Every department hopes for collaboration and cooperation among all of its members. Here at Central Web Services we are working towards making that a reality. In September, our office had a face lift. Out went the dull grey cubicles and in came new wooden desks and an open work space. The removal of the cubicle walls created an open and inviting workspace. Here are some pros and cons we’ve noticed since the redesign:
Pros
More space in the office
Easier to talk to one another
Collaboration among different areas within the department is easier
The office appears brighter and more inviting
Seeing who’s in the office at a glance
Cons
Nosier at times
No cubicle walls to hang things on
Spontaneous drop-ins by visitors can cause more disruption then previously
Although there was some hesitation on taking down the cubicles, we all agree that the change in the work environment has helped strengthen the team dynamic.
We have rolled out a new blog theme which is named OSU Responsive. Why Responsive?
Responsive really means responsive web design. The goal behind responsive web design is to have the design of a given web page be adjusted dependent on the size of the screen. So on a phone, the look and feel changes to be more of a mobile experience where reading a full web page doesn’t necessarily make sense.
The theme is a two column theme, with only a main sidebar, and the bottom contact area as available areas to put widgets in. Remember, not all widgets will look good in different areas so you will have to see what works and doesn’t.
Who can use OSU Responsive? Responsive is available for everyone, however, there are some things to note. The use of the OSU logo or tag is restricted to certain use. The theme will display the tag or not based on the Organization Type as specified by the table below.
Organization Type
Can Use Branded Theme?
Student
No
Staff
No
Faculty
Yes
Department
Yes
Sponsored Student Organization (SSO)
Yes
Voluntary Student Organization (VSO)
No
Non-Affiliated Student Organization (NSO)
No
Student Organizations are governed by the policies of Student Leadership and Involvement. If you are a student group and do not know which type of organization you are, please visit the Student Leadership and Involvement site.
What do you need to do to use it?
1. If you are switching over from an existing theme, and you switch it immediately, it might seem that your site is broken in layout. It isn’t. It is simply that the widgets need to be removed and put back into the areas available for it. So we recommend first removing all the widgets in use from the sidebars.
2. Go to Appearance -> Themes in your WordPress dashboard, and select the OSU Responsive theme.
3. Put your widgets back into the sidebar.
4. Deactivate the Sociable Skyscraper plugin if you are using it. Use of this inserts a thin horizontal line and makes the theme look broken. Go to Skyscraper Options in the Select Sociable Plugin expanded menu to deactivate.
And that’s it. Good blogging to you all.
Accessibility and Brand Guidelines
As part of the OSU Responsive use, the use of a different background image or color must adhere to OSU’s policies regarding Accessibility and Brand. Any failure to do so may cause your blog to be disabled. The net takeaway here is don’t change it if you don’t understand the policies, which is why we at Central Web Services, take care of these things for you in creating the default theme. However, do remember within your articles, accessibility policies still apply if this is used in any official capacity for students, staff, or faculty or OSU.
With the beginning of a new school year just around the corner, something big has been brewing. Connect Week is all about connecting new students to Oregon State through events that introduce them to the different resources available on campus. Since the events are not restricted to just new students, they have the opportunity to connect with returning students who have already been through the ropes and can give them some tips. To help with the transition, this year there is a Connect app! The app helps you:
Keep track of the new student events
Get up-to-date info through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook
Information about the assortment of food options open on campus at the time
Connect week FAQs
Connect week and new student news
What did the lead student developer, Nicole Phelps, have to say on the release of her first official app? “The OSU Connect app is a great way for students to get involved at OSU’s Connect week. Its theme is ‘Connect the Dots’, so I see it as an allegory for how each new student comes to the school with a blank slate, ready to connect their own dots.” You’ve connected the dots your whole life; from connecting the dots to discover the picture on the page to connecting the dots between classes to earn your diploma. Now you can use the app to help you stay connected at OSU while you earn your degree. It’s a connection to important up-to-date information on what’s going on and where to be right on your phone. This app provides a searchable campus map for the term (or multiple terms if you have luck like mine) that you have a class in a building like Wiegand Hall and you have no idea where it may be. Its list of the open food establishments on campus keep you informed and on time for meals. I wish I would have had an app like this during my first year on campus to save me from learning the dining center hours the hard way and showing up too late for a meal. Save yourself from the disappointment of missing new student events, and meals, and check out the app for Android and iOS!
