Tonight we have the opportunity to move forward on a step necessary for the deployment of our homepage in Drupal. We will be moving the ALA Website to new infrastructure tonight at 5:00pm. We estimate the outage to be no more than 30 minutes.
We will post a text message on the ALA homepage announcing the maintenance.
Thank you.
Sherri
1. Web Working Group, WWG (formerly Wed Editorial Board) – Eric Cameron, Program Officer ALA Public Programs Office and co-convenor of the new Web Working Group
Eric covered the mission and scope of the new Web Working Group as outlined below.
Mission: To create and maintain a strong web presence for ALA by incorporating best practices and trends, with a shared strategic vision.
Rationale: To optimize resources by engaging stakeholders across the association in actively sharing and implementing best web practices, rather than current editorial-only focus. To increase ITTS’s effectiveness without adding resources. To make policy and high-level recommendations to and receive such recommendations from ALA Management Group.
Who: Rotating conveners (elected by group), with staggered 12-month terms. Group open to all; outreach will be made to any units that the group identifies as lacking needed representation, especially if projects affecting that unit are planned. Two levels of participation possible: participatory or serving as representative/liaison (following in Connect only).
New scope:
– Policy/ high-level recommendations to and from ALA Management Group
– Develop objectives for web presence
– Discussion forum for stakeholders (key feature)
– Representative and inclusive group with flexibility of membership, and short-term ad hoc groups for specific projects
– A *working* group, with time commitment on a self-selected basis (mirroring the social media group which has been both creative and productive)
– Resource for colleagues–reach out proactively
Suggested activities/responsibilities/outcomes:
– Work with trainer to identify training needs.
– Work with Usability Officer to continuously improve website.
– Make recommendations about priorities for ALA web presence.
– Bring to group issues/proposals/changes that affect the selection and display of items on the homepage, and the top level left navigation menu, prior to implementation
– Help units adopt best practices (e.g., migrate a Word Press site to Drupal, or replicate effective ideas from other units) including implementation of microsite guidelines
– Provide coaching [and fun] for building new skills
– Create updated style guide for Drupal
– Organize informal information-sharing events open to all staff, similar to recent social media group brown bag lunches
– Track specific pages needing review; identify “owners” of seemingly abandoned pages or areas
– Identify projects, gather input, develop draft and have conveners/stakeholders take to Management Group
– Use group to help develop association-wide buy-in so changes are easier to make and more effective
– Develop pilot projects as examples of an improvement
– Solicit feasibility/analytic input from ITTS
– Identify projects deemed critical by the larger group for consideration for inclusion in ITTS budget
The new group is a successor to Web Editoral Board (WEB). WEB started out selecting News and Highlights for the ALA homepage. WEB’s charge then expanded to cover other areas on the ALA website. WEB outgrew its orginal charge and decided to redefine its mission to encompass its new role.
WWG serves two functions:
1) To identify Projects & Initiatives that need to be addressed
2) To be the Representative body of all stakerholders
Co-convenors are Eric Cameron, Mary Mackay, and Gwendolyn Prellwitz
Two levels of participation possible: participatory or serving as representative/liaison (following in Connect only). Representatives/liaisons can bring issues to the group.
WWG is a central place to think about what ALA and its related websites do.
2. Drupal CMS Migration Update – Louise Gruenberg
The homepage is the only content that is being served by Collage web servers. We plan to migrate the ALA homepage on May 9th, barring any unforeseen complications. We are configuring new server hardware for load balancing to handle the increased traffic and URL rule sets.
The Drupal book module is now available. It allows you to create web pages that will build a PDF for download. Eric Cameron will explore the application of module.
Lightbox is now available in Drupal. This application allows you to expand the display of an image or text file on the website.
A submission form for adding hightlights to website pages has been developed on the ALA training site. The form will be made available for staff to use very soon.
A feedback form for members and the public has been developed for various sections of the website. The feedback form will route information to appropriate staff based on the section of the site they’re visiting. The feedback form will be deployed as soon as minor revisions are implemented.
