Headings: !!Proposal: !!Functions !!Participants: !!Steps !!Use Cases: !!Examples: !!Articles: !!Potential Software: !!Notes:
Design and develop an information bank or knowledgebase to help faculty, staff, students and campus help desks get accurate, current info about technology, administration and library solutions in this increasingly interdependent environment. We'll need this for the classweb consortium, SAKAI Pilot, Wireless, ISIS, Sophos, and other cross-campus projects.
- simple search and browse interface
- immediate publishing of solutions to maximize reuse
- central server, distributed contribution and editing
- basic unit is questions and answers
- easy to add questions, answers and comments
- potentially, any UCLA staff member could post questions and answers
- anyone on campus can post comments (after login)
- all posts identified by name and department to distinguish tech support staff from student comments
- browsable by topic, poster, platform, software, location, most recent posting, etc.
- constant monitoring, moderating and editing by staff person(s) (This is the key)
- to clarify or improve poorly written answers
- to monitor all postings for privacy, accuracy, relevancy, etc.
- to mine all possible data from the searches
- to identify new problems and trends quickly
- to identify areas that we can improve in software or systems that we control, such as ?ClassWeb or labs
- keep track of current problem spikes
- which searches come up empty, can we add meta tags to lead them to appropriate answers?
- even if no-one but Help Desk staff consults it, we get benefit of more accurate and consistent answers
- everything is public unless the item is marked unpublish, which means it's in draft form
Basically, we would create a new feedback mechanism where faculty and staff can get help without having to understand the increasingly complicated, highly networked campus technology infrastructre.
By assigning staff to monitor, moderate and even research answers, we leverage our staff expertise much more broadly. It is much easier to point someone to a well-written explanation or tutorial or step-by-step guide, than it is to write it anew.
- Public - no login required
- search questions and answers
- browse of questions and answers by categories or tags
- list most recent questions and answers
- list oldest questions and answers
- list unanswered questions
- list most recent comments
- add question anonymously - queued for moderators
- UCLA student - ISIS login required
- all of above plus:
- add question - visible to public as well as queued for moderators, author name and date displayed
- add comment to answer
- UCLA employee - full or parttime - ISIS login required
- all of above plus:
- add question and answer set
- add answer to question - author name, dept and date displayed
- add additional answer to question - author name, dept and date displayed
- edit/delete your own previous answer to a question
- Moderator - ISIS login required
- all of above plus:
- edit answer to any question and archive previous version
- delete question
- delete answer - archive previous version
- delete comment
- view earlier versions of answer
- list searches that came up empty
- list most popular answers
- Additional Functionality
- login - should add name to people table if not already there
- email question author when question is answered
- email answer author when answer is edited or receives comment
- Mike Franks will contact each of the 43 Help Desks to get them to "buy in" to the concept, and refine this page per those discussions.
- Then we start defining the process and technical structures.
- Then we look for software we can buy, or open source projects we can use or adapt. Worst case, we build it ourselves.
- Then we build a website to make it public, and start doing usability testing.
- Shared writeups or tutorials.
- One department writes up a tutorial or detailed instructions for a common app, and another department wants to use it. The link to the off-site writup just becomes part of the answer, with the caveat to let us know if the link fails.
- A three hour search through MSDN finds the solution to an obscure problem.
- If that problem and solution is added to the knowledgebase it can save another tech support person from making that same 3 hour search.
- Report on Empty Searches.
- Daily reports can be made for knowledgebase searches that came up empty, and then we can either adjust meta tags to make appropriate answers show up for that search, or we can add this to the list of answers needed.
- A student or faculty member reads an answer in the knowledgebase and has a correction or addendum for their particular system.
- A COMMENTS link at the bottom of each page would allow that. And a report on recent comments can be used to look for edits that need to be made.
