get it right so that it doesn't have to be done over again.
      Liam is available to questions about web accessibility. request@uwaterloo.ca is the best place to pose these questions.
  6. WAC mandate

      Carried forward to the next meeting.
  7. Next meeting – Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 3:00 pm in NH 3004

  8. Meeting adjourned – 4:00 pm