3. ALA Connect – Sherri Vanyek
We’ve had many members and staff helping us beta test the redesign of ALA Connect. The feedback to date has been very positive. Jenny has been giving tours of the new design to staff. We hope to finish up with last minute revisions based on the feedback received very soon. The launch is scheduled to take place in May 2012.
4. Ecommerce RFP – Sherri Vanyek
The new ecommerce system will replace the old Active Matter system that members currently use to join or renew their membership, register for small events and continuing education, fund raising, subscriptions, and profile management. We have been meeting with various stakeholders across the association to gather requirements. We plan to draft a RFP and circulate it for review. The funds for this project will be available in the fiscal year 2013, which begins on September 1, 2012.
5. Virtual Meeting Software Update – Sherri Vanyek
We are looking at various solutions for the association. It was noted at the meeting that ease of use is very important. Sherri and Louise will meet with the ALA Online Learning Task force on Thursday, April 26 to discuss findings.
6. New Categories and Priorities for Track-It!– Irene Marquez
Track-IT Priorities (implemented 4/3/2012)
1. Just a casual question, comment, idea, suggestion…
2. I need some help but it’s not super time sensitive.
3. I can’t get things done until I hear back from you, please reply ASAP.
4. Things are broken and I’d like them not to be!
5. OMG! EXTREME CRITICAL EMERGENCY!! EVERYTHING’S BROKEN! People are DYING!
Track-IT Categories (implementation 04/25/2012)
1. ! Server Down !
2. Access Rights
3. ALA Software: Accounting
4. ALA Software: Outlook
5. ALA Software: iMIS
6. Hardware Support
7. Phones
8. Procurement
9. Email Marketing/Lists
10. Training
11. Web – ala.org
12. Web – ALAConnect
13. Web – Apps & Forms
14. Web – Blog, Sympa, Wikis
15. Web – Drupal on Dreamhost
16. Web – Moodle
17. Web – Other (KM, JobLIST, Store)
18. z-Other
Feedback on the priorities have been very positive.
151 categories were whittled down to 18. The group felt “ALA Software: Email” should be changed to “ALA Software: Outlook” and “Reports” should be changed to “Email Marketing/Lists”. The list was updated and implemented around 5:30pm yesterday.
7. Investigating Remote Office Worker Functionality – Sherri Vanyek
We are investigating several solutions to provide remote office worker functionality. We plan to make this available to all staff. Our current Citrix solution is being used by our remote offices. We are looking at application virtualization or desktop virtualization as possible options. We are also looking at different options for NetStorage file sharing.
1. CMS Update (Louise)
Things are moving along
Everything will go into the review stage during the next few weeks
Showed the new versions of PLA, I Love Libraries, LLAMA, AASL, RUSA, ASCLA, LITA, YALSA (some of which still need some work) but are displaying at some level in the new system
Hope that all divisions will have first round of pages on the review site by the end of this week
Then we’ll start on the round tables, offices, and sections
Reviewers should begin hearing from Louise soon
Will take PLA live when Shibboleth is ready, hopefully next week
When your site is ready to go live, you do one last lookover with ITTS on Monday
Tuesday the site is frozen and the migration starts
Go live on Wednesday (can rollback to old site if things don’t go well)
Thursday you come to training (Friday if you can’t make Thursday)
Member volunteers will all eventually get trained, starting with iLinc webinars
Screenshot-based documentation and training will probably become available in December
We’ll be taking sites live on a rolling basis as they’re ready
Shibboleth is moving forward, with just one remaining hangup to get it working on the dev sites
2. Connect update (Jenny)
Showed the new “Suggestions” feature that will be coming soon
Connect Roadmap for FY12:
3. Service outage on Tuesday, September 22, 2011, 5:30-8:30 pm CDT – corrected date (Sherri)
Hopefully the following services will only be down for a few hours early Wednesday evening
Staff: if you’re already logged in to the network, you’ll be able to keep working after 5:30 pm CDT; otherwise you won’t be able to log in during the outage
We’ll put up a message on the public sites when this happens so that users will see a meaningful message
1. iMIS 15 Upgrade this weekend (Sherri)
the upgrade to iMIS 15 will begin on Friday, March 18, at 5pm – see previous blog post for reasons, expectations
it will take 21 hours for the database to update
desktop rollouts begin on Saturday afternoon, starting with MACS, Accounting, plus web interfaces
will then work around the building to upgrade everyone
the upgrade will include the fundraising module, although staff might not get access to log in to it until Tuesday at the latest
Sheila has prepared some materials comparing versions; it will be distributed soon, but not much has changed in the interface