- Community Knowledge Sharing in Practice: The Eureka Story (2002) http://www.dialogonleadership.org/EurekaStory.pdf
- http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ERB0423 To meet the IT support demands of more than 98,000 students and 15,000 faculty and staff across eight campuses, Indiana University developed a fully integrated Online Support Environment (OSE) that handles an average 2.5 million IT support contacts each year, or the equivalent of one every 12 seconds. For users, it looks like a vast array of IT services and a searchable database of IT questions and answers. For the IT organization, it supplies a dynamic picture of the questions users ask and the topics they research, as well as usage and satisfaction data. This bulletin discusses how IT met the challenge to provide pervasive, around-the-clock support and outlines the considerations that informed the design of the resulting OSE.
- http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ERB0514 As a sequel to the ECAR research bulletin "Customer-Centered IT Support: Foundations, Principles, and Systems" by the same authors, this bulletin describes the philosophy behind Indiana University's integrated support strategy, which is based on the principle of using technology to serve the customer and the information technology business. The bulletin details how University Information Technology Services combined existing support resources with new ones to arrive at an exponentially larger and better system that serves not only the customer but also the IT organization. Underlying all is the critical role of data in helping the organization effect a positive evolution in IT support.
- Andy's PHP Knowledgebase Andy's PHP Knowledgebase using MySQL is a database driven knowledgebase management system. It includes bookmark friendly URLs, Q&A, easy search with browsing by category, article submission, a powerful administrator interface and a professional and attractive interface. aphpkb Review Notes
- Good
- Bookmark friendly URLs (essential)
- Categories
- Bad
- only version .45 (not even 1.0 yet)
- Interesting
- Questions
- ISISability?
- Too much overhead?
- phpMyFAQ - good possibility. phpmyfaq Review Notes
- Good
- version 1.4.11
- seems like large development community
- many features
- Bad
- Interesting
- Questions
- ISISability?
- Too much overhead? Maybe
- The Knowledgebase The knowledgebase is a tool to help you build a knowledgebase. The knowledgebase is organized into various topics. Users ask questions pertaining to certain topics. The questions/answers are browsable by keywords. The data is stored in a relational database - MySQL. _ It's slightly dated and there are probably others out there, but try this on for size. It gets high marks from the freshmeat rating system... - Steven C. Williams stevewil@glo.org 24 Feb 2004_ kbase Review Notes
- Good
- Bad
- 5 years old, no continued development
- Interesting
- Questions
- ISISability?
- Too much overhead?
- Lore ($99)
- http://www.knowledgebase.net/ - $
- Live chat software that's all done via PHP/MySQL and works with web browsers. The listserv was for University Web Developers, and someone was asking how to put undergraduate counselors "live chat" online cheaply and easily. Here's an example of its use at Bradley Univ. http://admissions.bradley.edu/freshman/ See two links on right side. This is the software, and it's commercial, but not outrageously priced. http://www.phplivesupport.com/ I particularly like the storage of the transcripts and the integrated knowledgebase.
14 June 2005 Mike Franks:
- Set up this page as a start to defining knowledgebase project.
18 June 2005 Prof. Francis Steen, Comm Studies: (email posted by Mike Franks)
The question is how to pitch it -- a general search engine like IU's, or a set of recipes aimed at learners.
For my purposes, I use google for unanticipated problems -- on the assumption that someone else may just have run into it too. Yesterday I solved a problem with my cousin's printer in Norway by following a discussion in New Zealand -- they had had the exact same problem. The chances of someone else at UCLA having run into the same problem is too small to be interesting. Of course this is Linux, which might change the argument, but I'm not sure it really does. Take your argument of the person who spends three hours researching a problem and then passes it on to a UCLA database. Well, the reason he had to spend three hours may well be that the problem is infrequent, so chances are nobody will run into it at UCLA. The number of unpredictable problems is astronomically large and the problem can't be solved locally -- a massive world-wide search engine will beat us hands down.
On the other hand, I need recipes for my students and sometimes for myself for overcoming predictable problems. This is where I would draw the distinction. The predictable we can build for, aggregate solutions, and target our audiences. Here I would very much appreciate help to offload my classtime and my own effort. Really explicit instructions for how to create a web page, for instance, would be really useful -- customized for BOL and our software. Even they would need frequent updates. Also a way to pool people's experience would be good.
