New Kuali Infrastructure

Since Kuali Days last November, the Kuali Foundation staff has been working overtime on a set of new infrastructure that will have a very positive impact on Kuali's collaboration environment. Next week, everybody who has an account on a Kuali system (e.g. Confluence, Sakai, Jira, SVN) will receive the first of a series of emails with important information and action items that will help the community through these changes. Please pay close attention to these emails so that you can continue to use Kuali's tools without any disruption of service. To be sure not to miss any important communications from the Kuali Foundation, I recommend that you add an email filter to prevent anything sent from @kuali.org from going into your spam box.

In this blog post, I will provide a high-level overview of some of the new infrastructure and our migration plan.

The heart of our new infrastructure is what we are calling Kuali Information System (KIS), which serves a number of functions. KIS is a web-based directory where you can find contact information for people associated with Kuali, explore the project teams of the various Kuali Projects, find Collaboration and Contribution groups to work with, manage your own contact information, discover new resources, and request additional access to Kuali resources. Kuali team leads can manage their team members through KIS.

In addition, KIS is responsible for the identity management tasks necessary to implement Single Sign-On, probably our community's most desired functionality. KIS gathers data from Kuali's systems like Jira, Sakai and Confluence, and uses heuristics to reconcile user accounts from these different systems into a single user account. In other words, KIS maps your various user accounts to a single user ID and password, an essential step in setting up Single Sign-On.

KIS also pushes data out to an LDAP server. Shortly, you will be able to easily configure a connection to Kuali's LDAP server through your Mail client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, Mail.app), which will allow you to look-up Kuali people directly through your email program.

Lastly, KIS pushes Kuali's teams and team members to Kuali's Google Apps account, which includes sophisticated email, grouping, calendaring, document sharing, code review, site creation tools and more. Although new Kuali projects, as well as Collaboration and Contribution teams, may start using this new infrastructure right away, existing projects will likely take some time, working with the Foundation to create a migration plan that does not adversely impact their development schedule.

We are very excited to start using our new infrastructure. The first step, which we will take next week, will be to ask all Kuali account holders to log-in to KIS and create their Single Sign-On password. We will give the community a few weeks to do this before we move any resources behind Single Sign-On.

Throughout the Spring, we will move our resources behind Single Sign-On one-by-one.

At the same time, we will be making minor changes that will be communicated, including changing a number of the listserv email addresses to follow a standardized naming convention.

Please keep your eyes peeled for our forthcoming communications! I encourage you to leave feedback in the comments below, or to contact me directly.

New kuali.org Website is Live

This morning the DNS record for kuali.org was changed to point to the new Kuali website. The new site is Drupal-driven, and beyond providing a web presence for Kuali it serves as a piece of Kuali's infrastructure to help us communicate and collaborate better. This post outlines some of the changes to kuali.org.

1. Follow Kuali: Kuali now offers free subscription "Channels" that allow you to easily follow Kuali projects. You can opt to receive just Kuali Foundation News (along with the Newsletter), or receive updates from a long list of sources including Kuali News, Blogs, Affiliate and Adopter Blogs, FAQs, Job Postings and more. You can choose whether you want to receive a digest of updates in your email inbox, read feeds through a Feed Aggregator, or follow Kuali on Facebook or Twitter. Kuali is using a combination of Drupal, Google Feedburner, FeedMailPro and RSS2Twitter to offer these services. I encourage anybody who participates in Kuali to subscribe to the Kuali Insider channel right away.
   
2. Kuali Days Schedule: The Kuali Days Schedule now includes a "Calendar" view (look for the link in the upper-right corner of the page) that allows you to easily see concurrent sessions. More data, including conference descriptions and presenter bios, are being added to the schedule. The schedule is viewable through smart phones (although the Calendar view is not) and prints in an easy-to-read format.
3. About Kuali: This section of the website has new content, including pages on Kuali's Values, History of Kuali and Adopter Stories (featured on the home page).
   
