March 18, 2015

Web Advisory Committee 

3:15p.m., March 18, 2015. NH 3001

Present:

Terry Stewart (acting chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Daniel Allen, Kirsty Budd, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Chris Gray, Marlon Griffith, Jim Johnston, Joe Kwan, Andrew McAlorum, Kevin Paxman, Susan Shifflett, Andrew Smith, Sam Toman, Jeff Voskamp (guest), Heather Wey

Regrets:

Donald Duff-McCracken (Chair), Janice Cooke, Chris Francis, Dianne Inacio, Karen Jack, Nitish Khiria, Stephenie Koerne, Amy Meredith, Mark McKay, Liam Morland, Elizabeth Rogers, Sarah Forgrave, Kristina Zelko

Absent:

Amy Aldous, Dave Annable, Herbert Balagtas, Marta Bailey, Tom Graham, Nigel Henriques, Paul Miskovsky, Megan Saunders

Approval of the minutes of the February meeting

The minutes of the February meeting were accepted as distributed.

Business Arising

Short URL (Andrew McAlorum)

• Last meeting we discussed the use of uwat.ca and Hootsuite for shortened URLs; discussed this with Mark McKay and we will proceed at looking at implementing a UW branded shortened URL creator.
  • Will report back at next meeting about the possibilities around that.

Node revision deletion (Andrew McAlorum)

• At the last meeting, Kevin Paxman discussed the potential to use a module that allows us to cap the amount of revisions saved in the WCMS; we would like to proceed with this and will contact the few people that use revisions that may exceed the cap number about alternative solutions.

Waterloo CMS update

Training & support update (Heather Wey)

• Migrations
  • 470 sites live
  • 41 in progress
• Some WCMS stats
  • 2338 total attendance in SEW courses
  • 373 site planning meetings
  • 535 in Drop-in lab
• Support
  • Working on documentation for support of Google Universal Analytics,
    • Google Analytics will only support Universal Analytics in the future. Universal Analytics gives you access to improved data processing, new collection methods, and more analysis tools.
    • The WCMS has added support for the new version. We will also continue to support the old version until September 2015.
    • Site Managers need to upgrade their WCMS site(s) to use Universal Analytics.
    • When you upgrade, you can access and analyze all of your historical data using the same reports and tools you use now, but you’ll also get access to features that are only available through Universal Analytics.
    • There was concern that the Information Privacy statement would not cover the collection of demographics information but the website privacy statement has been adjusted to allow for it.
  • Added how-to docs for:
    • How to create a Service
    • How to add Service categories
    • How to Create a serial number PDF (for web forms)
    • How to switch to Universal Analytics from classic Google Analytics

Technical update (Kevin Paxman, Andrew McAlorum)

• WCMS will be upgrading to v1.10 March 20-22^nd.
  • From 9pm Friday, March 20^thuntil around 6am Sunday, March 22^nd
    • Do not log into your sites during this time period to avoid any issues.
    • Could CAS be disconnected during the upgrade window to prevent people from logging in?
      • This will need to be investigated.
• Work has already begun on WCMS upgrade to v1.11.
• We are proceeding with consulting on our hardware refresh; using an external contractor that specializes in high-performance Drupal.
• Student Portal hack-a-thon is this Saturday; already have 80 people registered for it.
• Nathan Vexler will now be doing office hours for Open Data; every couple of weeks he will have MC 2009 booked for people who have questions regarding Open Data. 

IA update (Joe Kwan)

• The 3^rd session for the IA working group was held in mid-January; we received participation from all 6 faculties and numerous departments on campus throughout the sessions.
  • Dave Wallace attended the 3^rd sessions and clearly communicated his desire for student input and involvement on this.
• The next step is for Amy and I to aggregate and synthesize all of the notes that were submitted (if you have not submitted your notes yet please do so).
  • Will hopefully be able to report back on our findings at the April WAC meeting. 
• We will be looking to reengage with participants by asking them to give us their top 3 goals of what they would like to see the website accomplish.  
• Need to figure out the best way to get the students involved. Presenting to STAC? Reaching out via the faculties?

Chair’s Remarks/ web steering update (Don Duff-McCracken)

• The Web Steering Committee website is now live.
• The CIO of the University, Dave Wallace will be leaving the University to take on the role of Executive Director at the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre (OUAC) effective July 1, 2015.
• Nitish Khiria will be joining this committee starting next month as the representative from Human Resources.

Other Business

None.

Adjournment

Adjournment at 3:45pm