The performance of the EvalS application is now ready for primetime use. The team worked hard, in conjunction with help from Enterprise Computing, to make changes to the code to improve upon the speed of the application. Locally, you should see a significan improvement. What took over 30 seconds to load before now takes a second or two on bringing up a person’s evaluation. The initial load of the application is about 4 seconds, and still a little slow for our liking, so the team is looking at how to make it better. Half a world away, in Malaysia, I can access the EvalS system and begin entering in results, and on a slow-wi fi connection, it takes about 15 seconds to load. Not too bad.
The official notification went out on October 19th, by Jacque Rudolph. If you haven’t read the email from the inform list, you should. A kudos to the HR and Business Center team for all the hard work put into it. I found out more than I imagined about the process, and there are a lot of nuances to consider, with bargaining agreements, and other particulars to work with. Along the way, we hope we improved the process as well.
So how did it begin? Well it all began with a request for development of an electronic time reporting system, funded by the Provost. As Bob Nettles and I discussed, the decision was to ultimately look at a vendor system for the time reporting piece, as there are good systems already out there. So we couldn’t just sit around and develop nothing, and discussing with Jacque Rudolph and Bob Nettles, we said why don’t we tackle some of the other paper processes, and the evaluation process came to mind, due to its specific nature. With approval from the Provost, we set off in discussions and Agile development. We didn’t wait until all the details were there, otherwise it would have taken significantly longer. The Agile method allows for more rapid development, while gathering the particulars. We did show and tells along the way, and worked out many of the specifics.
The development team of Lead Developer Jose Cedeno with some assistance from Kenneth Lett, Mauricio Cordoba on styling, and Joan Lu, the software architect responsible for the overall technical design, put in a lot of hours, working weekends and then some to bring it together. We didn’t have the staff of a Google or a Microsoft, or my former company IBM, to implement this, but the talent of the two helped bring this to life. I put in a little time, myself on the original concept of the User Interface design, and Mauricio filled in the rest, so we do hope you find it as a good and modern interface. There’s still some things we can do to make it better, but we have to save some things for the next few releases, don’t we?
For those who don’t know what it takes to develop portlets, the little apps in a portal, send us a note, and we’ll fill you in. It does take some knowledge of Portal development, along with java programming expertise. So it’s not just for anyone to develop in.
This is one of the steps Central Web is taking in Greening OSU. So we encourage everyone to start using it. For the Classified IT and Professional Faculty, we will be working toward your electronic evaluations next, so as I always say, stay tuned. Sincerely, Jos Accapadi, Associate Director
It’s here and it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. On April 1st, under the Oregon State University iOS Enterprise License, Central Web Services and Web Communications released the Beta version of the iOSU iPhone Application.
Current features:
Campus Map
Find People
Photo Tour
Link to Library mobile sites
Wallpapers
News
Link to m.oregonstate.edu mobile site
Key contact numbers
OSU’s Twitter feed
and a Feedback form.
There are still some issues, known in the software world as bugs, to work out. While we did some preliminary testing across various iOS devices, we have not run through every permutation on how a user interacts with their app, and as such we do expect to discover more. Well in fact, users have already been using the Feedback portion of the app to tell us some of the things they are seeing as problematic.
We are also keenly interested in the views of students, and aspects that make their lives easier using a mobile platform. So if you are a student, do let us know what you think, and what you’d like to see!
Visit the the following site on your iOS device to download (and remember, you will have to login with your ONID id and password):
The good people at Oregon State University Ag Communications, part of OSU Extension, have brought an app to the OSU community, currently available for those with an ONID id. If you are not familiar with ONID, then you probably won’t be able to access the app.
It took several months of development as part of their goal to look at what it takes to develop an app. For those developing an app, the development is only one part of it. There are many more things to consider which I’ll go into in another post. What they turned out was a nice tour app, though for some it may be too much green to see. 🙂 Don’t worry though, it’s about trees, and we like our trees green, right? Although the Autumn season is nice as well, especially those orange colors.
The OSU Tree Tour App was distributed as part of Oregon State University’s Enterprise Distribution for iOS apps. If you don’t know what that is, we promise one day soon we will get to writing a good description of that and sharing with the OSU community what it is all about. So check out the app, but know there are a few specifics to use the app. So do read the specs and requirements.
Lastly, if you download it, I want to leave you with a thought on the power of an app like this. Take out Tree Tour, and replace it with any other set of information you want a tour around, maybe donor benches, sculpture art around campus, buildings, or just about anything else you can build a tour around. Imagine it.
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