one significant change is how iMIS 15 handles usernames and passwords
staff will be able to use the same login info to access the website, Connect, and iMIS; this will take effect on Monday, at which point you’ll log in using one password for all three resources
your username will be first-initial-lastname
formal communication went out to the membership on Monday, March 14
members who can’t log in can get help from MACS, although they’ll now be able to reset their passwords themselves via the website
reports should still work the same as before
2. Connect (Jenny)
– Welcome message: we’ll be implementing a new “welcome” message on the home page that helps new users get started
– Highlights, font color: you can now change the color of text or the background on it when using the WYSIWYG editor for easier highlighting and collaboration
– File repository: did a demo of this new feature; it’s ready to go, except for one bug that occurs with Internet Explorer 7 users; unfortunately, OJC’s programmer is on vacation for 3 weeks, so we won’t be able to fix this problem and implement it until he returns; look for this to go live the week of April 11
– Chat: we think we’ve found a solution for restoring chat to Connect; will begin internal testing next week; if it works, we hope to go live with it in April
– New hosting environment: during the next few weeks, we’ll be migrating Connect to a new, more robust hosting environment that can handle the traffic and server load for Annual
– Conference Scheduler: next month we’ll begin work on phase two of the Conference Scheduler, which will add more features for attendees
3. CMS Project Update (Louise)
will be working to migrate the awards database to Drupal in order to make the data can run ALA units’ pages so that no one has to maintain them manually
if you haven’t worked with Louise to set a migration date, you need to do so ASAP because you’ll get slotted into any open spot
we’ll be making the schedule public soon
delete from Collage anything you don’t want to migrate and then let Louise know the URLs
remember you can keep copies in the web archive if need be
4. Dreamhost outage (Rob)
yesterday there was a big outage (3am CDT) when Dreamhost’s core network crashed (all of their hosted sites, not just ours)
around noon they restored access to our server and our sites came back online
it was a network connectivity issue – the servers were fine and weren’t touched
1. Web presence snapshot (Jenny, Louise)
In December, Keith Michael Fiels asked the Web Editorial Board (WEB) to coordinate a snapshot of activity on ALA’s various websites and channels
This snapshot will include everything from our website to social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter and will take place the week of February 28, 2011
Units will be asked to report statistics about activity on their various sites by the end of the day on Wednesday, March 9 using an online form ITTS is currently creating
Because ALA’s web-based presence is so large and diverse, we’ll only be measuring activity for “big ALA,” offices, initiatives, divisions, and round tables at this time
More information about this project, along with instructions for gathering the statistics, can be found at http://itts.training.ala.org/node/221
Please be sure to read through that page in order to understand what your unit needs to do before the snapshot starts on February 28 and afterward in order to submit your statistics by March 9
Contact Louise Gruenberg or Jenny Levine with questions
2. Wiki & blog migration status (Rob)
Any remaining sites must be migrated by April 8
The week of April 18 is when the wikis.ala.org migration will start
Once the wikis are moved over, they’ll be subject to the new notification and lock scripts so a sysadmin has to log in periodically to keep them unlocked
If you need your wiki back up quickly, contact Rob to get in the queue higher up since downtime can last up to a week
3. CMS migration (Louise)
We’re about to spin up the virtual servers in order to start implementing code
We’re going to start work on single sign-on with Connect
Currently seeking feedback on design for division templates
The ALA home page won’t change in terms of content and structure during this migration
Hope everyone is working on their web mitigation snapshots
4. iMIS 15 rollout (Sherri)
Ran into a snag with the desktop installation due to the way iMIS 10 was installed, which has delayed the project
We still plan to move to iMIS 15 in March and we’ll communicate the date as soon as we have it
It’s very similar in the way things are laid out, so there shouldn’t be a big learning curve (just some color changes)
Most of the things that are different are in the backend
5. Agreement with Verizon (Irene)
We just signed a contract to change our long-distance provider
There’s a “small conference call” option now; can have up to 20 callers for “instant” meetings at 2.7 cents/minute
