3:00p.m., January 18, 2017. NH 3318
Attendance
Present:
Donald Duff-McCracken (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Herbert Balagtas, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Laurel Forbes, Tasha Glover, Tom Graham, Marlon Griffith, Alison Hitchens, Danielle Jeanneault, Andrea Jennings, Martin LeBlanc, Joe Kwan, Isaac Morland, Liam Morland, Kevin Paxman, Trevor Ridgway, Elizabeth Rogers, Susan Shifflett, Andrew Smith, Michael Tjendra, Heather Wey
Regrets:
Marta Bailey, Janice Cooke, Sarah Forgrave, Chris Francis, Karen Jack, Jim Johnston, Andrew McAlorum, Kayla Snyder
Absent:
Amy Aldous, Alison Gelata, Jennifer Gillies, Jim Johnston, Stephenie Koerne, Joanne McClintock, Amy Meredith, Carlos Saavedra, Lori Suess, Andrea Sweet
Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting
The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as distributed.
Business Arising
None.
Technical update (Kevin Paxman)
Since last meeting:
- Drupal has been upgraded to 7.53
- WCMS 1.13 and 2.3 were released and patched (currently at 1.13.3 and 2.3.2)
- Open Scholar 1.0 alpha was released
- Not specifically WCMS, but of potential interest to the group: git.uwaterloo.ca was upgraded to GitLab Community Edition 8.15.4.
- Accessibility link in footers changed on production sites
Slack channels launched:
- Sarah Forgrave launched webadvisorycommittee.slack.com for Web Advisory Committee members
- We launched uwweb.slack.com for more general campus-wide web discussion
- Open to anyone with an @uwaterloo.ca email address
Coming soon:
- WCMS 1.13.4 with a security fix and rolling the footer change out to other servers
- WCMS 2.4.0 with many changes, which will be announced with release notes
- Notable “bigger” highlights:
- Footer change
- Branding updates
- Fixes for multiple facts and figures
- Bulk image upload for image galleries
- “Path report” for site managers to see pages with “external internal” links
- Slack notification capability for needs review and/or published
- Notable “bigger” highlights:
- Open Scholar 1.0 Beta
- Releases expected around end of January, exact date TBD
Other news:
- Current sprint focus is Open Scholar for the beta release, upcoming sprints will be focused on Open Scholar for the “final” release.
- We received congratulations from University of Colorado Boulder for being the #1 higher ed organization contributing to Drupal via Kevin Reynan’s Twitter and the University’s Web Central site.
- Contributions don’t have to be limited to the WCMS team; if you contribute on drupal.org, please consider adding the University of Waterloo to your profile as your workplace.
- The @uwaterlooweb Twitter account is back starting this month after being silent since October 2013
- Will Tweet about the WCMS and the web in general.
- Let me know if you have content you’d like me to Tweet.
- Developer drop-ins have ended for the time being; looking for a more effective replacement or replacements – open to suggestions!
- Would anyone be interested in a SEW course?
- Presentation slides from WatITis session WCMS Development 101 are on the WatITis site:
- May do a recording of the talk
- Slides from other WCMS-related talks are also posted:
- Open Scholar
- Let’s Git Going
- Andrew’s talk on Dealing with Capacity and Demand
- Campus map presentation “Come to this session or get lost”
- Developer documentation is now on Web Resources
- As of Wednesday at 4:00am the Google Search Appliance was serving 721769 URLs and received 8016 search requests in the previous 24 hours
Training and support (Andrea Jennings)
Migrations and training – by the numbers
Since November 16, 2016:
- 684 sites live
- 10 new sites have launched (in responsive theme)
- 34 sites have relaunched in the responsive theme (274 sites in the responsive design)
- 3 single page sites
- 1 conference site
- 66 in progress on pilots (50 are responsive)
- Clients to Drop-in lab: 51 clients
- WCMS training courses: 123 attendees
What’s happening with the WCMS?
- A reminder that the WCMS responsive generic template options are now available upon request for appropriate use cases.
- Email was sent to POCs who have generic non-responsive WCMS sites to let them know.
- WCMS migration to responsive cut-off date – August 31, 2017
- The point of contact (POC) for each site should submit an RT to set up a scheduled migration as soon as possible in advance of this date.Additional details are available at https://uwaterloo.ca/web-resources/wcms-users/training-and-support/wcms-how-documents/move-to-responsive.
- Organizational charts can now be created by applying the style to an unordered list.
- Site managers can now remove or change the expiry of the form editor role once it has been assigned to a user (the role must still be added by the WCMS training and support team).
New to Web Resources
- UWaterloo Scholar information and support documents are now available on Web Resources.
- Contain: Guidelines for use; information for maintaining an accessible website; how to create and manage site content.
NOTE: This service is currently available as an alpha release. The beta version will be released in January 2017 (tentative).
- WCMS updates are now also posted on the Web Resources blog for future reference.
Reminders!
- Start of a new term is a great time to review site permissions!
- Lynda.com IST-WCMS playlist is available. The playlist will answer questions like: What is responsive design? What is Drupal, and why do we use it? How do I create and maintain an effective website within the WCMS?
- There is now a Slack group for everything web at the University! It is open for everyone with an @uwaterloo.ca email address to join - https://uwweb.slack.com/signup.
Web courses
Check out the SEW courses offered throughout January and February!
Drop-in lab
WCMS Drop-in lab open regularly scheduled hours throughout October: Tuesdays & Thursdays - 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm in MC 2060.
- The lab will be closed February 16 for scheduled maintenance.
If you require special arrangements outside of the regular drop-in hours please contact Andrea, ajenning@uwaterloo.ca.
New Training and Support co-op!
Aaron Lo will be joining our team for the winter term. Aaron will be providing WCMS training and support, migration and quality assurance testing services, and creating and maintaining course and online documentation.
Single-page and FDSU brand updates
- Martin LeBlanc provided a demonstration of the brand changes made to single-page and FDSU themed sites.
- The goal is to make cosmetic changes with minimal impact to web maintainers.
- These changes will be released with the WCMS 2.4 release around the end of January – beginning of February.
Other business
Infrastructure Architecture (IA) working group will likely meet at end of this month or early February; Joe Kwan will reach out to the group.
Meeting adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 p.m.