Web Advisory Committee meeting (January 15, 2014)

January 15, 2014 –  MC 2018 – 3:00 p.m. 

Present:

Terry Stewart (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Daniel Allen, Herbert Balagtas, Tanya Balian Bedrossian, Janice Cooke, Donald Duff-McCracken, Chris Francis, Marlon Griffith, Jim Johnston, Mark McKay (guest), Amy Meredith, Andrew McAlorum, Tammy Marcinko, Collin McIntyre, Liam Morland, Kris Olafson, Rose Padacz, Elizabeth Rogers, Megan Saunders, Susan Shifflett, Andrea Sweet, Jeff Voskamp (guest),Heather Wey, Virginia Young

Regrets:

Marta Bailey, Cynthia Breen, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Karen Jack, Liam Morland

Absent:

Dave Annable, Cynthia Breen, Nigel Henriques, Paul Miskovsky, Andrew Smith

1. Chair’s Remarks (Terry Stewart)

  • The Chair welcomed Herbert Balagtas (Arts) and Mark McKay (Director of Digital Communications) to Web Advisory.
    • Herbert replaces Guillermo Fuentes; 
    • Digital Communications has agreed to review who their delegates will be in future.
  • ​InfoBlox
    • ​Mistakes made with the network management software has caused the home page to go down for short periiods of time;
    • A committee has been struck to look for ways to make such events impossible in future.
  • ​Governance and web steering
    • ​Web steering will be looking at its own Terms of Reference; will be tied into the overall IT strategic plan.
    • Web Steering is still in the process of finding a replacement Chair for Web Advisory. 

2. Approval of Minutes.

  • The minutes of December, 2013 were approved as posted.

​3. Busines​s Arising

  • None.

4. Waterloo CMS Update (Heather Wey/Kris Olafson)

  • Skills for the Electronic Workplace (SEW) courses for January and February are out now and have filled up quickly.

  • It has been confirmed that we are adding a Content Maintainers course on February 5th and 6th.

  • New course on February 4th: Organizing your Website Content

  • Heather Wey has been taking on additional IST Communication duties while Natasha Jennings is off; Carly McLeod was hired on contract for 8 months to cover some of Heather’s duties.

  • Only 3 co-ops this term; as a result, drop-in lab hours are now 1-4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  • The WCMS team has been talking with Communication and Public Affairs (CPA) about the Daily Bulletin; it is an old site, and if it breaks, it may be hard to put back together.Probably best to build a new site using the Drupal template and revisit later when a publications module is developed;

  • Version 1.8 of the WCMS is almost ready to be released; planned to be done within the month. Several updates included in this release.

  • The plan is to start on the Responsive Web Design work in February.

  • The Google Search Appliance is taking longer than expected to crawl new content. We are having the backup search appliance crawl the campus to catch it up and will switch over to it in a week or two. 

5. Digital Initiatives Update (Andrea Sweet)

  • Name change: Communications and Public Affairs (CPA) is now Marketing and Strategic Communications (MSC) to more accurately reflect its activities and strategic plans;
  • DI is working on a Drupal site with Institutional Analysis & Planning (IAP) for the Accountability Framework / Strategic Indicators. It has a very different style and uses the whole page (discarding the left navigation bar). These are not features that can be activated on any site, rather it is a custom theme on top of our existing framework

​6. Accessible Web Resources Committee Update  (Rose Padacz) 

  • Jonathan Woodcock (IST) will be taking on the role of Accessible Web Coordinator as part of his portfolio of projects; will be looking at putting together a charter and forming a team from the existing Accessible Web Resources Committee;

  • Need to ensure that we have leads for each of the 5 pillars of accessibility (not just web);

  • An overarching lead will be appointed to coordinate accessibility for all pillars

  • We have come up with some samples of text that we can use on websites to inform visitors that we are working towards making it accessible. No formal agreed upon text as of yet.

    Questions & discussion

    Q: Is the statement for sites that have attempted to become accessible or sites that have not yet been worked on?

    A: Both. For sites that have already migrated, the majority of the site will be accessible but some documents like PDFs may not be compliant yet. 

7. Other Business

  • None

8. Next M​eeting 

  • 3:00-4:30p.m., February 19, 2014. MC 2018 a/b

10. Meeting Adjourned at 4:10 p.m.