Web Advisory Committee Minutes - February 19, 2020

3:00 p.m.,  19 February 2020, NH 3318

Attendance

Donald Duff-McCracken (Chair), Melissa Holst (Secretary), Meghan McPhee Ashdown, Tom Cauduro, Erica Clement-Goudy, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Laurel Forbes, Alyssa Frey, Tasha Glover, Tom Graham, Andrea Jennings, Liam Morland, Isaac Morland, Kevin Paxman, Elizabeth Rodgers, Michael Tjendra, Marlon Griffith, Ryan Lahti, Derek Leung, Amy Meredith.

Absent:

Herbert Balagtas, Iva Badjari, Marta Bailey, Lisa Brackenridge, Lannois Carroll-Woolery, Jamie Cook, Beth Cotter, Sandra David, Jasmin English, Sarah Frograve, Adriann Kennedy, Martin LeBlanc, Greg McIntyre, Neil McKay, Trevor Ridgeway, Andrew Smith, Lori Suess, Annaka Willemsen, Mirko Vuciceuich. 

Regrets:

Daniella Cross, Joe Kwan, Jennifer Halcrow

Approval of the Minutes of Previous Meeting

The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as distributed.

Business Arising

Don welcomed two new members to the committee, Meghan McPhee Ashdown (Writing and Communication Centre), Erica Clement-Goudy (Engineering).

Portal update (Joe Radman for Pavol Chvala)

  • 2.1 had some major design changes along with the improved navigation.
  • The WatCard and calendar functions have also been updated to a more user friendly interface.
  • Currently in the process of rebuilding Co-operative Education paging system for Portal 2.
  • Currently migrating code to Microsoft Azure (Microsoft’s cloud hosting and computing services).
  • Front-end testing of the Portal website with Cypress.

WCMS Training/Support update (Andrea Jennings)

WCMS course offerings

We've reduced the number of classroom offerings for the upcoming WCMS courses offered throughout March and April:

WCMS Content Maintainers - Tuesday March 10 and Wednesday March 11
WCMS Site Managers - Tuesday April 14
WCMS Web Form Creation - Tuesday April 21

Drop-in Lab

The WCMS Drop-in lab will be closed Thursday, February 20 while we attend a training session. Otherwise, it will retain its regular hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays - 1:00pm - 4:00pm in MC 2060. If you require special arrangements outside of the regular drop-in hours please contact Andrea, ajenning@uwaterloo.ca

WCMS change management survey

Our most recent survey, the WCMS change management survey, has closed and we are currently going through the results with the intention of presenting them at next month's WAC. Visit the Building the Next WCMS website for updates and information.

WCMS Technical Update (Kevin Paxman)

  • Focus points in this sprint include Drupal 8 build-out, cleanup of WCMS 2.8.0 release, "branded" WCMS 2 installs to avoid manual changes per site type, module updates, and adding "local installations" info to our sites database.
  • 2.8.0 fixes from testing handed back to training and support today for review; will likely miss hoped-for "end of February" date to begin deployment but hopefully not long after that (announcements will be made when this is finalized).
  • One thing that was found in review was a bug that has been in place since September 2016 which prevented sites created since that date from checking for broken links; we will be sending a special reminder about this as sites that have "seemed" to have no broken links may "suddenly" have many.

WCMS 3 update (Kevin Paxman for Joe Kwan)

  • The first of two consultants that will be working with the WCMS team, Chaz Chumley, was on-site for 2.5 days at the beginning of February.
  • The focus of this training was around our new presentation technologies, Pattern Lab and Gesso.
  • Among other things, the consultant was able to help us clarify issues like:
    • Understanding how to use Pattern Lab and Gesso appropriately with Drupal 8; 
    • General best-practices for how to implement both technologies; and 
    • Fundamental of reusability in Drupal 8 that will make it easier and more scalable to integrate with both technologies.
  • The second consultant, Evolving Web, will be on-site this week (tomorrow and Friday) for a technical workshop that will also serve as their primary information gathering exercise.
    • Evolving Web will return in March to deliver tailored D8 training.
  • We have started our discussions with Pantheon, and our project manager continues to work on our contract.
    • No issues of contention are foreseen, our PM anticipates the contact returned from Pantheon with a week or so.

Consulting plan for Drupal 8 (Joe Kwan)

  • We are currently consulting with 3rd party vendors.
  • Looking at best practices, experiences, who has deployed this before. There is also potential for people across campus to help out.
  • There are roughly 800-1000 sites that require to be moved.

Other Business

  • For our monthly WAC meetings, Don reminded the committee that presentations are always welcome! If a member (or a coworker of a member) would like to present, or if you know of some topic that you would like to be covered, please let Don know. As you all know, WAC is a friendly and informal environment, so it is a place one can informally present on a wide range of topics. If you are curious about presenting, please bug Don! 
  • To comment on my recent policy around meeting cancelations, If there is just WCMS updates I will likely cancel the meeting, though I do not like us missing more than one meeting in a row.

Meeting Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 3:25 p.m.