Even a well-organized and stocked set of howtos is a lot of work to put together and to keep current. A wiki is actually not a bad format for this -- it can also help create a community.
20 June 2005 Phil Phillabaum, Arts and Architecture: (posted from email by Mike Franks)
My helpdesk deals mostly with administrative computing. We also support the setup of faculty machines, get them connected to email, and help them when hey need it.
One problem I forsee is instructions covering step by step access to administrative systems. It seems like there are going to be all kinds of documents that people won't want public. This could really help central groups like AIS distribute information. It would be nice if units like AIS could post things not in "draft" form (as it says in your quick write up) but limit the audience to IT folks. Tie it into the CSC database, let them grant access to help desk staff.
That's my 2 cents.
20 June 2005 Mike Franks meeting with Ricardo Garcia, CLICC:
- news and writeups vs very distinct problems (see Steen comment). We're aiming at the news and writeups more.
- RSS feeds
- question of anything private (see Phillabaum's comments). Initially we think all public is less confusing because of these possible problems:
- Help Desk could mistakenly email link to faculty that faculty isn't allowed to see.
- Help Desk could mistakenly paste a long explanation with something private in it, into an email to faculty.
- Once we limit subset access to specific groups, then depts could want it for just their staff and we lose the reviewability we want.
- Searches would cross public/private boundaries and would require login before search. They might see one set of results without logging in, and a different one after logging in.
- ranking to show articles by staff first? Not sure.
- We want low overhead system that is self-correcting, as much as possible. Don't want huge central administration process.
- What do we want to happen if a CLICC Staff member edits and improves an SSC article? Who gets the credit? Is it still branded as an SSC article? Mike suggests listing authors and editors, but keeping branding with original.
- Definitely need version control. Suggest keeping all versions in db. Advanced search might let you find earlier versions.
- We'll probably want auto-notification if your article gets edited or commented.
- Who can post articles? What if anyone can post an article, or comment, but they have to login through ISIS first, so their name and UCLA status (staff, faculty, student, and dept shows up). There may be occasional problems of people posting things they shouldn't, but we get the benefit of quicker contributions.
- emphasis at this point is getting articles in knowledgebase.
- Currently, CLICC lead consultants can write articles, regular consultants give articles to leads to publish.
- Need static way to link to articles so we can refer to them from outside, for guides, etc.
- Would want usage stats for each article.
- CLICC has problem with Google loving their technical writeups and come by 2-3 times a day. e.g. http://www.clicc.ucla.edu/default.asp?InfoType=tech&ID=52
- 43 Help Desks could each assign their own staff IDs for who ever should get their branding when they post articles. Just need UID in db.
- All in same database but tagged by poster, poster status and dept affiliation as of author date. That is, if Ricardo had posted one when he was working for CDH, that dept. affiliation would stay. Even when he later moved over to CLICC.
- Symantec visually identifies authoritative answers with Symantec branding vs user forum contributions. http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/enterprise/select_product_kb_nojs.html
21 June 2005 Ricardo M. Garcia, CLICC: (email posted by Mike Franks)
As per our conversation yesterday, here were a couple examples
of things I was thinking of:
Branded Articles: Dell has something like what I was thinking in
their community forum (depending on the implementation of a
knowledgebase, they might not be so dissimilar)... See link and attached screenshot (in case you're not a registered dell member)
I could see this type of branded response having the
same type of look in a semi-public (public browsing/authenticated
authoring) knowledgebase. It also seems a natural fit for something
showing department designation (SSC vs. CLICC vs. etcetera).
I was unable to find the Symantec one, though the design I was
thinking of was similar to the dell site example.
While searching through the Symantec site, though, I did notice
they have a couple of nice features such as ?DocumentIDs (which I'm sure
are a standard kind of offering in a knowledgebase product) as well as a
ratings system (Does this document answer your question: "Yes", "No",
"Maybe, need to test", and "None of the above"). They also had an
option to submit specific suggestions for improvement (which is nice if
we are tracking authors) and language translations for key documents
(see link, or attached screenshot 2:). I don't know if
these features would be of interest to campus, but they might be nice!