If you require more than 20 callers, rate is the same but you have to call to reserve ahead of time
To set that up, call them but Irene can provide the rates
We also have the ability to do netmeetings, 17 cents/minute plus voice call
No licensing, anyone can set one up, you don’t pay for it if you don’t use it
There’s a web moderator tool where you can see your usage
Currently costs 2.2 cents per minute for 5 callers using just your phone for conference calling
Should be set up by the end of February
70 staff members are being set up with access to the interface, so watch for an email from Verizon (which might end up in your junk email folder)
Irene will send email about this as it happens
Not sure if the call has to originate at ALA – will ask
Irene set up every unit manager and a few other staff members but she can add others as needed
6. Adjourned
The iMIS 15 upgrade has been scheduled for February 15, 2011. The upgrade is needed because the version we currently have will not be supported in the future. We will also gain access to new web services that will be needed for the future. The new interface is a little different and Sheila will be developing training materials for the rollout. She will also hold training sessions on the new interface and features of the release.
The majority of the wikis and blogs have been migrated. Please notify Rob Berquist (rberquist@ala.org) if you have been contacted. We would like to finish this project as soon as possible.
Enhancing your ALA Staff Directory record with your photo and expertise was discussed at the last ITTS News meeting and now step-by-step instructions are ready and we encourage everyone to go through the process of enhancing their record. Instructions and videos are available on the ITTS Training Web site. These instructions are in the staff-only area of the Web site so you will need to login with the proper staff-only credentials. A link to the ITTS Training Web site and login information is included in the Staff Tools area of the homepage of the KMS. An all staff email will also be sent with information on how to access the instructions.
Adding photos and expertise to the Staff Directory is a Keith Michael Fiels initiative.
At the last News meeting, concerns were raised about storing home and phone numbers in one’s staff record. This information is no longer visable to anyone perusing your record. The only place this number will be used is when the Call Tree is transferred to the KMS and a supervisor would only see the numbers of those people they are responsible for calling in the event of an emergency.
If you find out of date information in the KMS Staff Directory, please submit a Track-IT! request reporting your findings so they can removed.
We didn’t want to conflict with activities during the recent board meetings, so the upgrade has been put off until some time in November. We will let you know the exact date when it is rescheduled.
Progress: Louise is meeting with unit managers to give them their Web Snapshot Reports, to discuss strategic objectives and plan mitigation efforts. Meetings are scheduled between now and mid-December
Training: Sheila has developed a Moodle class with support materials for the website cleanup. The access URL and instruction key are provided in a link in the Web Snapshot Report. She provided a tour of the course, “Liberation from Collage” and recommends that staff and member-volunteers engaged in mitigation efforts use the course in parallel as they work through the items on their lists.
New Enhancements: Irene demonstrated how to search for yourself in the Staff Directory, add information, upload a photo (it has to have the same number of pixels for the length and the width), and add expertise. Reminder: the Staff Directory on the website pulls from the KM, so please maintain your correct job title and phone extension. There’s a bug that exposes your home phone to people looking at your profile in the KM (not the website) when it should limit that information to the Call Tree. Please wait until you get the all-clear before adding that information.
Irene also demonstrated how to register for a class in the Orientation & Training area of the KM by clicking on its name. (Register for multiple events by using the checkboxes and the Register/Unregister link at the top and bottom of the page.) You will receive a meeting invitation that you can accept to add the class to your Outlook calendar. Unregister by (you guessed it) going back to the KM, selecting the checkbox next to the class and clicking the Register/Unregister link.
To prevent spam from overtaking ALA wikis, Rob has developed a script that reviews the login status of the wiki’s sysops. If no one with sysop privileges has logged in during the last 90 days, the wiki is locked and becomes read-only. Please upgrade staff and member-volunteers who maintain wikis to sysop status. Sheila will send the link to the instructions. If a wiki is locked down and needs to be revived, check with Rob Berquist.
