Meeting Minutes
February 6, 2003

Present
Mac Avery, Jeff Buffington (for Robert Dixon), Linda Crouch, Rick Denton, Malinda Miller-Huey, Gary Pollock, Judy Poynter, Eric Richards, Bonnie Templeton, Barbara Todd, Paula Vaughan, Terry Vaughan

Announcements task force
(Linda C., Robert D., Malinda M-H., Bonnie T., Barbara T., Paula V.)

• Working through policy issues, examining the role of portal announcements within our current electronic communications (i.e., Buff Bulletins, e-memos).
• Gathering information on current announcements – how presented, who submits, audiences, vital announcements, etc.
• Need to talk to Housing and the Graduate School.
• Evaluating announcement channel technologies currently available from uPortal.
• Action Items: Provide an update at the next Core Meeting; have formal recommendations prepared by February 16th from which technical programming and design work can commence.

Events task force
(Housing rep., Malinda M-H., Pat J., Josh L., Bryan M., Paula V.)

• Events in the portal will be presented as a prototype within the portal prototype. Developing a process to gather event information from the campus’ disparate events calendar is a major project in itself. The events envisioned for the portal are much broader than the current web events calendar which is now specifically for events open to the general public, and contains only a subset of those.
• Tools being evaluated for events calendaring: SunOne (the campus’ personal calendaring tool supported by ITS), the current events calendar input mechanism, and a new events calendar tool being developed by Web Communications.
• The team will need to test display, subscribe and sort capabilities for any tool under consideration.
• John Fox, Housing, is interested in participating on the Events team.
• Action Item: Provide an update at the next Core Meeting.

Tech Dev team
(Bob F., Will K., Josh L., Andy M., Malinda M-H., Justin M., Gary P., Paula V.)

• Putting PLUS into channel with single sign on (authentication to portal passes through to PLUS). Have found problems with the html code and with maintaining login state between portal tabs.
• Infrastructure:
  • Building the database behind the portal.
  • Hardware is being ordered. (expected delivery time for the switch is 24 days )
  • Experimenting with groups – preloading from the enterprise directory to the local database.
  • Need to find out how to build and manage groups based upon unique selects for announcement audiences (i.e., complex SIS queries to determine who should receive specific announcements)
• Channels that are almost complete: weather, forecast, search, web cam
• Channels in process: survey, quick links.
• Design guidelines have been written.

Prototype Audience

• Ideas: various student groups (President’s Leadership group, Norlin Scholars, etc.), Housing, User design practicum
• Questions:
  • Should we limit (via authorization) to specific individuals or should we advertise to specific groups/individuals but allow others who hear about the portal via word of mouth use the prototype.
  • What time period should have the prototype available for? And should we take it away at the end of that time period or, if there are no significant problems with it, should we let it continue to run?

Success Criteria

• Action Item: Review and comment back on the success criteria by Feb 14th.

Sub-Teams

• Campus Outreach – formal and informal presentations, focus groups, surveys, publicity.
  Members: Mac, Malinda, Rick, Judy, Barbara T., Bryan, Paula
• Testing – test plan development, test audience selection, testing
  Members: Terry, Rick, Mac, Jeff, Linda C., Gary, Bob, Barbara Todd or designee, Paula
• Deployment Planning – planning of prototype and production rollout (audiences, functions, stages, etc.)
  Members: Barbara T., Bonnie, Malinda, Terry, Gary, Bob, Paula
• Naming – how to go about naming the portal – handle virtually with the entire core team.

Next Meeting
Monday, February 24th, 8:30 a.m., Telecomm 215