Ricardo
23 June 2005 Paul Phillabaum, Arts and Architecture: (email posted by Mike Franks)
> Desks that have "bought in" at least to the concept, and put your name as a contact?
Sure, it's a good concept. The implementation will be the interesting part.
:)
I see your point about different access levels. Keep it open and see how it develops.
> Also, there's the question of who can post articles. I really want low overhead without a huge central admin process. What do you think of this:
> Approach #1:
> - let anyone at UCLA who can login through ISIS post articles, but their
> name, status (staff, student, faculty) and dept. affiliation shows up
> (none for students. I don't want to show their majors for fear of
> Registrar concerns.)
> - the 43 Help Desks can create a list of their student workers who should
> be allowed to post
>
> Approach #2:
> - let anyone at UCLA post, but unless they show up on UCLA
> Payroll in some way, their post gets put into a PENDING pool for some
> admin to approve it.
> - the 43 Help Desks can create a list of their student workers who should
> be allowed to have their posts go up immediately
>
> Any other ideas? I'm sure there are other approaches.
Posting approach #2 doesn't seem to meld well with the low admin overhead
you want. It will also restrict student access, and there will probably be a
lot more students posting than faculty/staff. So I would definitely lean
toward #1.
23 June 2005 Jose Hales-Garcia, Statistics: (on phone with Mike Franks)
- Interested. Have writeups already. Not sure how many would be useful to wider audience. http://support.stat.ucla.edu/
- But, with crosslisted instructors and students from other depts, and some general interest topics there may be quite a bit of interest outside.
- We'll need someone way of establishing context for the articles. e.g. In Statistics, ...
- Asked about issues:
- open to all is ok.
- who can post? What if we leave it entirely open, but make name and dept affiliation show up? Will we get much garbage?
- Who can edit? Any staff, faculty, full or part-time? List of moderators? Stakeholders should be the ones to post.
- What about students who know someone else's BOL and get in and post junk in their name on a lark?
23 June 2005 Patrick Burke: (on phone with Mike Franks)
- Disabilities and Computing Program is just two people and maybe too is in our heads. It might be good to get some of these written.
- OK with idea of any staff posting, and anyone with UCLA login adding comments.
- OK with pool of trusted moderators from around campus with privileges to edit any page.
23 June 2005 Martin Simon, Physics and Astronomy: (on phone with Mike Franks)
- Knowledgebase - not interested, doesn't see writing up answers. Doesn't see going there either. Wouldn't use it.
- Agree that if there's an outstanding resource that might be great.
- Figuring out your intended audience is first step.
- Doesn't really have a help desk in dept. or division.
- Start off with top 100 questions from Help Desk standpoint.
- If it's going to be useful old solutions need to expire.
- Most people immediately go to Google for bugs.
- Highly specialized problems are very unlikely to be found in UCLA knowledgebase, because what are chances that anyone even had same problem.and then that they bothered to write it up?
- Could immediately show benefit for Help Desk staff, as first target audience.
- Point to BOL writeup not pull it in.
- Not being big with help desks on his side, and not having written many FAQs, and with things constantly being in flux.
- They get questions from faculty about gradebook, for example.
- An experiment: What will happen if we let any employee at UCLA post what they think is useful.
- If we get many wild comments could change things so that comments have to be moderated first.
- Mechanism that poster gets comments.
- Have Administrative Support Group, technicians that scan things for profs.
- One useful question: How do we set up to accept electronic payments on campus?
- New state law about if machines are compromised.
- If there is no gatekeeper, how useful can it be? Want some targeted info, but not too shallow.
- Should be targeted at Help Desks.
- How to measure benefit? Keep counts of downloads?
29 June 2005 Prof. Tim Groeling, Comm. Studies: in conversation with Mike Franks
- need help desks to be contributing. Can't rely on the random contributions from the campus.
- Should read Prof. Kollock's article on building communities. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/design.htm
- What happens if anyone can post and a student decides to post reviews of local restaurants? How would this be handled? Mike's response was that moderators would decide if it was appropriate and remove it, or we could only allow students to post into a PROPOSED ARTICLE queue so it doesn't become immediately visible. The Help Desk student workers will need to be able to post immediately though.