From Sheila: To learn how an administrator can assign roles on their wiki, please start here: http://training.ala.org/sandboxwiki/index.php?title=First_Visit#Upgrading_Users_to_Administrators.2C_Bureaucrats_or_Bots
Anyone can learn more about establishing and caring for a Wiki from this Sandbox Wiki. In the future, you can access it by going to the Wiki section of the ITTS Training Website at: http://training.ala.org/a/wikis.
Jenny will be providing more Twitter sessions for those who tweet and retweet. Check the Orientation & Training schedule on the KM in the next week or so, and use the one-click registration method Irene demonstrated to sign-up.
Those with iLINC accounts have already received an email about the situation preventing us from having the use of all four of our rooms whenever four ALA staff users with accounts are in a session, any session. Because units already have resources attached to their user accounts, we don’t necessarily want to delete user accounts. Our workaround is to have anyone on staff who is attending but who is not leading the session login with a personal email address rather than their staff email. Those logging in with personal emails rather than staff logins get guest accounts that can be set up to be assistants and actively manage the meeting without triggering the system to think we’re using another room. See the email message or Connect iLINC Early Adopters community posting for more information. Units that are willing to trade in their personal accounts for a generic unit_user account attached to their unit email should enter a TrackIT ticket.
Tags: iLINC Issue
Rob is contacting units to schedule the migrations; submit a Track-It ticket if you want to discuss timing before he contacts you
many of our wikis seem to be informational and aren’t updated much
a lot of them are getting spammed to the point where they’re unusable
Rob has developed a script that checks for any admin activity in the last 90 days
if the admin hasn’t logged in during the last 90 days, it will send an email to the address listed for that account to let them know the site is being converted to “read-only” status
this means updates/edits will no longer be possible, but Rob can always reverse the read-only status so that it can be edited if changes need to be made at some point
this will prevent spammers from creating new accounts and vandalizing the wikithe new blogs/wiki server is working amazingly well and is nice and clean
We also upgraded chat a few weeks ago; there have been no reports of users getting kicked out of chat rooms since the upgrade was installed.
There are some new features that came with the upgrade (see next blot post for more details), but you can now:
– Pop the chat out into its own window
– Pause autoscrolling
– Make the box you type in bigger by pulling down the bottom border of the box
Right now, we’re working on offering the ability to do “drafts” so that you can start writing something and stave it but not publish it yet.
This fall, we’ll be working on the new conference scheduler (used to be known as the “event planner”) and giving each group its own file repository. We’re also going to redesign the Connect home page and group home pages so that they’re easier to read and use.
These three major projects will take up the bulk of our time, so there won’t be a lot of smaller enhancements until either December or January.
the Library has become less reactive to questions and more proactive to get the information out there and reorganized ahead of time
they’ve have been working on the Guidelines and Standards section, the Library FAQ Sheets, an A-Z of topics
they’re also doing interventions in major areas because then the number of questions about that subject drop when work is done to address problems
one of the problems has been the Policy Manual, which was originally posted as a straight translation of the print version to the web (150 print pages as one long scrolling page)
– the Library has redone it, with Rebecca taking the lead to work with Lois Ann and the Governance Office
Karen showed work that was done to make it a true web document, such as making the data that needed to be in tables accessible, adding anchors for navigation, and adding a section for recent changes
they’re still building the left navigation
ITTS fixed everyone’s links to the Policy Manual and deployed the pages so the links wouldn’t break
please be sure to link to the new version, rather than reproducing it (or sections of it) elsewhere on the site
the Library has begun working with OIF to restructure some of its pages and is starting another project with the Governance Office
Will email a survey link to the folks who attended to get detailed feedback
Asked for feedback about the first vendor meeting on Monday
Next vendor is scheduled to come in on Thursday
Hope to make an announcement sometime after August 1 so the lawyers can start on the contract
Recent enhancements to Connect include:
– Rotating banners on the home page to help highlight all of the new features and changes
– You can now compare versions of online docs to see what actually changed (the way you can on wikis or on new press releases). Just go to the “revisions” tab on an online doc, select which two versions you want to compare, and click on the “show diff” button.
