OFIS Notes from 19 Jun 2009

• Ray will add shell access. uses nexus p/w

• Daniel will investigate: does htmltidy clean up the messy html?
• question about bibtex. can it export?
  • Daniel will post to list with details of exporting to xml / other formats

Marlon reported that the office of research data feed will soon include campus-wide historical data (for profs' advising records)

HR feed: does include adjuncts and visiting professors, but doesn't include "contract" faculty, currently.

Daniel asked about "engineer professor on the street" question.

• Marlon would find that useful information, as well, prof feedback.
• Peter offered to share their report on current usage. pretty charts include department histograms. not by name, but I can take a random sample from a department that has lots of recent use.
• in engineering, 50% of profs use this period, versus 56% last.
• Office of Research uses it to look at their own data.
• Mech, CE probably don't use much.
• biggest complaint is probably going to be "data is incomplete/inaccurate"
  • the GSO data was bad; it's getting better now, but no clear idea of how bad it still is, except if people complain.

Sharepoint: discussion.

• Beth used "infopath" (a sub-tool?) to generate HTML forms. these forms upload directly to sharepoint.
• ecshare.uwaterloo.ca - test server. beth/peter have admin access.
• beth's demo: views of tables for different users. RO or RW.
  • can be viewed in IE (& FF?) (& non-windows OS?)
  • Daniel asked about data validation. It can validate for simple types (numeric).
    • problem is: data integrity, unique keys.
• open software that performs the same functionality?
  • "zimba" ?
    • zimbra.com: email/calendar/document management. doesn't seem to compete on forms-generation/viewing
  • Daniel will ask online about open-source gui form-builder, mysql data view.
  • Marlon thinks there's an excel spreadsheet views system?

discussion: phpCake is a MVC framework.

Past Tasks:

• Daniel: Further investigation of http://www.tug.org/utilities/texconv/textopc.html (as above)
• Daniel: Other methods to get information from current OFIS users
• Beth: add access for Daniel/Marlon/? on sharepoint - not needed right now.

Upcoming Tasks

• Daniel: report to list on http://www.tug.org/utilities/texconv/textopc.html and bibtex exporting (xml, other formats?)
• Daniel: does htmltidy clean up TeX4ht?
• Daniel: get information from current OFIS users
• Daniel: remind Peter about report on usage
• Daniel: open software that performs same functionality as sharepoint (as far as we need?) Will ask online about open-source gui form-builders with mysql data views.
• Ray: add Daniel to ofis host for shell access