2019 was a pivotal year for DMPonline. Having introduced a new subscription model in November 2018 to sustain the DCC-led service, the last 12 months saw us develop a solid user base. This uptake has allowed us to grow the team and increase our engagem…
Category: DMPRoadmap
DMPonline release notes: April 2019
DMPonline release notes: April 2019
We do appreciate your feedback, as it is very valuable for us to know what works well for you, or anything else you wish to be fixed, improved or deployed! If you are interested to see what we are currently working o…
Roadmap back to school edition
Image: CC-BY-NC-ND ‘Pencils‘ by Vanessa Lynn
Summer activities and latest (major 2.0.0) release
The DMPRoadmap team is checking in with an overdue update after rotating holidays and work travels over the past few months. We also experienced some core team staff transitions and began juggling some parallel projects. As a result we haven’t been following a regular development schedule, but we have been busy tidying up the codebase and documentation.
This post summarizes the contents of the major release and provides instructions for those with existing installations who will need to make some configuration changes in order to upgrade to the latest and greatest DMPRoadmap code. In addition to infrastructure improvements, we fixed some bugs and completed some feature enhancements. We appreciate the feedback and encourage you to keep it coming since this helps us set priorities (listed on the development roadmap) and meet the data management planning needs of our increasingly international user community. On that note, we welcome Japan (National Institute for Informatics) and South Africa (NeDICC) as additional voices in the DMP conversation!
Read on for more details about all the great things packed into the latest release, as well as some general updates about our services and of course machine-actionable DMPs. The DCC has already pushed the release out to its services and the DMPTool will be upgrading soon – separate communications to follow. Those who run their own instances should check out the full release notes and a video tutorial on the validations and data clean-up (thanks Gavin!) to complete the upgrade.
DMPRoadmap housekeeping work (full release notes, highlights below)
- Instructions for existing installations to upgrade to the latest release. Please read and follow these carefully to prevent any issues arising from invalid data. We highly recommend that you backup your existing database before running through these steps to prepare your system for Roadmap 2.0.0!
- Added a full suite of automated unit tests to make it easier to incorporate external contributions and improve overall reliability.
- Added data validations for improved data integrity.
- Created new and revised existing documentation for coding conventions, tests, translations, etc (Github wiki). We can now update existing translations and add new ones more efficiently.
DMPRoadmap new features and bug fixes
- Comments are now visible by default without having to click ‘Show.’ Stay tuned for additional improvements to the plan comments functionality in upcoming sprints.
- Renamed/standardized text labels for ‘Save’ buttons for clarity.
- Added a button to download a list of org users as a csv file (Admin > ‘Users’ page)
- Added a global usage report for total users and plans for all orgs (Admin > ‘Usage’ page)
- Admins can create customized template sections and place them at the beginning or end of funder templates via drag-and-drop
- Removed multi-select box as an answer format and replaced with multiple choice
DCC/DMPonline subscriptions [Please note: this does not apply to DMPTool users]
Another recent change is in the DMPonline service delivery model. The DCC has been running DMP services for overseas clients for several years and is now transitioning the core DMPonline tool to a subscription model based on administrator access to the tool. The core functionality (developing, sharing and publishing DMPs) remains freely accessible to all, as well as the templates, guidance and user manuals we offer. We also remain committed to the Open Source DMPRoadmap codebase. The charges cover the support infrastructure necessary to run a production-level international service. More information is available for our users in a recent announcement. We’re also growing the support team to keep up with the requests we’re receiving. If you are interested in being at the cutting edge of DMP services and engaging with the international community to define future directions, apply to join us!
Machine-actionable DMPs
Increasing the opportunities for machine-actionability of DMPs was one of the spurs behind the DMPRoadmap collaboration. Facilities already exist via use of a number of standard identifiers and we’re moving on both the standards development tracks and code development and testing.
The CDL has been prototyping for the NSF EAGER grant and started a blog series focused on this work (#1, #2, next installation forthcoming), with an eye to seeding conversations and sharing experiences as many of us begin to experiment in multiple directions. CDL prototyping efforts are separate from the DMPRoadmap project currently but will inform future enhancements.