– In the email notifications for updates to online docs, we’ve added a line that links you directly to the revisions page so that you can immediately go see what’s changed.
– Right now we’re working on implementing HTML formatting in email notifications in order to make them more legible. We know it’s difficult to read blocks of unformatted text, so we hope to make this easier.
– In the last two weeks, three new versions of the chat module have been released, so we’re currently testing the latest one to see if we can go live with it to try to resolve the problems that some users encounter when using the chat function. We’ll report back on the testing soon but even if it’s successful, we believe the links to past chats will still be broken, so we’ll again have to give folks time to archive their chats before implementing the new version on the live site. More news on the blog as we have it.
MemberFuse pilot restarting
This is the project to test some software called MemberFuse to see if it’s a potential replacement for Drupal to run Connect. Although we got some good feedback from a handful of folks in late May and early June, things kind of died off as we got into Annual. We’re going to add a few more testers and restart the pilot so that it runs July 26 – August 15. If any staff person wants totry it out and give us feedback, please contact Jenny to get access.
Inventory project
inventorying each unit’s pages and deleting unneccesary ones
took three weekends to finish the inventory of each unit’s content
only removed content that had already been removed from the website by someone in the unit, so no live pages should have disappeared
we removed 20,000 pages, so we hope that will help with deploys since we’re not trying to publish thousands of removed pages anymore
HTML Tidy project
we had a version customized for us to remove font tags, inline formatting, and non-XHTML compliant code, as well as alert us to other accessibility issues
we have to take files from the website, run them through HTML Tidy, and then return them to Collage
we’ll be starting to run the program on unit’s files but will coordinate with each unit because we have to lock out authors during the run so that the files don’t change
units will receive a before and after “snapshot” of the changes to show the differences
it took Rebecca less than a minute to make most of the changes suggested for the Library’s pages
question: what are the options for loading new CSS files in Collage for migrating tables?
answer: we can figure out a way to add the necessary code, hopefully as a universal solution for everyone
Louise showed the newish Online Learning section of the website since it’s gone live since our last meeting
we’ll be adding Round Tables as contributors
trying to get all units to use the templates for uniform display of information
Louise also showed the revamped Conferences & Events section of the website
work was done to condense the “calendar of events” area down to three: affiliates & chapters, American Libraries Magazine’s, and a new list of celebration/promotional weeks/days
happening on Wednesday, July 21, around 5:30pm
the current content will be copied onto a brand new server using the latest version of Moodle
classes.ala.org may be down for up to 4 hours while the DNS propagates
there don’t seem to be any interface changes, although there are a lot of new report options available for instructors; most folks shouldn’t notice any change at all.
we’ve posted an announcement on the Moodle site for the last week and did a post on the ITTS blog last week
ITTS has worked with the Library to add “expertise” and staff photos to the staff directory in the KM system
Sheila is working on documentation for how staff can add information to both; it should be ready in mid-August
all you need is a square image of yourself to add your picture
Karen showed how to use the expertise directory to find who in the building is a notary public, just as an examlpe
we’re migrating from a single, private server on Dreamhost to two new private servers on Dreamhost
why now?
because we have some intrusions on our current server that are serving up pharmaceutical ads
this happened because we have a lot of blog and wiki software on Dreamhost that is very out-of-date
going forward, we’ll be upgrading all blog and wiki software at once as soon as new versions become available
the main issue will be that if you have a custom theme for your site (in other words, you’ve changed a default one in some way), you may have to re-install it after the upgrade
unfortunately, whole domains will have to be moved at the same time (eg, pio.ala.org, alcts.ala.org, etc.), so Rob will work with each unit to coordinate timing
for content you don’t need anymore, ITTS can archive it on a DVD, although that will just be the data and not necessarily a way to easily view it; we’re investigating options for this.
if you want to make a site an online archive, we can migrate it and make it uneditable so that it can’t be spammed
we’ll also be increasing security, like requiring secure FTP, changing everyone’s passwords, and encouraging strong password use
on the plus side, the new servers will run much faster and perform better
The best description possible in the Track-It ticket helps us resolve your issues faster.