4. Resource Guide: This is a new page that summarizes the resources available to learn about Kuali. Some new resources include Tutorials and a page on The Business Case for Kuali.
5. Frequently Asked Questions: Our FAQs are now stored in a database, and can be categorized by Kuali Project and displayed hierarchically. For example, the Kuali Foundation FAQ contains answers to questions about each of the Kuali projects, whereas the KFS and KC site FAQs only have questions and answers relevant to their project. FAQs can be read through RSS, and when new FAQs are added they are included in the Kuali Insider subscription channel.
6. Quicklinks menu: On the upper-right side of the page you will see the Kuali "K" along with a few links. That "K" also appears on all Kuali websites, and will bring you back to the Kuali Foundation (kuali.org) site. Note that we use this menu to put time-sensitive links of interest. Right now you will see a link to a page about Kuali events at Educause, and the Kuali Days 8 Schedule.
7. Search: The content on kuali.org is now search-able and includes built-in advanced search options. Look for the search link in the upper-right corner of the page.
8. Employment Opportunities: This new page allows the Kuali Foundation to post Kuali-related employment opportunities, whether they are offered through the Foundation, a Member Institution or Commercial Affiliate. Jobs posted here appear in the Kuali Insider subscription channel, and on the home page under "Feeds."

Most importantly, the new website greatly simplifies the creation of content and empowers the Foundation to keep its public information fresh, informative and targeted. Kuali.org will continue to evolve, so be sure to stay connected by signing up now to Follow Kuali.

kuali.org website upgrade

Porting the kuali.org website into Drupal is one of the most important goals outlined in my Strategic Plan for Communications and Collaboration in the Kuali community. The Drupal platform will help us achieve short-term goals such as improving the navigability and ease-of-use of the website and our ability to keep content fresh and relevant. Additionally, we will be in a much better position to reach longer-term goals like turning kuali.org into a one-stop portal for communications management. In this post I will provide an idea of what you can expect when kuali.org goes live later this summer. I encourage you to leave a comment with your input and feedback -- what you see below is not by any means set-in-stone!

Look and Feel
The look-and-feel of the new kuali.org website will be based on the elegant design of the Kuali Student website. Apart from simple text menus at the header and footer of each page, multi-level, expandable menus are all located on the left-hand side of the page to greatly ease navigation.

Drupal site designs are theme-based, which means that the look-and-feel of kuali.org can be controlled independently from the content. This flexibility allows design changes to be switched in and out with little effort.

Content Creation Delegation
The Drupal content management system makes it easy to provide web-based access for people to keep the content that they own up-to-date. This means that fresh content will become available quicker. No more administrative processes to get content published -- as soon as your permissions are set up, you have free reign over the material that you own.

Expanded Content
The new website will have new content that is not available on the current website, including a "get connected" section that details how interested parties can plug-in to Kuali by subscribing to listservs, the newsletter, RSS feeds, and by attending Kuali Days. The site will also feature profiles of Kuali adopters, detailing the implementation decisions that were made.

Some of the current content will also be improved, including the "get involved" section and the Frequently Asked Questions.

Feeds
One of my most important goals related to the website upgrade is to use bundled RSS feeds to provide a single view of Kuali information aggregated from multiple sources including News, Blogs, Tweets, FAQs, Events and Newsletters. This allows individuals in each project to choose their preferred communications method, while allowing interested parties to follow those communications easily without knowing the details of how the communication medium. For example, you would not need to know the URL of a blog or have a Twitter account to follow what people are blogging and tweeting. Likewise, this strategy allows people to decide whether they want to follow information at a granular level (e.g. only follow news about Kuali Student UX) or at a macro-level (follow all information from every project and the Kuali Foundation).

Note that the website will contain information (or links to information) on how to use RSS feeds, as many people in the Kuali community may not be familiar with feeds.

Events fed from Google Calendar
The "Events" listed on the home page of the current website will be fed to the new website through Google Calendar. This means that the display of events will be automated in a date-conscious manner -- only current and future events will show up on the home page. Also, when users click to view all events they will be shown a Calendar-style view on the Kuali website. Since events are available through feeds, they will also be displayed through RSS feed bundles. Kuali community members who need access to add and edit events will be able to use the Google Calendar interface, which is very simple and intuitive.

