Web Advisory Committee meeting (May 15, 2013)

May 15, 2013–  MC 2018 – 3:00 p.m. 

Present:

Daniel Allen, Heather Anderson, Marta Bailey, Kirsty Budd, Pascal Calarco (guest) Janice Cooke, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Chris Francis, Guillermo Fuentes, Alison Gelata, Chris Gray, Marlon Griffith, Karen Jack, Heather Wey (guest), Andrea Jennings, Collin McIntyre, Liam Morland, Kris Olafson, Rose Padacz, Megan Saunders,  Susan Shifflett, Terry Stewart (Chair), Andrea Sweet, Jeff Voskamp, Jonathan Woodcock.

Regrets:

Donald Duff-McCracken, Patsy Jenkins (Lafranier), Jim Johnston

Absent:

Amy Aldous, Dave Annable, Jay Athia, Nigel Henriques, Tammy Marcinko, Amy Meredith, Paul Miskovsky.

1. Chair’s Remarks

  • Welcome to Pascal Calarco and Andrea Jennings.
  • Congratulations to Patsy Jenkins (Lafranier) on her recent marriage.
  • Vadim has left the University. The Chair will contact Andrew Smith to nominate a representative from MUR.

2. Approval of Minutes.

  • The minutes of April 2013 were approved as posted.

​3. Busines​s Arising

  • None.

4. Update on the Digital Media Asset Management Initiative (Pascal Calarco)

  • Pascal's PowerPoint presentation on Digital Media Assets Update is available online.
  • The project has recommended Assetbank with value-added being provided by Archimedia (Ottawa)
  • It will be a tactical implementation involving CPA, Engineering, Library, Athletics
  • Others are welcome to join but will be expected to share the initial costs of software (estimated at $20,000)
  • IST will provide the hardware (estimated at $12,000)
  • Care will be taken such that any data entered will be fully exportable if a different system is chosen in future.
  • If you would like to test out Assetbank, contact Pascal. 

Q.  Are you still considering iTunes?

A.  There are issues with different versions of iTunes on campus.

Q.  Confused about status of video, what about storage?

A.  We have 270 megabytes of storage; IST has room to save uncompressed files. If we put up uncompressed version of a class it would be hundreds of gigabytes.  We need to scope out a solution of compressed video.   

Q.  How does the transcoding work?

A. Transcoding works with different images. Assetbank uses Image Magick; audio is done through an outside app.

C. If you do see this is of some use in your area please contact Pascal.  After the first year the cost will be around $500.00 dollars a year.

C.  Storage – Images, access will be available directly to the CMS site.

C.  The initial concern is storage.

C.  Terry has used the system and found it to be  simple to use.  It is somewhat clunky and could use some Web 2.0 functionality.

5. URL Shortener Update (Jeff Voskamp)

Jeff presented a demonstration of the URL Shortener. 

  • About a year ago we came up with a set of recommendations as to what people could do with the URL shortener. There was a presentation at WAC last July.
  • A package was installed called YOURLS.
  • The Administrative Interface should be redone to incorporate more of the UW web design.
  • Presently there are 17 URL's in the system for testing
  • Adding a '+' to the end of the URL will take you to the administrative interface where you can (amongst other things) see who has been accessing the short URL.
  • There are no accessibility concerns for people using site.
  • There is a multi-user mode that Jeff has been investigating.
  • The initial look did not originally have CAS authentication - the list of users and their passwords were hard coded in the application.
  • There are a few fixes; people see their own URLS, Admin and Assistant Admin logout function does not log you out of the site.
  • When logging back in it does not take you back to general login page.

Questions and Comments:

C.  Original recommendation from committee was to have the ability to change a URL to a smaller friendlier interface, much the way you get a short form in the WCMS.  There will be guidelines in the report on how to deal with this.

C.  This is only for Waterloo sites.

C.  Most of the power users use USSITE.

C.  There is no aging in the code.

Q.  Does this handle analytics as well?

A.  There is a Google analytics package available.

C.  To use Google Analytics you would have to create a landing page for the short URL where the Google analytics code would live.  

Q.  Is it live?

A.  Yes

ACTION: After a discussion on possible uses and failings in the current policy, Jonathan agreed to chair a committee to review the policies surrounding the URL shortener.  If you are interested in serving on this committee, contact Jonathan.  Jonathan will call a meeting and report back at the next Web Advisory Committee meeting.

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

  • Welcome to Andrea Jennings, Andrea has replace Natasha in the WCMS.

  • The second Google appliance is now in place (AKERUE -EUREKA spelled backwards).  This will allow the team to update the first appliance. 

  •  People Content will be looked at this summer.  Events will be completed first.

  • Link checker is having access control issues. Kris will let us know of any broken links on the internal and external websites.

    C.  There are still links that are pointing back to sites that have since been moved into Drupal. The redirect was left on; this caused bouncing from server to WCMS.  All sites still worked with redirects running.  The link server will correct a server to redirect permanently to site.  This is a major task to stop all of the links bouncing over different sites.

    Q.  Is there anyway to be notified of a redirect link?

    A.  Kris is going to look into this.  It is suggested that it be turned on, site by site.  This solution will need to be discussed first.

    Web courses
    Registration for May/June Skills for the Electronic Workplace (SEW) courses is now open.  There are lots of web courses being offered including several accessibility courses for compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians With Disabilities Act (AODA).

    Co-op studen​t resources

    Have you hired a co-op student to work on your website?  See this list of resources that will help them get up to speed.

    Site Managers: time to review permissions!

    It’s the start of a new term - don’t forget to review permissions on your site for past co-op students.  (We recommend that you remove the role(s) assigned to a user rather than removing their account from your site.)

    Accessibility Legisl​ation

    The University of Waterloo is committed to meeting our obligations under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).  Read all about the standard and what you need to do on the Web Resources site. 

7. Digital Initiatives Report (Jonathan Woodcock)

Q.  Was there anything shareable from the training at the PDF Design?

A.  Yes, Andrea can provide an update, perhaps at the next WAC meeting.

8. Other Business

  • None

9. Next M​eeting 

  • 3:00-4:30p.m., June 17, 2013. MC 2018 a/b (Note room).

8. Meeting Adjourned at 4:30 p.m.