A Roadmap for Kuali Rice at UC Davis

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Last updated: Mar 01, 2011 by HamptonH (Unlicensed)Version comment
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A Roadmap for Kuali Rice at UC Davis

This document describes a roadmap for Kuali Rice services at UC Davis.  It is intended as a companion to the UC DAVIS KUALI RICE POLICY 200-45 in order to provide information to application managers in support of their strategic planning.  Further information about Rice and the services it provides can be obtained from that source, as well as the Kuali Foundation web site.

Statement of Direction

It is anticipated that Kuali Rice will become a formal standard for campus-level administrative services.  Further, Rice is expected to become an implementation and investment priority for campus-level academic services as well as for departmental services that will be scaled, or might be considered for scaling, across colleges or supported at a campus level. 

As a campus standard, Kuali Rice's interfaces and protocols, such as Kuali Service Bus (KSB) and Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW), will be used by departmental applications to interface with major campus administrative systems.  Finally, an expectation of compatibility with or use of Kuali Rice will be a standard component of our procurement process for major campus software. Specific details regarding campus standards will be developed, published,  and shared with the campus community through a collaborative, evolutionary process.

In anticipation of this standard, Kuali Rice is being introduced at UC Davis in phases.  This document describes significant milestones that will be achieved through that process.  At each of the milestones, we will address the following issues:

  • Requirements addressed / services offered
  • UCD standards implemented
  • UCD standards utilized
  • Production and development platforms provided,
  • Support provided (consulting, documentation, toolkits, etc.)
  • Anticipated impacts
  • Expected lifetime
  • Financial support model
  • Community input

This is intended to be an evolutionary document, modified as required to address the changing environment, both within UC Davis and within the broader communities within UC Davis participates, such as the UC System, higher education, and the IT industry in general.  The fact that it is evolutionary, however, should not discourage IT planners from using the information presented here.  We will also strive to address life-cycle issues, making commitments to specifications and services for specific periods of time to mitigate uncertainty.

Current State (Feb, 2011)

Rice has been in Production since October, 2009 and integrated with the first non-Kuali application, MyInfoVault in early 2010.

  • IET and ARM have agreed to partner in delivering Kuali-based services to UCD. 
    • Anchor Applications
      • ARM is implementing the Kuali Financial System (KFS) and, in partnership with the Office of Research, the Kuali Coeus (KC) research administration system and the Bio-Safety User Authorization (BUA) application.  As mentioned above, IET integrated Kuali Rice with MyInfoVault (MIV), leveraging Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW).
  • Each sponsor of these Anchor Applications have come together to form the Rice Oversight Committee (Co-Chaired by Dave Shelby and Mike Allred).  Supporting this committee, IET convenes two workgroups, the UCD Kuali Rice Project Coordination Workgroup and the UCD Kuali Rice Technical Workgroup for discussion of project management and technical issues, respectively.  These groups are supported with electronic mail lists and a wiki space, /wiki/spaces/UCDK/overview.

