Wednesday, November 16, 2011 – Needles Hall (NH) 3004 – 3:00 pm
Present:
Janice Cooke, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Don Duff-McCracken, Chris Francis, Guillermo Fuentes, Chris Gray, Marlon Griffith, Natasha Jennings (Guest), Pat Lafranier, Collin Macintyre, Tammy Marcinko, Liam Morland, Wendy Philpott, Terry Stewart (Chair), Kelly Teahen, Heather Wey (Guest) and Jonathan Woodcock
Absent:
Amy Aldus, Marta Bailey, Sarah Forgrave, Eva Grabinski, John Kemp, Paul Miskovsky, Isaac Morland.
1. Chair’s remarks
- Joanna Magee (Science) has accepted a position at Fanshawe College. Science will appoint another representative when available.
- From the Daily Bulletin – Health Services announced a new web site. http://info.uwaterloo.ca/infoheal/_home/index.html
2. Minutes of October 19,2011 - approved
3. Web redesign status update (Kelley Teahen)
- New pictures are being developed and are at the approval stage.
- Investigating content v. user experience and tweaking some of the animated features (i.e., chevrons – to some chevrons mean a link to next page whereas in this case they were being used as an animated feature).
- “About Waterloo” is ready and can be viewed. It will go public when the home page is ready.
- The schedule for completion of redesign work is not yet determined.
4. Content Management System (CMS) Project update (Kris Olafson and Heather Wey)
- Environment website went live successfully on November 3rd. The first update was today and will occur every two weeks.
- Housing, Applied Health Sciences (AHS), and Web Resources should all launch by the end of the year.
- The team is working on: trashcan functionality, live function and maintenance issues.
- December 2 – Don (Environment) and Megan (Housing) will discuss the experiences of launching the website at an upcoming Professional Development Advisory Group (PDAG) session.
- Migration Order of Websites
- Faculty-level websites;
- Priority/strategic sites (with navigational structures defined by previous web design project) Co-op; Support Waterloo (Office of Development); Waterloo International; Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment (MUR); Graduate Admissions; Alumni; Communications & News (CPA); Creative Services; Student Success Office (SSO); Office for Persons with Disabilities (OPD) (added b/c web accessibility legislation in effect for all new site commencing in Jan 2012);
- Academic department sites;
- All remaining support unit websites (in alphabetical order unless directed otherwise)
- Plans for January to April
- Faculty of Science; Graduate Studies Office (GSO), Student Success Office (SSO); Office for Persons with Disabilities (OPD); Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment (MUR) and International have been contacted about migration. The Faculty of Engineering using staging model to move sites. Arts and Math have not announced a migration date.
- Staging space will be available in Jan 2012 to coincide with when training is available however, there will be a limit on the number of sites in staging at a time (for training & support reasons).
- Training for university staff will start in Winter 2012 term with drop-in labs, Skills for the Electronic Wrokplace (SEW) courses, screencasts all planned. (Full training support plan is available by emailing Heather Wey.)
- Long-Term Scheduling Information
- There is somewhere on the order of 1000+ websites are to be migrated. Based on information from other universities – this will take about 1-½ years. To produce long-term schedules, we need to determine our website migration velocity from January to April.
- Sarah Forgrave is assisting and will assist with information architecture for academic support units. Encourage departments to contact Sarah to begin working on this now before migrating.
5. Guidelines for re-use of content across websites (Jonathan Woodcock)
- Document will be housed in CPA but will remain on the SEW SharePoint for the time being. Team is looking to reword and define “ownership”.
- Action: Jonathan will send a revised copy to Pat for the SEW SharePoint and to Sharon for the minutes. Members are encouraged to distribute the tips and tricks guidelines as applicable.
6. Web Advisory Committee Mandate (Terry Stewart and Jonathan Woodcock)
- Changes to Web Steering and University Committee on Information Systems and Technology (UCIST) and the realignment of VP position may affect Web Advisory role. The suggestion was made that a sub-committee should revisit the mandate and role of WAC. Of the 6 points from the current mandate, WAC currently addresses only two. A working group was struck consisting of: Don, Terry, Jonathan, Pat, Janice and Chris Francis.
Action: Terry will arrange a meeting of the group before the next meeting.
7. Next meeting – Wednesday, December 14 at 3:00 pm in NH 3004
Note change in date