Strategic Plan and Other Updates

Although I was on vacation for most of June, I have been able to meet many people in the Kuali community since I became the Member Liaison. At this point I am transitioning out of orientation phase and into full-throttle mode. With the pending implementations at CSU and San Joaquin Delta, this couldn't be a more exciting time!

Today I published a document titled Strategic Plan for Communications and Collaboration on the Kuali wiki: https://test.kuali.org/confluence/display/KULFOUND/Strategic+Plan+for+Communications+and+Collaboration. This document is meant to define the broad goals, methodology and projects that drive the work that I do in close collaboration with Farooq Sadiq, Kuali's Configuration Manager. I am excited to see how the Kuali community reacts to this document, and hope to get a lot of feedback.

Note that the strategy document is published under the wiki space for the Kuali Foundation (https://test.kuali.org/confluence/display/KULFOUND/Home). The C&C Team recently re-organized this space -- please have a look to see what kind of information you can find there.

In early July I will be heading to the Sakai conference in Cambridge, MA in order to co-present two presentations with Mark Norton to the Sakai community. The presentations will cover an overview of the Kuali Foundation, including its history, organizational structure, governance practices and growth, and a look at Kuali Rice's functionality. As a part of this effort, in the next couple of weeks Mark and I will be posting re-usable powerpoint slides on the Foundation's wiki here: https://test.kuali.org/confluence/display/KULFOUND/Powerpoint+Templates+and+Slides

Stay tuned!

A Vision for the Member Liaison Position

In my first week as the Kuali Member Liaison I was exposed to a myriad of communications tools, and issues related to each one. The size of the Kuali community, the diversity of member types and the complexity of communication paths are both daunting and exciting. There is a lot to do, and I couldn't be more excited by the challenges that lie ahead.

My broadest mission is to streamline communications within the Kuali community. When people hear "Kuali," I want them to think about a supportive community where it is easy to find the information you need, get your questions answered, and encounter reliable partners to assist you in evaluating, implementing and maintaining Kuali software. I want Kuali to be the pudding that proves that open-source software does not come at the expense of support, that a community can provide far better assistance than a 1-800 number.

I plan to work on two fronts simultaneously in order to be an effective Member Liaison. The first, most obvious front is to be a communicator, a go-to person for any sort of information, a keen listener and a proactive messaging hub. This front includes the production of content for the Kuali website, Confluence and other sorts of publications, which have a strong impact on the Kuali brand.

The second front will be to manage our communications infrastructure, working closely with Farooq Sadiq, Kuali’s Configuration Manager. The tools we use to communicate and how we use them have a major impact on our ability to collaborate and support each other. Farooq and I have already begun to define a technology road map that will bring Kuali into the modern age of identity management, providing a “single version of the truth” for biographical/demographical data on Kuali people, expanding Kauli's ability to collaborate with other institutions, and streamlining administrative processes such as account provisioning.

Apart from regular communications, some of the deliverables that I intend to provide include:

• A strategic communications plan defining my goals for the next year and how I plan to achieve them
• A road map outlining milestones and time frames related to changes in our communications infrastructure
• A simplified group structure to govern Confluence spaces, listservs, calendars and other communication tools
• An organizational map that helps people wrap their head around the structure of the Kuali community
• Expanded and improved website content
• A streamlined member on-boarding and account provisioning process including a well-defined governance framework
• Single Sign-On infrastructure, so people will have a single password for all Kuali resources
• A one-stop Communications Center where people can go to understand and access Kuali’s communication tools
• Proper portfolios for Kuali’s vendors and applications to help facilitate administrative tasks
  

As I gear up, I will be seeking perspective and advice from the entire community. Please feel free to share your opinions with me in any way you wish – a phone call, email, IM, skype, or comments on this blog. (See my profile for contact information.) In particular, these are some of the questions that I will be asking:

• What are the strong and weak points of Kuali’s communication framework?
• Are there particular tools that you would like to see Kuali use?
• How could we improve how we are using our current tools?
• What does the Kuali brand mean to you?
  

I look forward to hearing what you think!