Roadmap

  • First Production Release (Q4, 2009) - COMPLETE
    • The first production release occurred in October of 2009 in preparation for the MIV integration.
    • Services Provided.  This release provided the KEW, KSB, KNS, and KIM components of Kuali Rice.   An eDocLite pilot was initiated earlier in the year but it quickly became clear that the limited Rice resources would need to be focused on deploying the central Rice service and integrating with Anchor Applications.
    • Standards implemented.  This release included workflow (KEW) and service bus (KSB).  At the time of this release, KEW and KSB, as defined in UC Davis IT Standards - Service Bus and UC Davis IT Standards - Work Flow, will become the campus standards for workflow and service bus in enterprise administrative applications.  New applications that incorporate workflow or a service bus should plan to use these services.   KNS and KIM will not be required campus standards, except to the extent that they may be required by KEW and KSB.
    • Standards utilized.  KIM will utilize LDAP to interface with UC Davis's identity management infrastructure.  Other identity management interfaces may be required as implementation progresses.
    • Production and development platforms provided,  IET will provide Dev, QA, Staging, and Production platforms for use by the Anchor Applications.  Note that the departments will provide QA, Staging, and Production platforms for their applications; IET hosts only the shared portions of Rice.
    • Support Provided.  Support for developers will be provided by IET through the UCD Kuali Rice Technical Workgroup (electronic mail list and wiki).  Generic Rice documentation is also available from the Kuali web site.
    • Anticipated Impacts.  This is a new deployment of functionality.  No impacts are anticipated.
    • Expected Lifetime.  There is no end of life planned for these services and standards.  While changes are likely at some time in the future.
    • Financial Support Model.  It is IET's assessment that these services can be scaled up to meet increasing campus demand without significant cost beyond the initial investment and normal equipment refreshes.  If, in the future, it is discovered that there are significant usage-sensitive components of the operational cost, IET will work with the campus IT community to determine an appropriate usage-based cost recovery model.
    • Community Input.  The UCD Kuali Project Coordination Workgroup will be the primary venue for community interaction.  Significant issues will also be addressed in the usual IT groups, like DTC and TIF.
    • Unresolved Issues (to be resolved by the UCD Kuali Rice Technical  Workgroup)
      • Completeness and robustness of the web services interfaces.
      • Integration with UCD's Shibboleth IdP vs. CAS
      • The KIM security model for identity attribute release.
      • Naming conventions that provide space for college and departmental applications, as well as inclusion in UC, national, and international collaborations.
      • Additional first-release applications.
      • Policy and procedure for incorporating applications into the development integration, QA, staging, and production environments.
      • Other that may be identified by the UC system-wide IT Architecture Group in early 2009.
  • Second Production Release (Q1, 2010) - COMPLETE
    • The second production release targeted:
      • The integrated with MyInfoVault and was successfully completed in January of 2010
      • The integration of the KFS application into the Integrated (non-Production) Rice environment
    • All services, standards, platforms, support, etc. remained the same as in the First Production Release. 
    • The VPIET office officially joined the Rice Project at the Kuali Foundation Level, including a voting seat at the Rice Board level and representation on the supporting committees (Application Roadmap Committee and the Technical Roadmap Committee)
    • During this release the Rice Oversight Committee finalized the Terms and Conditions agreement for integrating applications
    • Additional unresolved issues
      • Specific requirements generated by the Kuali Coeus deployment.
      • Specific requirements generated by the eDocLite deployment.
      • Additional costs associated with consulting support for eDocLite developers.
  • Third Production Release (Q3, 2010) - COMPLETE
    • The third production release will target:
      • The integration with KFS in Production (Phase 1 = Chart of Accounts and Contracts & Grants)
    • All services, standards, platforms, support, etc. will remain the same as in the Second Production Release
    • Additional unresolved issues
      • Specific requirements identified by colleges and departments.
      • The integration with KC in a pilot capacity
      • The possibility that the third and fourth releases may be merged, due to Rice 1.1 and KFS deployment scheduling.
  • Fourth Production Release (Q1, 2011) - 
    • Pilot eDocLites applications will resume.
    • All services, standards, platforms, support, etc. will remain the same as in the Third Production Release.
    • This release will also migrate KIM's identity management interfaces from Mothra to the new IAM system.
    • Additional unresolved issues
      • Specific requirements generated by the Kuali Financial System deployment.
      • Integration with other UC campus Rice deployments, if required by KFS.
      • The possibility that the third and fourth releases may be merged, due to Rice 1.1 and KFS deployement scheduling.
  • Later Releases
    • eDocLite Production Release to campus (available for campus use)
    • Full Production releases of Kuali Coeus and Kuali Financial System.
    • Candidates for later releases of UCD's middleware infrastructure include the following.  Note that not all of these may be taken from the Rice suite.
      • More robust service bus
      • Rules engine
      • Notification (KEN)
      • Other APIs
        • Enhanced / complete SOAP?
      • Federation of UCD's middleware infrastructure with other institutions (e.g., other UC campuses)
      • Script support (e.g., Groovy)
      • Portal
      • Alignment with Sakai
      • Banner integration
      • Decision support integration
    • Release date for Kuali Rice 1.1 (Version Backward Compatibility) - Scheduled for 8/1/11 from the Kuali Foundation.