Sakai Monthly Project meeting

Smartsite Monthly Project meeting 8182008

Kirk Announcements - There were none.

IT Express - Chuck Sievers recommended that we always have someone in the tier 3 role for IT Express.  The high traffic from the campus starts a week before instruction.  He also said that only IT Express needs to be in Remedy.  The rest of us should be watching Jira.

Needs reproducing status for bugs - Nancy Wilkison wants faster response time to QA's reactions.  Chuck recommended that we always remember to reassign to the person who raised it.  Always update Jira if you use chat to resolve issues.

Machine names - always mention this when creating a ticket.  Also tell IT Express which browser and which OS.

QA - QA is focusing on Help to make sure that all the help files are present (some are still missing since the upgrade).  They are also working on Corey's new help splash page.  Both of these efforts should be completed before Fall 2008 quarter.

Pete distributed IET's new QA policy.  SmartSite was already following this policy. 

QA is also working with James for iterative Next Generation GradeBook testing. 

Communications - TRC information on SmartSite is posted on their website now.  We need communications on SmartSite training, drop in, and departmental training.  I&E do not yet have due dates on these efforts.

Other communications needed include:
--increasing outreach for SmartSite exposure and information on training opportunities,
--preparing for CMS transition,
--new functionality,
--tracking internal metrics, 
--perhaps a customer satisfaction survey, 
--let faculty know CMS won't be shut down for now,
--campus communication about guest access,
--campus communication about trainers' schedules,
--minor upgrade coming with Sakai 2.5.2.

Other recommendations for SmartSite articles: the new help splash page before the Fall; the banner student IDs in GradeBook; Scantron and the clicker applications. 

Gmail accounts will not be inhibited from writing to SmartSite since they can change the From to @ucdavis.edu .  [note: Subsequent to this meeting, I verified with Gaston De Farrari that all Gmail accounts that come from our Gmail domain will come in as indistinguishable from any other @ucdavis.edu account.  Students will not need to change anything.]

QA thinks they should look into this.  They will check for valid email addresses in ldap. 

Action Item: Show Corey's new Help splash page in Tuesday meeting also.

Faculty support - and training.  Training last week was with the college of engineering.  The attendees were programmers and departmental support people.  2.5 hr training.  They decided that in Sept, they want a training for all non-technical staff.  Then will host an open training (if they bring laptops) for faculty in college of engineering.  The logistics of these event are being handled by the department.

TRC - SITT in Sept, 4 days instead of 5.  Not a focus on SmartSite like last time.  SITT will have labs, though that will include SmartSite.

TRC is losing some key staff.  Also they are re-organizing.  They're moving to a new web development software package called WordPress.  This may represent a challenge to us.  The old calendar is going away.  Right now they have a text listing of events for SmartSite.  Starting now, Steve and Fernando will create our events on TRC's WordPress server.

Look at plato.ucdavis.edu to see word press pages.

Since TRC is changing their url from what it is now to plato.ucdavis.edu, we will have to change our references to them in SmartSite.  SmartSite has url references to TRC so we'll need to make these changes.  We want our links to go straight to Events on TRC, not their front page. WordPress will run on php servers.

Staff development for SmartSite.  Babette can introduce Steve to the key person in Staff Development. 

Guest Access: Steve will write a simple document on this. 

The trainers will review Tips and Work-Arounds before the Fall.

Steve will talk to the TIF about Guest Access. [I'm not sure when this will happen.]

ETTA (Educational Technology Teaching Assistant) - ATS is working on this with TRC.  It is a certificate program for grad students. These TAs will have no other TA responsibilities.  They will learn a variety of technologies.  (Action Item): Kirk will send the documentation on this program to communications people.  So far Psychology is the only dept committed.  They commit to 2-3 quarters. 

Programming team - The programmers are targeting having a statistics gathering applications in place before Fall.  These are applications that collect relevant statistics on our systems' usage: how many people logged in per hour, per day; how many locally developed help documents have been used; which day of the week is busiest for SmartSite, etc. 

Also they want to have historical data preserved in SmartSite, data that come from source systems.  This is with regards to data changing in Banner over time, data that our system references.  The programmers recommended that we develop our own flags (field indicators) in Banner rather than continuing to rely on theirs.

Another goal for the Fall is archiving mothra data on which SmartSite depends.

Load testing is another goal.  Programmers will follow up on this.

Patrick reminded us that there were no significant architectural changes since the 2.5 upgrade, which we load tested.  There have been no significant Banner changes between now and then, or mothra changes.  No new AFS issues either.  There were significant network issues earlier but the Data Center has resolved them.  The SmartSite application servers are scheduled to move to a new vlan which will change their IP addresses.  We should have this done by September but it's not necessary for a successful Fall.

Dave Zavatson will present on new technology at TIF on Wednesday that may affect SmartSite's future.  This is virtualization, in which a system may share server hardware with other systems though residing in it's own virtual environment.  This may reduce the number of servers we have to purchase for SmartSite.

DBA - There are no Banner changes to affect us for Fall.  The network performance issues have been cleared up. 

We should be mindful to understand what changes Gmail will have on us.  No major changes to the databases. 

Program Management - Our significant challenges include the Next Generation Gradebook and our participation in a sakai kernel project over the next fall.  Kick off for the kernel project is over this next month.

Meeting adjourned.