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Wat i tis_os
- 1. #watitis2016 w atitis.uw at erloo.ca @w at it isconf UWATERLOO SCHOLAR Eric Bremner
- 2. #watitis2016 UWATERLOO SCHOLAR • What is UWaterloo Scholar • Uses and benefits • Project description • What is Open Scholar • UWaterloo Implementation of Open Scholar • Trials and tribulations • Future development • Questions and comments
- 3. #watitis2016 WHAT IS UWATERLOO SCHOLAR • Uses Open Scholar • Open source software solution built on Drupal • Provides dynamic and customizable personal or academic websites • Offered as a SaaS • Built using the WatIAM id
- 4. #watitis2016 USES AND BENEFITS • Why use UWaterloo Scholar • Takes seconds to create a website • Friendly user interface • Easy to maintain • No technical experience required • Open Source • Built on Drupal • Used by many academic institutions • http://openscholar.harvard.edu/
- 5. #watitis2016 USES AND BENEFITS • Benefits of UWaterloo Scholar • Allow faculty to quickly build websites • Secure, professional environment • Self management or easily maintained by another user.
- 6. #watitis2016 PROJECT DESCRIPTION • Personal websites for faculty and researchers account for a significant footprint of UW • Implement Open Scholar for use at UW. • Use “out of the box” as much as possible • Have one theme for all UWaterloo Scholar sites • Build on WatIAM id(s)
- 8. #watitis2016 UWATERLOO SCHOLAR • Demo of “Out of the box” Open Scholar • Demo of UWaterloo Scholar
- 9. #watitis2016 TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS • Base on WatIAM ID • Logging in via CAS • Restricting to just faculty • During login use ldap lookup to see which OU groups user belongs too • Allowing WCMS to administrate everyone • During login use ldap and change role to administrator. • Creating a role that can create on behalf of other people • Nexus group created and during login use ldap lookup to grant user certain access
- 10. #watitis2016 TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS • Open Scholar documentation • Very well documented front-end • http://docs.openscholar.harvard.edu/ • Virtually no back-end documentation • Thankfully built on Drupal
- 11. #watitis2016 TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS • Open Scholar updates • Releases happen often • Little or confusing release notes • http://theopenscholar.org/software/openscholar-drupal-7/7x- 3523 • No feature reverts
- 12. #watitis2016 TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS • De-Harvardifying and theming • Open Scholar has an abundance of themes • Users are able to pick a theme by default • Our implementation was to restrict to one UW theme. • Theming uses old philosophy to code for responsive • Implemented testing to check on updates
- 13. #watitis2016 TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS • “Out of the box” -> Custom code • Still use about 90% of Open Scholar • Custom code comes around 1500 lines
- 14. #watitis2016 FUTURE DEVELOPMENT • Pilot launched Aug 2016 • Math, Arts and Environment • 1.0 Alpha was released on Nov 28, 2016 • All faculties and grad students • 1.0 Beta will be released Jan/Feb 2016 • Full release first quarter 2017
- 15. #watitis2016 THANK YOUS • Would like to thank the following: • Andrew McAlorum • Martin Leblanc • WCMS team
Editor's Notes
- Point 1&2: The University of Waterloo is using Open Scholar, an open source software solution built on Drupal. Point 3: To provide dynamic and customizable personal or academic websites for Waterloo faculty and researchers. Point 4: These Faculty and Researcher sites will be offered as Software as a Service (SaaS). Point 5: Will be built using the WatIAM of the faculty member or researcher.
- Point 1&2: It takes seconds to create a website. Point 3: Friendly user interface that makes it <POINT 4> easy to maintain websites from anywhere through a web browser, <POINT 5> without any technical expertise. Point 6: Open source and strong community Point 7: Built on top of Drupal and a full stack of open source tools and technologies. Point 8: Used by many academic institutions worldwide such as Harvard, Princeton, and Berkely just to name a few. Show the Open Scholar Harvard.
- Point 1: Benefits of Open Scholar Point 2: This new service will allow faculty members and researchers to quickly and easily build personal or academic websites using an interface that is logical and intuitive, and does not require previous programming or coding experience. Point 3: Faculty and Researcher sites deliver a secure, professional environment for the promotion of personal or academic work and achievements, while fostering online collaboration opportunities and providing an enhanced end-user experience for site visitors. Point 4: The easy to use site tools and features allow users to self-manage their content, creating site sections unique to the needs of each user. Whether it’s building a robust Publications library, creating an interactive blog post, or advertising upcoming events or workshops, the Waterloo Faculty and Researcher site template will meet your needs.
- Point 1: Personal websites for faculty and researchers account for a significant footprint of UW Point 2: This shows what some of the personal sites across campus look like. Point 3: Project was given the goal to Implement Open Scholar for use at UW. Point 4: With this given goal we were to use “out of the box” Open Scholar as much as possible Point 5: We are to have one and only one theme for all UWaterloo Scholar sites. This was also to be on brand for the University and be responsive (meaning to work on mobile). Point 6: The whole site was to be Built on WatIAM id(s) and administrated by WCMS staff.
