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17 Nov 10 ITTS News Meeting 11-16-2010

iMIS 15 Upgrade

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.

Wiki & Blog Migration Status

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.

CMS Project Updates

  • Moving from Discovery to Design: Our vendors are shifting from the discovery phase to the design phase. We expect to have mock-ups for review by the division directors and the Branding, Marketing & Design group in mid-December.
  • Web Snapshots: Louise has met with 9 of 11 division directors and a number of office directors to review web snapshot reports. The members of the Round Table CMS Task Force and their staff liaisons will receive their respective snapshots this week. Units that have done a significant amount of deleting, mitigating, archiving should request a new HTML Tidy report.
  • Demo for How to Archive Web Content: This went off without a hitch. Detailed instructions are in the Liberation from Collage Moodle course (under Miscellaneous) at http://classes.ala.org.

Knowledge Management System Tech Tips

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.

26 Oct 10 ITTS News Meeting 10-26-2010

1. Collage SQL Server Database Upgrade (Jeff)

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.

2. Website Cleanup for Drupal Migration (Louise & Sheila)

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.

Knowledge Management System (Irene)

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.

New Wiki Usage Notification (Rob)

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.

More Twitter Sessions Coming Soon (Sherri)

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.

iLINC Issue (Sheila)

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.

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23 Sep 10 ITTS News Meeting – September 21, 2010

  1. CMS Update (Louise)
    the contract is with the lawyer – we hope to have it signed in October
    Louise is giving an update to Unit Managers at their October 6 meeting
  2. Introducing Jeff Dong, newest member of the ITTS staff (Sherri)
    Jeff’s primary responsibility is for our database servers and the interaction with them (maintenance, upgrades, support, etc.)
    we’re very happy to have Jeff on board
  3. Blogs & wikis migration (Rob)
    Rob is working away on the Dreamhost migration and is making good progress; he’s already about 50% done
    one thing he’s discovered during the process is that themes can get lost for blogs, so make sure you have a copy you can reapply

    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

  4. ALA Connect Updates (Jenny)
    Jenny showed screenshots of the following Connect enhancements:
    – Round Table statistics
    – New link to download all attachments at once
    – Email notifications when someone friends you
    – New option to attach files to comments
    – Added a direct link to the revisions page for online docs in email notifications
    – Position titles now appear on rosters that synchronize with iMIS; note that if a member has two affiliations with a particular group, only the last one listed in iMIS will display in Connect; if that’s a problem, you might want to remove the affiliation you don’t want to display.
    – iMIS groups can no longer be made “open” since the rosters synchronize with the member database
    – We added more options for listing additional education and work history information in profiles
    – Because we’ve added the time and date of an event to the email notification for it, we now require you to pick a time zone; if you don’t, it will say “no time zone selected” instead of listing a time zone, so please be sure to pick one!

    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.

  5. Web Application Firewall (Sherri)
    everything will be down when this is being worked on
    will be between 5-60 minutes at 5pm on Wednesday, October 6 (which is our normal maintenance time)
  6. KM System (Irene)
    we’ll be upgrading the KMS starting at 2pm this Friday (/24)
    it should be back up in a couple of hours, but if you access it during that time and notice something strange, it’s because the system is being upgraded in the background
  7. Web Editorial Board update (Karen)
    meeting summaries are publicly posted to its Connect space, with an email notice sent to unit managers
    there’s a special WEB meeting next week to discuss what needs to be done in preparation for the migration
    the overall message: be prepared to spend some time working on your unit’s content to make it clean and valid

    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

23 Jul 10 ITTS News Meeting – July 20, 2010

  1. New CMS vendor selection (Louise)

    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

  2. ALA Connect (Jenny)

    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.

  3. WEB report (Louise)

    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

  4. Moodle upgrade to 1.9.8 (Rob)

    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

  5. Knowledge Management System (Sherri)

    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

  6. Dreamhost Application Migration (Tim)

    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

  7. Please submit your help requests through Track-It.

    The best description possible in the Track-It ticket helps us resolve your issues faster.

  8. Don’t forget to subscribe to updates from the blog!

18 Jul 08 ITTS Update Meeting – July 15, 2008

1. Web

* Website Redesignhttp://staging.ala.org/preview (Karen)
Change in where you’ll post information to within the website
Might not be “under your office” by default anymore — might be where it best fits by topic
Membership units vs. organizational units – organizational units might have reduced number of pages under “their” section; instead, content from all units will get mashed together by topic
Showed “contact us” as one new, revamped area

Toured the various left-hand navigation menus and explained what is now in each of them (eg, scholarships are now in “education,” not “awards”)

Have broken the news up into 3 main categories
– National/International Views – regular news from American Libraries
– Inside ALA = our press releases
– Legislation & Advocacy

