Customizer/Engineering Community of Practice

[mcruz-umich]

Hello all,

I work at the University of Michigan and am onboarding to help support our collection managers that use "Collective Access".

I would like to start up a group of people that are interested in working together to help solve challenges each of us might encounter with CA.

Here are the topics:

1. Process Definition - How to do things that we tried but are not quite working right
2. Configurations: How to configure the system to turn on/off features, rearrange things, etc
3. Customizations: Creating and link tables to forms, layouts, etc [Implementing all the magical abilities listed in the documentation]
4. Extending the code base - Community driven voting or contributions to extend code base

We could use this group to email each other questions, to discuss challenges, or to help solve issues.

Please let me know if you are interested by replying to this discussion.

Thanks!
Matthew

[poplarmedia]

Hello Matt,
I am very interested. I am also 2 hours west of you in Grand Rapids.
Matt P

[mcruz-umich]

Excellent.... I will give this discussion topic a couple of weeks to gather members and then reach out and we can arrange a video chat.

[greermartin]

I work at Loyola University Chicago Libraries and we recently started using Collective Access and would be very interested in joining!

[kehh]

I work for a consulting company (@gaiaresources) in Western Australia and am interested in this.

[mcruz-umich]

Hi @poplarmedia, @greermartin, @kehh

Please email me at [email protected] so that I can know your email address and set up a video meeting for us to introduce ourselves and get a discussion started.

Thanks!

[mbutel]

Hey, I just saw this, I work with CA in Argentina and Latinamerica, we have our group bibliohack. Would love to join a space like this. I thought there was a slack or sth like that?

[mcruz-umich]

Hello! I got loaded down with another non-collective access project that I am trying to finish up. Also my leadership has gone back and forth on how we are going to approach supporting CA so there has not been a clear direction. I believe they will still encourage this user-group to get started. One option that we are considering is using 3rd party customizers. I did some research on it that you might find useful: *Third-Party Customizers* 1. https://singhconsultinggroup.com/collective-access/ 2. https://www2.archivists.org/consultants/janine-biunno-archival-consulting-jlb-archival 3. https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/blog/2018/11/11/installing-collectiveaccess-on-a-cloud-server/ Keep in touch. If you do not hear from me by the end of December please reach out again. Sincerely, Matthew

…

On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 4:32 PM mbutel ***@***.***> wrote: Hey, I just saw this, I work with CA in Argentina and Latinamerica, we have our group bibliohack. Would love to join a space like this. I thought there was a slack or sth like that? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1456 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIWEL5FR4CNZPHD6LT6J5WTYGZJ7TAVCNFSM6AAAAAAZYW5Q7GVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TMOJXGM3TQ> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.*** .com>

-- Matthew Cruz, Application Architect Web and Application Development Services LSA Technology Services The University of Michigan

[mbutel]

Thanks! Matías On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 7:13 PM mcruz-umich ***@***.***> wrote:

…

Hello! I got loaded down with another non-collective access project that I am trying to finish up. Also my leadership has gone back and forth on how we are going to approach supporting CA so there has not been a clear direction. I believe they will still encourage this user-group to get started. One option that we are considering is using 3rd party customizers. I did some research on it that you might find useful: *Third-Party Customizers* 1. https://singhconsultinggroup.com/collective-access/ 2. https://www2.archivists.org/consultants/janine-biunno-archival-consulting-jlb-archival 3. https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/blog/2018/11/11/installing-collectiveaccess-on-a-cloud-server/ Keep in touch. If you do not hear from me by the end of December please reach out again. Sincerely, Matthew On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 4:32 PM mbutel ***@***.***> wrote: > Hey, I just saw this, I work with CA in Argentina and Latinamerica, we > have our group bibliohack. Would love to join a space like this. I thought > there was a slack or sth like that? > > — > Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub > < #1456 (reply in thread)>, > or unsubscribe > < https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIWEL5FR4CNZPHD6LT6J5WTYGZJ7TAVCNFSM6AAAAAAZYW5Q7GVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TMOJXGM3TQ> > . > You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: > ***@***.*** > .com> > -- Matthew Cruz, Application Architect Web and Application Development Services LSA Technology Services The University of Michigan — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1456 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABOJN3KC2TQXUXKQGVS5HEDYGZOY5AVCNFSM6AAAAAAZYW5Q7GVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TMOJXGY3TC> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.*** .com>

[goetzk]

Hey, I just saw this, I work with CA in Argentina and Latinamerica, we have our group bibliohack. Would love to join a space like this. I thought there was a slack or sth like that?

I would like to start up a group of people that are interested in working together to help solve challenges each of us might encounter with CA.

There are a number of places to chat about CA but the proposal here sounds like an email discussion list.
CA communications channels I'm aware of:

• Gitter chat
• Matrix.org bridge of Gitter
• CA Developers slack (invite only? I'm not sure but have seen it mentioned)
• Forum https://collectiveaccess.org/support/

Perhaps that last option is worth a look for your purposes?

ps. I just found https://collectiveaccess.org/contact/ does list Slack, so i think the list above is complete.

[mcruz-umich]

Thanks @goetzk !

Prior to sending out this information, I had reached out to the CA administration about if there was an existing community and they said there was not so I am going to try to start one up..... The CA-team is pretty loaded down with work so a community-driven group would probably be our best bet for more throughput....

[collectiveaccess]

I'm not sure what "community" means in this context. As @goetzk wrote, there are plenty of places to ask questions if you want to ask them. I don't know that another is needed. The Slack channel is open to all, but you do need to ask for an invitation link.

[mcruz-umich]

Thank you all. In this context, "community" refers to a group of active users and customizers that could meet with a degree of frequency to solve issues together. It would likely follow some sort of calendar schedule, showcase past, current, and future issues and have a portion of the meetings to focus on on-demand problem-solving. The goal would be to take the best-of information from the resources found online [see the list above from @goetzk] and combine it with our direct experiences, to help each other advance more quickly through our backlogs of customizations, etc. It aims to have a group of us working and talking together real-time rather than sole dependence on forum postings or support-ticket requests. This is just in the early stages of formation so any input from others on what they would like to see or do with this group is appreciated!

I will try to get this rolling early in 2024. In the meantime, what is the process to get an invitation to the slack channel, please?

Thanks!

[collectiveaccess]

There's already a group of this sort for Canadian users. I don't know how active they are or how often they meet, but they do meet.

There is a link on this page to request access to Slack.

[mcruz-umich]

Thanks!

I do not have an email under any of the allowed domains for joining that slack workspace.... What should I do?

[mbutel]

Same problem here!

…

On Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 19:16 mcruz-umich ***@***.***> wrote: Thanks! I do not have an email under any of the allowed domains for joining that slack workspace.... What should I do? image.png (view on web) <https://github.com/collectiveaccess/providence/assets/36455924/59fbbd38-298c-4677-907c-9d17ea0508df> — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1456 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABOJN3NVWMFSBB2EKZCN7A3YHEAVLAVCNFSM6AAAAAAZYW5Q7GVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TOMRSHA3TI> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.*** .com>

[miqrogroove]

I've been tinkering with CA and PHP 7.4 mainly to get the default theme working and displaying some of the missing fields. I've written a few PRs for the awful implementation of jcarousel in the object details view, but my strengths are in PHP and MySQL. I've also had a few PRs accepted to resolve defects in the dacs_heritage profile.

I might be more of a lurker on process definitions and code extension, but I'm generally interested in reading about the DIY efforts.