- Mike: It may be worth trying the more open approach and see what happens, before tightening it down.
5 July 2005 Jim Williamson, OID: in conversation with Mike Franks
- do we want group accounts, e.g. SSC Help Desk posted this item?
- assigning keywords, how is that going to be handled?
- TEC@OID has some tutorials and links that could possibly be used. http://www.oid.ucla.edu/units/tec/tectutorials/
- Mike would want to use this for SAKAI Pilot, if it's ready.
7 July 2005 Julie Austin, SEASnet: in conversation with Mike Franks
- First reaction (in email) was good idea for IT staff but nothing public.
- On phone Mike explained goal of consistent answers for student help desk staff to use, which faculty could also search. SEASnet already has that.
- Comments mostly haven't been useful ones so far.
- Help Desk is physically located so that the student employees office is right next to that of programming staff which makes it easy to work closely with them.
- Ok to add name to list of groups "buying in to concept." We'll talk more later.
8 July 2005 Met with Zoe Borovsky, Annelie Chapman, Stacey Rosborough:
- Discussed whether "no secret sections" is a problem. Decided there are other venues for that, and if needed, an answer might point to them.
- Definite benefits if we can use other dept. writeups
- Be sure contact: ASUCLA (Computer Zone and Textbook Ordering), URSA, Software Central
- Might need a policy board to direct things, like what are allowable posts, and where we should focus efforts.
- Talked about meta-tags and how we should standardize them. Hoping for Library help.
- Talked about data mining benefits. Questions like:
- What searches had no results?
- What is most common search today? Does it mean a new problem has arisen?
- What are the newest postings?
- Any new questions posted?
- Talked about different roles moderators could play. Some could focus on particular software, others could edit posts for meta-data, etc.
- Talked about how some campus groups might want to post questions and answers as a way to point to particular info on their websites. KB could solve problem of needing to know the right place to go or person to ask to find a specific answer.
- Should start writing up questions on knowledgebase itself as a start.
- What is the UCLA Knowledgebase?
- Who can post questions and answers? Anyone at UCLA can post a question. Anyone employed by UCLA can post answers, including student employees, but their name and dept and date of post shows up too.
- Who can edit postings? Only person who posted item, or moderators. Their names and depts show up along with edit date.
- Who are moderators? Anyone assigned or appointed by 43 sponsoring help desks. They are allowed to edit or delete any posting.
- Who can post comments? _Anyone at UCLA can add a comment to a post, though policies may change if this proves too obnoxious.
- Enthusiastic about idea. OK to list them above.
8 July 2005 Rose Rocchio:
- discussed when this idea should be presented to groups like CSG. Too early. Need to develop idea and get more buyin first.
8 July 2005 Stephen Schwartz:
- Told me about eLibrarian demo to Library from Anderson Computing.
11 July 2005 Terry Ryan: brief conversation
- concerned about uncontrolled or non-authoritative answers that are posted
11 July 2005 demo of eLibrarian by Tim Carlson and Eloisa Borah:
- more efficient replacement system for email questions to Reference Librarians at Anderson.
- students login and identify which class question pertains to, also several broad categories.
- They are "pushed" to a list of questions from other students in the same class, same term. If none of them applies, they're allowed to ask their question.
- question gets routed to librarian on duty, and tracked in database. Another librarian can take it over, but when it's done, result is an answer emailed to student and saved in database.
- Librarian can edit question to make it more clear for later use.
- Future plan is to make a knowledgebase where all the questions can be searched by students and faculty. That's the point where Mike thinks these systems could converge.
12 July 2005 Esther Grassian:
- Discussed Ready Reference project with Memory Mate 10 years ago.
- Anyone who has FAQs on campus could be involved, not just Help Desks.
- She has some articles about similar systems.
12 July 2005 Prof. David Sears:
- Likes idea, talk to Charles Kim for ISSR buyin.