Image: CC-BY ‘Active DMPs in South Africa‘ by Sarah Jones
You can also check out the preprint and/or stop by the poster for ‘Ten Principles for Machine-Actionable DMPs’ at Force2018 in Montreal and the RDA plenary in Botswana. This work presents 10 community-generated principles to put machine-actionable DMPs into practice and realize their benefits. The principles describe specific actions that various stakeholders are already undertaking or should take.
We encourage everyone to contribute to the session for the DMP Common Standards working group at the next RDA plenary (Nov 5-8 in Botswana). There is community
consensus that interoperability and delivery of DMP information across systems requires a common data model; this group aims to deliver a framework for this essential first step in actualizing machine-actionable DMPs.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
Courtesy of Stephanie Simms at CDL, here’s our bi-monthly update on all things DMP
Image credit: Jon Baglo CC-BY-NC-ND
Our DMPTool and DMPonline services have been humming along with the same underlying code for a couple of months now. Since our MVP release, we’ve shifted gears to more regular sprints. We’re also pleasantly surprised by how eager the wider DMP community has been to join forces in migrating, translating, and even contributing new features already!
Here’s a brief retrospective and a glimpse into the future.
Post MVP Backlog
There is a modest backlog of work that didn’t make into the MVP release. We’ve prioritized these issues and are focused on tying up the loose ends over the coming months. Those following the DMPRoadmap Github repository will notice more regular releases. The goal is to settle into a steady two-week rhythm, but in the near term we’re working on slightly shorter or longer cycles to address critical bugs and some minor refactoring. Many thanks to our users on both sides of the pond who have reported issues and provided overwhelmingly positive feedback so far!
Evolving processes
We’ve been communicating with our respective user communities about new fixes and features as things pertain to them. Some things to note about our evolving development process:
- DMPRoadmap GitHub repo: this is where most development work happens since the majority of fixes and features apply to the core codebase. This repository also contains all technical documentation, release notes, and other info for those interested in deploying their own instances or contributing to the project.
- The DMPRoadmap wiki has a list of potential future enhancements. We’re collating ideas here and will define priorities and requirements in consultation with the community via user groups and listserv discussions. If you have other desired new features please let us know.
- Any service-specific customizations reside in separate GitHub repos. For example you can find the custom Single-Sign-On code in the DMPTool GitHub repo. The way in which we handle helpdesk functions varies too. DMPTool users can report issues directly in the DMPTool repo or via the helpdesk. If something pertains to the common codebase, Stephanie will tag the issue and transfer it to DMPRoadmap. For DMPonline users we ask you to report issues via the dmponline@dcc.ac.uk helpdesk.
External contributions
Our core dev team is test driving the external contributor guidelines with the French team from DMP OPIDoR. They developed a new feature for a global notification system (e.g., to display maintenance messages, updates to funder templates) that happens to be in our backlog. The new feature looks great and is exactly the kind of contribution we’d like from others. You’ll see it in the next release. Thanks Benjamin and Quentin!
We’re also keen to commence monthly community dev calls to learn about other new features that folks might be planning and keep track of how we collaborate on DMP support across the globe.
Translations
We’ll be adding a new translation for Brazilian Portuguese (thanks to Benilton de Sá Carvalho and colleagues at UNICAMP!) and Finnish thanks to DMPTuuli. We’re also reaching out to fill in missing portions of existing translations for other languages since we added so many new features. New translations are always welcome; more information is available on the GitHub wiki and/or contact us.
A machine-actionable future
With the launch milestone behind us, we’re devoting more attention and resources to creating a machine-actionable future for DMPs. Two working groups hosted productive sessions at the recent RDA plenary (DMP Common Standards, Exposing DMPs) that included lightning talk presentations by members of the DMPRoadmap project (slides 44-51). Both of the groups are on track to provide actionable outputs in the next 12 months that will bolster wider community efforts on this front. We will continue participating in both groups as well as begin prototyping things with the NSF EAGER grant awarded to the California Digital Library. Stay tuned for more details via future updates and check out the activedmps.org site to get involved.
Pizza Party!
The DMPTool team has embarked on a major housekeeping effort in order to migrate to the DMPRoadmap platform in February 2018. Last week they began a global audit of the funder templates and guidance in an all-day pizza-fueled event that amounted to a h…
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Image credit: Airstream CC-BY-NC by dwstucke
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Eurostar by red hand records CC-BY-ND
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