* Knowledge Management System (Karen)

The KM system has a new look!
Toured the new interface
Showed list of magazines checked in today
Showed how you can search databases without having to log in to each one
Site now shows a tag cloud of resources the Library is bookmarking in del.icio.us

* Website Redesign (Rob and Louise)
Some of the new IA is going to be created by staff tagging via a new tagging system
The tagging matches the IA exactly — it’s only available on “ALA live” document type
Showed how to tag items in Collage
Question about rolling up an ACRL event up to Upcoming ALA Events – will check on that
Division sites may become smaller as their resources are located in more main areas
If a division uses this, the page will appear branded elsewhere in the site, not just within the division’s pages

* New Google Search Features (Rob)
Just before Annual, Rob installed some code behind the search box on the home page of the preview ONLY
Google Search Appliance doesn’t do pagerank, so we’ve been working with a consultant to improve the SERP — Search Engine Results Page
First hit (if available) will be an “ALA suggestion” that we configure (example, Newbery)
We can put in any number of these
Next set of hits will be “results from Google” that do use pagerank because the search is run from the big Google search engine; set is limited to ala.org hits
Last section is results from content on our server, which has been cleaned up considerably
– this content is more granular; it just doesn’t have the same sheen of authority that Google or the direct keyword match give it
This customized SERP will eventually be the default for every results page
Have the ability to customize sections for searching and to brand search results for divisions/units
Still have to work with the consultant on including search results from blogs and wikis

Will present two options for implementing the redesign at the unit manager’s meeting tomorrow; decision will be noted in the meeting minutes

** Note that the decision was made to freeze the site for 30 days to do the migration
** Watch for more details about this here on the blog

2. Association 2.0

* Online Communities Update (Jenny)
not much to report yet but work is continuing
Drupal has been installed for about a month, and Urban Insight is installing modules and implementing the interface
work is beginning on the iMIS authentication
the response at Annual was very positive – many members are looking forward to using the new service
Jenny will be doing a task analysis for each module/tool and will post the steps to this blog – please have your committees provide feedback on these! thank you 🙂

* New Capabilities (Matt)
Matt will be providing instructions soon for how to migrate your b2e blog or wiki from the ALA server to Dreamhost

* Demo of how to use OPAL (Sherri and Jenny)
Sherri and Jenny logged into an OPAL room with member Aaron Dobbs
Sherri spoke with Aaron via voice over IP through the computer while Jenny communicated with Aaron via a text chat window

ALA has 4 OPAL rooms available for staff and members to use – 2 rooms with 25 seats each, 1 with 50 seats, and 1 with 100 seats
ALA staff and/or members can use these for meetings, discussions, presentations, and other ALA-related activities for free right now
members can reserve a room by contacting their staff liaisons

Louise sent out documentation for how to book these rooms in Outlook back in March and they are loaded in the KM systemOPAL offers text chat with the option to save the transcript, co-browsing, audio discussions, a whiteboard, and uploading of files for a meeting
the audio portion can be saved to your desktop as an MP3 file you can then post to a blog as a podcast
– or you can post the audio file to a web page so others can download or listen to it (this is not called a “podcast,” though)

you can password-protect a room for private discussions
you can have one way audio for just the presenter

staff are encouraged to purchase a headset to use with OPAL if they are going to use it more than once or twice, as it’s much easier to hear and be heard this way
headsets are not very expensive and can be purchased for around $25 – Maribeth has information if you’re interested

3. Keeping up with developments (Sherri)
Blog w/RSS Feed – http://itts.ala.org/update/
Wikis – http://wikis.ala.org/learningcollage ; http://wikis.ala.org/webplanning

4. Q&A / Wrap-Up
No questions at the end this time

27 Feb 07 KMS Updates – February 2007

The Knowledge Management System was upgraded in January. Users no longer need to provide their context in order to log in. The next phase of development will include system-wide search capability, expanded browse capabilities, the ability to register for training via the KMS, and the new request/response system (aka Feedback Form). Disaster recovery call trees will also be included.

27 Feb 07 Feedback Form Updates – February 2007

ITTS and Library staff met with SydneyPLUS staff in January to look at a prototype of this application to accept and route incoming requests and track responses. Work continues.

01 Dec 06 Feedback Form Updates – November 2006

We are expecting a proposal from Sydney+ regarding the feedback form in early December.

31 Oct 06 KMS Updates – October 2006

Individuals’ library activity (check outs / check ins) has been added to “My Resources.” Work continues on the KMS-based feedback form.

31 Oct 06 Feedback Form Updates – October 2006

ITTS and Library/Knowledge Management Center staff met on October 30 to discuss interface issues for the feedback form. We identified several models on which to base our interface, and Karen Muller has agreed to make a first pass at defining the front page.