Web Advisory Committee Minutes - March 21, 2018

3:00p.m., March 21, 2018. NH 3318

Attendance

Present:

Donald Duff-McCracken (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Herbert Balagtas, Lannois Carroll-Woolery, Janice Cooke, Beth Cotter, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Graham Faulkner, Laurel Forbes, Chris Francis, Tom Graham, Troy Grandy, Marlon Griffith, Danielle Jeanneault, Andrea Jennings, Joe Kwan, Andrew McAlorum, Liam Morland, Kevin Paxman, Trevor Ridgway, Elizabeth Rogers, Michael Tjendra, Mirko Vucicevich, Heather Wey, Annaka Williemsen

Regrets:

Daniella Cross, Tasha Glover, Melissa Holst, Adrienn Kennedy, Stephenie Koerne, Martin LeBlanc, Isaac Morland, Carrie Nickerson, Susan Shifflett, Melanie Scott, Kayla Snyder, Lori Suess, Andrew Smith, Jodi Szimanski, Claire Taylor, Chao Yang

Absent:

Sarah Forgrave, Jim Johnston, Carlos Saavedra, Andrea Sweet

MyResearch (Christine Gillis Bilton, Neil McKay)

Neil McKay, Srusht Dastan and Karina Liberati presented on myResearch and provided a demonstration on the tool. Topics included:

  • What is myResearch
  • Integration
  • Progress
  • Demo

View the full presentation on myResearch

Comments and discussion

  • Most of the content comes from HR and supplemented by metadata collected through publications. Users can then choose to add as they please.
  • What is the difference between UWaterloo Scholar and myResearch?
    • We are still working on the best way to differentiate the two for potential users. UWaterloo Scholar will be more customizable where as myResearch has a lot of the data automatically generated.
    • A comparison could be that myResearch is like LinkedIN for researchers and UWaterloo Scholar is more of a personal site for additional content (not exclusively research).
  • Is this service available for post-doctoral or grad students?
    • Currently just available for tenure-track, tenured and adjunct professors.
  • At this point you can only access the site from an IP address on campus. We want researchers to be comfortable with the tools/site before we open it up publicly.
  • We should discussed the potential impact on People Profiles on the WCMS.
    • Don Duff-McCracken will look to set up a separate meeting for those interested in this discussion.
  • The site is hosted in the cloud in Ireland.

Approval of the minutes of January meeting

The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as distributed.

Business Arising

None.

Web Accessibility compliance project (Andrew McAlorum)

Andrew McAlorum provided an update on the Web Accessibility Compliance project.

  • We are entering stage 2 of the project; the first stage was the environmental scan of UWaterloo sites. Working with Joyce Barlow in Accessibility who is leading this project.
    • 60% of UW sites are in the WCMS; 500 sites outside of the WCMS.
    • Site framework within the WCMS is automatically considered to be accessible (albeit content on the sites may not be).
  • The second stage of the project is to determine how to remediate the 500 sites outside of the WCMS to ensure they meet AA compliance by 2021.
  • The WCMS training and support team will be reaching out to the POCs from our database to determine next steps.
    • This could include deleting the site if it is no longer needed or offering to migrate their sites to the WCMS.
  • If sites require authentication do they still need to meet this compliance standard?
    • The primary requirement for accessibility is for public sites. This does not mean we can ignore authenticate sites as it is still important that it is accessible for anyone using them still. But the current concern is public facing sites.
  • As part of the university wide effort to become compliant, Policy 58 includes a blurb regarding web related accessibility.
  • If you are unsure your site is compliant you can use the WAVE tool (Chrome has an extension you can use or the WAVE site itself).

Waterloo Content Management System (WCMS) updates

Technical update (Kevin Paxman)

  • Focus points in our current sprint, other than Drupal 8, include contrib module updates, term merging capabilities for the event tag and blog tag taxonomies, a generic “catalog” content type, and AssetBank integration.
  • UWaterloo Scholar 1.4 was released on March 15th. We now allow retired faculty to request and be granted access (no security group defines “retired faculty”), and we now use version 2.0 of the ORCID API. Full release notes: https://uwaterloo.ca/web-resources/news/uwaterloo-scholar-14-release
  • WCMS 2.6.1 was released to pilots and dev sites on March 19th; an announcement is expected shortly but we are expecting to release it to sites on the forms server, the voting server, and the University home page on Thursday, March 22nd, and to production sites starting on Monday, March 26. As mentioned previously, it’s mostly contrib module updates, bug and accessibility fixes, with some minor feature improvements. Full release notes: https://uwaterloo.ca/web-resources/news/wcms-version-261-release

Training update (Andrea Jennings)

Migrations and training – by the numbers

  • 779 sites live
  • 57 in progress on pilots
  • WCMS training courses: 4,097 attendees
  • WCMS drop-in lab attendees: 1,307

On Web Resources

  • Web courses
    • All SEW courses offered throughout March and April are posted on the Web Resources website.
  • Co-op SEW099 course registration
    • Have you hired a co-op student to work on your site in the WCMS? Co-op student training will be offered May 2 and 3 from 9:00-12:00 in MC 1078 (this is the SEW099, Content Maintainers course). They must attend both mornings to get credit.
    • Register your co-op student for the training.

Drop-in lab

The lab will be closed on Thursday, April 5 while we attend the OHD Staff Conference.

Regularly scheduled WCMS Drop-in lab hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays - 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm in MC 2060.

If you require special arrangements outside of the regular drop-in hours please contact Andrea, ajenning@uwaterloo.ca.

What’s happening with the WCMS?

  • Release of WCMS v.2.6.1
    • Working with developers to test elements included in the upcoming WCMS 2.6.1 release. Of interest to site maintainers: Site managers can now delete embedded facts and figures and embedded call to action content.

Archiving WCMS site requests/retrieving content of culled sites

We do not offer archiving services for WCMS sites no longer needed, and we do not maintain backups of sites that have been culled after an extended period of time. But, you have options!

  • For ‘archiving’ your site, you can use software like Wget to essentially download a copy of your site.
  • For retrieving content from a culled site, you can try the web archive on The Wayback Machine.

The WCMS for Content Maintainers (SEW099) is now available on LEARN!

SEW099 is now piloting on LEARN, scheduled for release May 1, 2018…

We’re now offering site maintainers the option of completing the SEW099 course at a time and location that fits their schedule! Users will self-register on LEARN, and our team will then be in touch with the information and resources they need to complete the course online. Watch the Web Resources site for more information!

External website vendor obligations (Joe Kwan)

  • It has gotten to a point where we need to consider formalizing obligations for vendors to deliver work to us that is accessible.
  • Two kinds of agreements to consider:
    • RFP (high price): these are easier to enforce stipulations regarding what they are to provide us.
    • Lower price agreements that do not require RFPs become more difficult to enforce requirements.
  • Further discussion on this topic is required.

Potential guidelines around UW web applications (Marlon Griffith)

Due to time constraints this item will be discussed at the next meeting.

Other business

None.

Meeting adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 4:28 p.m.