ITTS Update

There are a number of usability tests of the division websites scheduled at conference. Interested members should contact their division web content manager to volunteer.

Members are also needed to help with ALA Connect testing on Saturday for about an hour between 1:30 and 3:30 PM. Testers will receive gift certificates to the ALA Store. If you are interested is volunteering for a test, contact me at lgruenberg@ala.org as soon as possible. Note that this is a new time, the previous test was set for Sunday.

Posted by Louise Gruenberg under ALA Website & ALAConnect & Usability Study & Web Planning | 1 Comment »

1. ADP eTime Software (Sheila)

   Because this is browser based, ITTS can’t push out an icon for this. The site will go live in the next day or two.This link from the KM system will *ONLY* work from inside the office. You can’t use it from home.

2. New Security Certificates for ALA websites (Sheila)Will be re-issued on June 18, so you’ll see new prompts to accept these new certificates that use https instead of http.

   Only have to accept the certificate once per browser on any computer you use.

   Certificates apply to the staff wiki, TrackIt help site, and the KM system.

   ITTS will send out a notification on the 18th reminding staff to accept these certificates to gain access to these sites.

   Reminder about a link to the TrackIt help desk is always in the left column of the KM home page.

3. Usability Testing at Annual (Louise)ITTS is doing a series of usability testing focus groups of division pages, the interface for the awards database (if ready), and ALA Connect
4. ALA Connect Update (Jenny)- Email blast to members went out today, and we’re seeing a lot more hits on the site as a result2009 schedule for Connect:
   • June = migrate to Drupal 6
   • July = implement the mentoring network
   • August = implement the opportunities exchange
   • September = implement new search engine
   • October-December = implement new conference event planner for Midwinter 2010

   ITTS has scheduled drop-in Q&As every day at Annual, so tell your members!

   showed some statistics from May, will post new ones to Marginalia this week; 1600+ visits today alone due to the email blast

5. Intro to FriendFeed (Jenny)

   showed FriendFeed, a lifestream aggregator
   - ALA’s account
   - ACRL’s account

Posted by Jenny under ITTS Update meetings | No comments yet»

At the Midwinter Website Advisory Committee meeting, a subcommittee formed to help implement a new conference event planner in ALA Connect. This group has put together a survey to help us learn what members want improved/fixed/added/changed about the current event planner.

You can help us out by completing the survey and giving us specific suggestions for what would help you. If you’ve ever complained about using ALA’s event planner (or even if you haven’t), now’s your chance to actually *do* something about it. Don’t just mutter under your breath - mutter to us. 

The survey will be open through July 19, 2009, and anyone can take it, including non-members. All of the feedback received will help us shape the new event planner, which we hope to implement for the 2010 Midwinter Meeting.

Thank you to WAC members Dave Hargett, Rebecca Jackman, Mary Popp, Jean Rainwater, and William Reed for their invaluable help with this project.

Posted by Jenny under ALAConnect & Web Advisory Committee (WAC) | 1 Comment »

1. ALA Connect Update (Sherri for Jenny)
The site launched April 6, 2009.   Overall the feedback has been positive.
Here are some statistics for ALA Connect for each of the last two weeks, as well as a combined total.
Week 1
———
880 logins, 759 ALA members + 121 non-ALA members
Non-ALA member accounts created: 159
Posts: 78
Online Docs: 93
Calendar Events: 100
Polls/Votes: 11
Discussions: 19
Images: 21

Week 2
———-
708 logins, 636 ALA members + 72 non-ALA members
Non-ALA member accounts created: 82
Posts: 46
Online Docs: 31
Calendar Events: 25
Polls/Votes: 3
Discussions: 13
Images: 3

Total
——-
1588 (1395 ALA members + 193 non-ALA members)
Non-ALA member accounts created: 241
Posts: 124 total
Online Docs: 124 total
Calendar Events: 125 total
Polls/Votes: 14 total
Discussions: 32 total
Images: 24 total

Division, Round Table, & Office web content management communities have been created in ALA Connect.  Please feel free to join them. The easiest way to find then is to search on the term “web” once you are in ALA Connect. (Louise)

ALA Connect Phase II (Sherri for Jenny)
We need to upgrade to Drupal 6 to improve the search engine and add other enhancements.
Phase II will include an advanced search for members, a Craig’s List-like exchange, a mentoring network, and an online Curriculum Vitae.
5. Web Services Health Check (Sherri)
ITTS has selected a Chicago-based company, Pathfinder Development, to perform the web services health check.  We are in the process of negotiating the master service agreement and the statement of work.  We plan to get this underway as soon as possible.

