Web Advisory Committee Minutes - April 20, 2016

3:00p.m., April 20, 2016. NH 3318

Attendance

Present:

Donald Duff-McCracken (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Michelle Douglas-Mills, Laurel Forbes, Sarah Forgrave, Chris Francis, Tasha Glover, Marlon Griffith, Alison Hitchens, Karen Jack, Andrea Jennings, Joe Kwan, Courtney Matthews (guest), Andrew McAlorum, Isaac Morland, Liam Morland, Kevin Paxman, Stephanie Putnam, Trevor Ridgeway, Elizabeth Rogers, Susan Shifflett, Michael Tjendra, Heather Wey

Regrets:

Amy Aldous, Herbert Balagtas, Kirsty Budd, Janice Cooke, Alison Gelata, Tom Graham, Jennifer Gillies, Jim Johnston, Nitish Khiria, Stephenie Koerne, Joanne McClintock, Amy Meredith, Kayla Snyder, Andrew Smith, Andrea Sweet

Absent:

Dave Annable, Nigel Henriques, Paul Miskovsky

Announcements

  • None

UWSpace – Library’s institutional repository (Courtney Matthews)

Courtney Matthews presented on UWSPace. Topics included:

  • Background
  • Expansion
  • Support
  • Demonstration
  • Next steps

View the full presentation on UWSpace.

Comments and discussion

  • The UWSpace guide is a helpful resource that provides an overview of what is accepted, who can submit, guidelines and policies, etc.
  • We provide a level of education to make their content accessible which makes us compliant; the Ontario Council of University Libraries has a guidance document regarding Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and institutional repositories.
    • A text copy is created for every PDF that is submitted that is readable via screen reader.
    • The AODA doesn’t require digital repositories for an institution to be fully accessible but we are expected to make the effort to educate our users on the act (which we do).

Approval of the minutes of March meeting

The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as distributed.

Business Arising

  • Issues with the Google Search Appliance that were mentioned at the last meeting have now been fixed.
  • Karen Jack will seek more information regarding accessibility requirements for digital repositories.

IA Working Group update (Joe Kwan)

  • Several people have submitted their names to participate in the working group; some emails will come in the next little while regarding ideas and meeting time availability.

Waterloo CMS update

Responsive template update (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Andrew reviewed the web development road map and the upcoming sprints.
  • As of now, if you are requesting a new site, you can request it to be responsive; any existing sites can be moved over to responsive as well.
  • We can speak to Jonathan Woodcock regarding having another testing group meeting soon.
  • We are close to releasing the admissions page; based on the single page site template.

Training and support (Andrea Jennings)

  • Migrations
    • 564 sites live
    • 51 in progress
  • Training and support
    • WCMS training courses have been steady: 46 clients through in last month.
    • There have been 17 through the drop-in lab.
      • Drop-in lab closed for end of term maintenance this week.
    • Co-op student Content Maintainer course: May 4 & 5; full, form closed.
  • WCMS responsive design
    • Release of Publications 1.0 include:
      • Site managers can now add categories and issues to the menu (edited existing how-to doc).
      • Added previous/next article navigation (edited existing how-to doc).
      • Added article sub-navigation (created new how-to doc).
      • Added publication archives page (created new how-to doc).
    • Opportunities content type changes (edited existing how-to doc):
      • Added “research participant” as an opportunity type.
      • Added the ability to specify whether the opportunity is full time or part time.
    • Coming months will be participating in testing versions of the new site templates.
    • Creating how-to documentation during closed-beta testing periods.

Technical update (Kevin Paxman)

  • Release window for Drupal security updates is today (April 20th); will be monitoring to see if there is a new release.
  • PHP and Apache were update on production WCMS sites April 10th.
    • Now all of our servers run supported versions!
  • WCMS 1.12.4 was released April 11th
    • Released publications 1.0
    • Minor changes to opportunities, award and contact content types.
    • Changed automatic path handling for pages with underscores in the title.
    • Release notes
  • WCMS 2.0.0 (final beta) releasing to pilots Thursday night (April 21st) and to production Monday night (April 25th).
    • Only affects responsive sites.
    • Releases all the fixes and updates we have completed to date.
    • Includes updated image galleries, with carousel and thumbnail display options, and ability to embed galleries in other content types.
    • Updates to the local footer.
    • Release notes
  • Current sprint just wrapping up; next sprint’s focus is completing 2.0.0 final and working on the conference site configuration; release of Graduate Studies Academic Calendar.

Other Business

  • Members are interested in guidelines for making their non-WCMS sites have a common look and feel in-line with the UWaterloo brand.
    • Michelle Douglas-Mills will send an email to Dawn Charlton (who is leading the Brand Refinement project) regarding a style guide for non-WCMS sites.
    • Andrew McAlorum will also bring this to the Web Steering Committee at the next meeting.
  • Access to the University’s main Google analytics has been discussed with many stakeholders and will soon be brought to the Communications Counsel Committee and then lastly to the Web Steering Committee.
  • Brand Project team will come present to WAC again, likely in July. Robust digital design guidelines are on our list of deliverables already.

Meeting adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 4:11 p.m.