November 27, 2007
Patch schedule - Patches to be applied on January 8, 2008, barring any conflicts with other school schedules.
Registrar feedback on proposed roster changes (key at top of Discussion section page, role key at top of normal roster page) - Michael has not yet heard back from Jill or Diane.
Shopping period changes - We shouldn't have as many shopper_ws to deal with after shopping period is over. The changes Michael has made will remove any shopper_ws who has 'unchecked' a course before sealing. Students are required to uncheck any course on their worksheet before sealing. The 'checkbox' is what flags our Banner import to put someone on a roster. Now our rosters will 'self-clean' after a student seals, leaving fewer shopper_ws' on the roster. The only stragglers are those students who did not seal before OCS was closed to students. We are still looking into a way to do 'Join by Request'. David found an active Sakai Jira (SAK-8167). Cheryl is watching and has voted for it and will put a comment on the Jira so it is updated to reflect that we would like to see this applied to 2.4 and 2.5. It is currently only listed for versions 2.2 and 2.3.x.
Tabs/More changes in new versions - The "More" pull-down, while a nice option, does not work well when you have cross-listed courses all with the same name that span several terms. We're hoping new versions of Sakai will offer options for rendering previous terms and projects a different way so that people who have courses with the same name taught over multiple terms can find them easier. David thought about exploring a portal-type window in My Workspace to show a user their current tabs to allow for easier browsing.
Gateway page - Cheryl to move this to the new Classes server and point the page to the new location so the main screen at least is not affected if research.yale.edu is down.
Sign-Up tool - Peter and Parthee making good progress. Michael thinks we can start testing their initial program in a few weeks. We hope to release this tool as a stealth item to a few select users in the Spring 08 term.
Preferred Name/Local Accounts - With the introduction of the new EID vs UserID in Sakai, local accounts are no longer the best way to handle requests for a custom name in Classes*v2. If someone cannot change their name in the People file to have it show up properly, we are hard pressed to display their name differently on v2. Michael thinks we may be able to utilize the custom email table that we use for Summer Classes*v2 users to display a custom name for people. Something to look into.
Remove inactive local accounts? - Is there any way to guarantee that a local account truly is inactive and someone isn't actively using their My Workspace? No way to really track who is no longer 'active'. A nice option would be able to set an account inactive at the login level, not just the course level.
October 16, 2007
Classes shares still active: CJ to follow up with Pam, Andy Z. again to get them deactivated, then copy data from old Classes to new Classes server. Michael will follow up with Howard about how to convert nsconfig from Netscape iPlanet to IIS webserver. After migration of data to new server, CJ will begin copying MyWorkspace files from research.yale.edu so they can be served from the new server.
Help files: The following Help files and/or tip sheets need to be written - Email Tool, Webspace, Feedback Tool, Discussion (Jive), Roster, Groups.
Sign-Up Tool: Target is Spring 08. Michael has sent out the first draft of requirements. We will contact the original requestors for their input on what they would like to see in the tool, but not get so many requirements for v1 so that we miss our deadline.
Umbrella courses: Gloria has drafted a proposal for determining which syllabus would get posted to OCI in the case of an umbrella course. Some umbrellas only have the syllabus in the umbrella course, not the child courses. We would want that syllabus to display in OCI for the child courses.
Registrar meeting, History of Art: History of Art was unhappy with the discrepancies between online section lists and actual class sections that were set by the registrar. An unfortunate artifact of shopping period.
October 9, 2007
Samigo/Nursing questions: The School of Nursing is using Samigo and is unhappy that we are not fully supporting the application and some of the bugs that have come up. CW to research any Jira solutions that we may be able to patch. Search our RT queue and then Sakai's Jira to see if patches are available.
School of Nursing, load Spring courses now: Issues if we load Spring courses now are potentially greater number of orphaned courses that we need to keep up on daily; if we decide to change a set of tools for Spring 08 or any other aspect for all Spring 08 courses, any courses that we create now will not reflect those changes. Gloria suggested contacting SOM, EPH, Rel to see what their feedback on this idea is.
Shopper_ws: For the next shopping period, Michael will be removing any shopper_ws that has sealed their courses, but has not de-selected a course from their shopping cart and are not officially registered for that course.
Schedule tool: Meeting set up for this week to review the German Tutorial schedule. Andy, Peter and Parthee already working on case scenarios to begin development that can most likely be contributed back to the Sakai community.
September 25, 2007
Shopper Purge - Currently 1130 shoppers, 6876 shopper_ws; Registrar PUSH to happen today. We will test the Banner code on 'test' and if all goes well, promote new code and switch to Banner mode (From OCS-mode) on production.
Thursday, September 27: We will email shopper_ws and cc: Residential college deans and their admin assistants at the same time (per Joe Gordon's request). SHopper_ws who need to regain access can use 'Join' under 'Membership' in My Workspace.
Wednesday, October 3: Email shoppers that they will be purged on Monday, October 8.
Patches - Michael will request that the patches be deployed to production on Thursday, September 27 at 6am. Gloria will change MOTD and send a note to Gloria Hoda to post outage on the status page.
Next patch outage will most likely be the week of Thanksgiving break.