6. Trackit Update (Irene)

ITTS is a little behind in the implementation of Trackit so we extended the deadline to end use of the helpdesk@ala.org email address for staff.  ITTS will send out an email to notify staff when helpdesk.ala.org is no longer available to staff.  Members will still be able to reach us at helpdesk@ala.org.
Staff can start using http://help.ala.org if they’re not already using it
your login is your FirstInitialLastName (eg, jlevine)
contact Sheila for your password if you’ve never used Trackit before
7. Postini Implementation
Postini will become our new email transfer agent.  The agent will filter out messaging threats, including spam and viruses, before they reach our network. By routing inbound and outbound email through their data centers, we can activate robust security policies that will keep our organization secure and compliant.  This also reduces our inbound bandwidth needs by stopping the unwanted email before it reaches our network.  Staff will be able to log on to the Postini site to look at your Spam.  ITTS has one more piece to implement before we go live.  This piece will synchronize our address books so that email can be properly routed to either our email provider or our Sympa list server.

Microsoft Office 2007 Rollout (Sherri and Sheila)
ITTS has rolled out Office 2007 to Publishing and is about to contact the rest of the units to see if they are ready to move ahead.  Sheila is working on some basic documentation that explains what the differences are between 2003 and 2007.  Sheila demonstrated some of the differences.

PC/Laptop Rollout
ITTS is planning to lease the next batch of PC and laptops and will begin the rollout once the equipment is configured.

Posted by Sherri under ITTS Update meetings | No comments yet»

Inbound email was interrupted this morning from 6:15am - 9:45am due to a routing issue at our provider.  Any

email sent to us from outside during this time period was rejected and should be resent.  Internal email was

not affected.

Posted by Sherri under Email Issues | No comments yet»

1. Explanation of ALA Connect privacy settings (Jenny)
Jenny did a demo of the new privacy options for members in ALA Connect
this includes the ability to hide community, division, round table, and section affiliations, but not committees

2. Demonstration of new release of Trackit help desk software (Sheila)
ITTS is going to end use of the helpdesk@ala.org email address for staff on April 8
support requests after that time need to be submitted via Trackit
staff can start using http://help.ala.org if they’re not already using it
your login is your FirstInitialLastName (eg, jlevine)
contact Sheila for your password if you’ve never used Trackit before

feedback@ala.org isn’t going through here
can still call 3273 if you’re computer or internet access is down
this site isn’t open to members - helpdesk@ala.org is only going away for staff use, not members
ITTS is discussing ways to monitor Trackit during holidays

discussion of way to just notify about a potential problem, rather than fill out a full report
ITTS will implement that type of feature in Trackit

3. Brief demonstration on how to schedule meeting rooms in Outlook (Sheila)
Sheila did a demo of how to book meeting rooms and resources in Outlook
this is how you can book a meeting room now, although you need to contact Alicia to actually book the executive conference rooms on the 2nd floor
contact Sheila or Louise to book the training room

there’s a bug that doesn’t show “all day meetings” as “busy,” so you’re better off picking specific times (like 9-5)

Posted by Jenny under ITTS Update meetings | 1 Comment »

In an effort to ease the pain of the wiki migration, ITTS will be moving the entire wikis.ala.org domain to off site hosting this coming Wednesday, March 18th.  This means that rather than moving each wiki to an new individual hostname, as previously planned, all wikis currently hosted at wikis.ala.org will continue to function with the same addresses they currently have.  We will endeavor to make the transition as seamless as possible.  We simply request that you make no changes to your wikis on Wednesday, as changes made while the data is being migrated will be lost.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this migration.

Posted by Matt under Blogs & Wikis | No comments yet»

An anti-virus service failed on one of our email servers last night causing a backlog of incoming email and

some duplicate messages.  The backlog should clear up over the weekend and email should be back to normal on

Monday.  We’re in the process of replacing this email server entirely so that this doesn’t happen again.

Posted by Sherri under Email Issues | No comments yet»

This weekend, the server on which wikis.ala.org and blogs.ala.org are housed encountered a system failure that required in person attention.  It was corrected Sunday evening.  This downtime was not related to the blog migration efforts taking place this weekend, but does illustrate the need to move content off of both sites.  Please let me know (at mivaliotes@ala.org) if you have a blog at blogs.ala.org or a wiki and wikis.ala.org that can be deleted, so we can clean this machine off as soon as possible.

Posted by Matt under Blogs & Wikis | No comments yet»

Emily Woodward of Denver, Colorado was randomly chosen from the group of members who took the online Website Focus Group survey. She will receive a $50 certificate to the ALA Store, courtesy of ITTS. Congratulations, Emily! We hope you have fun shopping.

The twenty-eight members of ALA who participated in the Midwinter Focus Groups will also be receiving $50 gift certificates. Their participation in the 1 1/2 hour sessions was very helpful, and has led to several initiatives to reorganize portions of the website and to reduce the number of broken links. Certificates were mailed today, so keep an eye out for them in your snail-mail.

Posted by Louise Gruenberg under ALA Website & Usability Study | No comments yet»