- What is Open Scholar? Here is a shot from the Open Scholar download and description page. Show the Open Scholar page and three faculty pages.
- Point 1: One of the toughest problems was the documentation for Open Scholar. Point 2: The front-end (the user interface) is very well documented by Open Scholar Point 3: Open Scholar documentation website (SHOW) Point 4: There is virtually no back-end documentation.
- Point 1: All activity should be base on WatIAM ID Point 2: All Logins should be done via CAS Point 3: Code showing logging in via VAS Point 4: The logins should be restricting to just faculty and graduate students. Point 5: During login use ldap lookup to see which OU groups user belongs too Point 6: Code showing restriction. Point 7: We wanted to ensure that WCMS is allowed to administrate everyone and everything Point 8: During login use ldap and change role to administrator. Point 9: Code showing how we check for WCMS Point 10: Creating a role that can create on behalf of other people. This will be used by IT personnel in each faculty who will faucilitate professor with their sites. They can create a site for a valid WatIAM user (faculty or grad student) and then administrate their site as well. Point 11: Nexus group created and during login use ldap lookup to grant user certain access. Point 12: Code showing how to check for the nexus group. DEMO THE CREATE A SITE.
- Point 1: One of the toughest problems was the documentation for Open Scholar. Point 2: The front-end (the user interface) is very well documented by Open Scholar Point 3: Open Scholar documentation website (SHOW) Point 4: There is virtually no back-end documentation. Point 5: Thankfully Open Scholar was built with Drupal as a backend, which is very well documented. We were able to use a lot of our experience from the WCMS to manage our implementation of Open Scholar.
- Point 1: Another problem is when Open Scholar updates. Point 2: Releases happen often, When we launched in August 2016, Open Scholar was at version 3.44.0 recommended release. By November when we were getting ready to launch the Alpha version of UWaterloo Scholar, they were already at 3.52.3 recommended release. Point 3: Open Scholar releases updates with little or confusing release notes or guidance on how to update. Point 4: Through many trials and reading, found out that Open Scholar does not recommend and even errors out when doing a feature revert. A feature revert is a tool that we use to set content types to the latest versions and make any changes to the content types/features. This has to be done through a database update or manually through code.
- Point 1: De-harvardifiying and theming. Point 2: Open Scholar has an abundance of themes that can be used. Somewhere around 25 pre-installed themes are present out of the box. https://d7os/fdsu5/#overlay=admin/appearance Point 3: With out of the box Open Scholar users are able to pick a theme that they would like to use and are able to customize it to their needs. Point 4: Our implementation called for restricting to using the one UW theme. This provided many challenges removing themes from Open Scholar. Eventually had to code through uninstalling and removing each theme individually. Point 5: Open Scholar uses panels to do theming for responsive. Basically using screen widths in Javascript to theme based on the window size. This is an old philosphy to theming for mobile. Now we use media queries and CSS to do responsive theming. We had to try and integrate both ways and came up with a successful integration. (SHOW PANELS IN OPEN SCHOLAR OUT OF THE BOX) also (SHOW RESPONSIVE VIEW OF OUR SITE). Point 6: When Open Scholar is to be updated we wanted to ensure that none of the Harvard brand is coming through and that UW’s are still in place. To do this visually checking every update would be time consuming and we might miss something. Write unit tests, using drupal’s simpletest to ensure that UW’s stuff is still in place. (SHOW TESTING).
- Point 1: “Out of the box” compared to custom code Point 2: We are still using about 90% of Open Scholar “out of box” Point 3: We ended up writing about 1500 lines of custom code to get our implementation of Open Scholar up and running. (SHOW MODULE CODE).
- Point 1: Pilot launched August 2016 Point 2: This was done with Math, Arts and Environment Point 3: 1.0 Alpha was released on November 28, 2016 Point 4: This now allows all faculty and grad students to access Point 5: 1.0 Beta will be released on Jan/Feb 2017 Point 6: Full release will be available in the first quarter of 2017
- Point 1: I would personally like to thank the following people Point 2: Andrew McAlorum, Manger Web Development, for assigning me this project and having the faith to see it through. Although trying at times, it has been fun to work on this project and to see its final results. Point 3: Martin Leblanc, from Marketing and Strategic Initiatives, who provided a majority of the work on the theming part of the project. I know it was a big task to get through Open Scholar’s theming section and come up with our own theme. Point 4: The whole WCMS team who has put time into bug fixes and input. Also helping out with releases.
- Point 1: I would personally like to thank the following people Point 2: Andrew McAlorum, Manger Web Development, for assigning me this project and having the faith to see it through. Although trying at times, it has been fun to work on this project and to see its final results. Point 3: Martin Leblanc, from Marketing and Strategic Initiatives, who provided a majority of the work on the theming part of the project. I know it was a big task to get through Open Scholar’s theming section and come up with our own theme. Point 4: The whole WCMS team who has put time into bug fixes and input. Also helping out with releases.