October 16, 2013– MC 2018 – 3:00 p.m.
Present:
Daniel Allen, Marta Bailey, Tanya Balian, Cynthia Breen, Janice Cooke, , Donald Duff-McCracken, Chris Francis, Alison Gelata, Chris Gray, Bob Hicks (Guest), Karen Jack, Jim Johnston, Joe Kwan (Guest), Collin McIntyre, Liam Morland, Kris Olafson, Rose Padacz, Megan Saunders, Andrew Smith, Terry Stewart (Chair), Andrea Sweet, Jeff Voskamp, Dave Wallace (Guest), Jonathan Woodcock, Heather Wey
Regrets:
Michelle Douglas-Mills, Marlon Griffith
Absent:
Amy Aldous, Dave Annable, Nigel Henriques, Tammy Marcinko, Amy Meredith, Paul Miskovsky, Susan Shifflett, Virginia Young
1. Chair’s Remarks (Terry Stewart)
- Welcome to Dave Wallace (CIO) and Bob Hicks (Director of Client Services); here to discuss IST’S Organize for Success Initiative and the implications for the WCMS and the web in general.
- Alison Gelata will be leaving on parental leave until November 2014 and introduced her replacement, Tanya Balian. Tanya is new to the university and joins us having spent the past 10 years working for the Weather Network as a web producer and most recently, a digital content specialist. The Chair welcomed Tanya and wished Alison all the best on her leave.
- Congratulations to Jonathan Woodcock. Jonathan will be leaving Digital Initiatives to assume a new position in IST as a project manager in the Portfolio Group; as such Jonathan will be stepping off Web Advisory. Joseph Kwan will be replacing Jonathan on the Committee. The Chair thanked Jonathan for his many contributions to Web Advisory.
- As promised at the last meeting, the Chair invited Ellen Rethore to speak on Visual Identity. Unfortunately, she is not available but she has promised a full report at an upcoming meeting of Web Advisory. Andrea will give a Visual Identity update under the Digital Initiatives Report.
- Cathy Newell Kelly will also be here next month to discuss CEL’s activities in the area of MOOC’s, open courseware, etc.
- The Chair has been invited to speak about the Web Advisory at an upcoming PDAG seminar.
2. Approval of Minutes.
- The minutes of September 18, 2013 were approved with one correction to the item on Juicy Studio. Initially, the minutes indicated it was used for checking accessibility of PDF’s. In fact, it is only useful for HTML pages at this time. This was corrected on October 15. Thanks to Chris Francis for noting this.
3. Business Arising
- None.
4. IST's Organize for Success (Dave Wallace, Bob Hicks)
Dave presented Web Advisory with a shortened presentation of the ongoing IST Organize for Success initiative. The goal of the re-org is to eliminate all silos, have IST working towards a unified role across campus. By increasing customer Manager Roles this allows IST to re-focus on client service and create client contact at a senior level.
Successful candidates for “net new” and “expression of interest” positions have moved to their new roles as of November 1. Vacant position resulting from “net new” and “expression of interest” hires will be posted (campus-wide) between now and the end of the year. IST Executive will participate in a half-day retreat on November 11 to review the process so far and the plan to move forward.
IST will continue to refine and evolve the organization based on client needs and opportunities with the federated model.
Questions and Comments
Q. WAC and Web developers have put over 100 requests to the CMS for things to be done. Is there new man power for the WCMS.
A. The WCMS will need to focus in on one group, find out what is priority, and line them up to be completed
C. There is a flurry of people working outside of the WCMS. If other people are interested in developing, the CMS team will train on Fridays.
5. Digital Initiatives Report (Andrea Sweet)
Andrea Sweet updated Web Advisory on Visual Identity changes.
Questions and Comments
Q. Are we pulling away from the multiple shades of gold?
A. Moving it to be an accent colour. Official communication documents will be black, white and gold.
Q. How will we know when the changes will be rolled out?
A. We will communication via WCMS feature release email, as well as an email from CPA to WAC and Communications Council.
Q. What about those who work outside the WCMS?
A. We will be supplying a template. This will be launched after the initial launch.
C. There are 3 different templates that are accessible.
C. Not taking away any templates, templates are only being added.
Q. What is happening with the colours?
A. Communicating with different levels, none of the colours are staying as they are.
6. Waterloo CMS Update (Kris Olafson/Heather Wey)
Did you know that you can create Expandable/collapsible content areas on your WCMS site? Because Expandable/collapsible content templates hide content under headings and users need to click on an expandable content heading to view the hidden content below there are some usability concerns with Expandable/collapsible content you should be aware of!
Drop-in lab hours
The WCMS Drop-in Lab is open Tuesdays & Thursdays – 9:00-4:00 (MC 2060).
Who’s new to the WCMS…
18 more sites have launched in the Waterloo Content Management System (WCMS) since our last update.
To see a complete list of sites in the WCMS and sites in the progress of being migrated, check out the WCMS migration schedule on the Web Resources site at https://uwaterloo.ca/web-resources/wcms-migration.
Accessibility Legislation
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.
Questions and Comments:
Q. What is the Service Content type?
A. The Service content type is for services offered at the University. It includes fields for ‘Service name’, ‘Description’, ‘What’s available’, ‘Who can use this service’, 'Minimum notices required for this service’, ‘Average length of time to complete request’, ‘Cost’, ‘How to request this service’, ‘Support for this service’, ‘Service hours’, ‘Service location’, and ‘Service category’.
Q. How many co-ops for WCMS?
A. There will be three co-ops for the winter term working in WCMS. Drop-in hours will be reduced.
WCMS Features and Upgrades
- Content types like news, events and services will be aggregated at api.uwaterloo.ca; please tag your content appropriately if you want your content to be available in the portal.Version 2 API release can go to the open data site for updates.
- Version 2 of the open data API has been released - can go to the open data site for updates.
- Header won’t take as long, should be ready early to mid-November.
- WCMS team is having developer meetings every Friday at 11am, if interested please contact Kris Olafson.
- Priorities
- Project targets
- Tyler will be on parental leave, will be down a person.
- Publications need to be done before end of year.
- RT web servers, dot net developers
- Need way to automatically copy RT tickets into open source and Microsoft based project management tools.
Questions and Comments:
Q. Request from Library; for sub-sites within the Library site.
C. Library has a large site that we would like to break down into smaller sub-sites.
C. This will be taken to the next Web Steering and Kris will report back at next meeting.
8. Other Business
- Rose Padacz– COU now has web resources on accessibility.All universities are trying to deal with web accessibility sites with resources, tools, and tips for making our sites more accessible. See: Accessible Campus: There is a Q &A information and communications planning and best practices. University of Waterloo are being used as an example. This is being viewed across Canada wide. Waterloo's efforts are being applauded.
Questions and Comments:
Q. What makes a video accessible?
A. In short, there needs to be a transcript of the video. Audio descriptions of visuals, captions and sign language features are nice to have but not required.
Q. Is there a recommendation for a good tool to produce an XML site map for our site?
A. The WCMS automatically generates sitemap.xml at the root of every site.
9. Next Meeting
-
3:00-4:30p.m., November 20, 2013. MC 2018 a/b