19 July 2005 Peter Blase:
- permission to add to participants list, notes to follow
19 July 2005 Jeff Baughn - Bruin Online:
- working on something in house
- CTS doesn't have a different help desk
- This knowledgebase could include general UCLA questions such as:
- How do I apply?
- What does SIR mean?
- Have you talked to anyone at UCLA Portal Project? His division supposed to move over to portal in next few months. All Business and Administrative Services will have same look and feel.
- gave permission to add to participants list.
19 July 2005 Charles Kim - ISSR:
- he handles personnel payroll issues, might have some
- wouldn't consider himself webmaster of ISSR, just administration part of ISSR
- each center has different areas and are responsible for their own sections of website.
- Need to talk to centers, good to start with Libbie Stephenson.
- gave permission to add to participants list.
- He will talk to David Sears about what kinds of questions they might want to put into knowledgebase. Mike suggested papers and events.
19 July 2005 Libbie Stephenson - ISSR Data Archives:
- has tutorials and what do I do now writeups
- likes idea
- constantly looking for where to refer people for particular things
- Maybe we're ready to start designing data design.
- Agrees that writeups should be for both technical and non-technical audience.
- Should talk to ATS Statistical Consulting, Michael Mitchell.
- Sample question: How can I find out what new data the Data Archives has?
- Sample question: How can I find out what new library electronic resources have been added?
- Let people add their own questions that they want answered.
- Anything that can give us visibility or share what we know.
- Over and over I come across resources and people and I think "where have you been all my life?"
- Very enthusiastic about this.
- She will start looking at what FAQs to contribute.
20 July 2005 Tim Carlson:
- talked some about how to possibly incorporate eLibrarian knowledgebase data.
20 July 2005 Michael Mitchell - ATS Statistical Consulting:
- talked about the annotated stat output pages
- likes KB idea because often he thinks TAs are reinventing the wheel when they teach students how to use statistical packages. They can use his materials and adapt them.
- training movies on their website. Intro to SAS, Intro to Stata, Intro to SPSS.
- Sample question: How can I find training materials on SPSS?
- SAS Starter Kit, same for Stata and SPSS.
- likes feature where changes or comments to an answer sends email. It could act
- showed him PHP Function List http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.file.php for comments afterwards, which is the basis for our wanting to allow comments. He liked that very much.
- mentioned Wikipedia's featured article of the day as a way to highlight
- lots of people across campus are creating good information but it's balkanized, lacks central pointer.
- people use informal networks all the time.
- Stat Computing site is an archive of what they've learned. Searchable 24/7.
- targeting Help Desk Staff first. Theoretically their number of calls will go down, so you can use their time for other things.
- Their experience has been that web now solves the simple questions and now the questions
- ideal would be that no problem has to be solved twice.
- When a question comes in two or three times they start thinking about adding it as an FAQ for their website.
- Have people at help desk track common questions that come in five times a day.
- can make sets of questions as guides for particular groups or situations. Target specific FAQs. e.g. new grad student, beginning dissertation.
- so many well defined communities here at UCLA and resources associated with them.
- new profs should know about Statistical Consulting group
- they go through new faculty lists and email them about Stat Consulting Group
- wholeheartedly endorses this project and ok to list as buying in
- search for FAQ in UCLA group
- loves that everything will be public (except answers in draft form)
20 July 2005 Aaron Seligman, CCPR:
- can you get list of CCPR questions?
- can you order them by importance? So, basic questions could
- ok to list as buying in
20 July 2005 Lucas Lee, Economics:
- couple of concerns
- overall can see it being useful, with writeups and how-to's
- what about incorrect answers, especially from a tech standpoint.
- something I've noticed, the info on UCLA website is not easily searchable.
- should be group responsibility. e.g. whoever provides a service should document it
- agrees that there are lots of duplicate writeups, because no one can find them.
- could think of it as marketing
- going out on web for campus specific stuff doesn't work well
- way of keeping track of organizational knowledge
- they don't have FAQs now
- sample question might be: How do I find faculty working papers? And answer could link to Econ's Working Papers site, along with others on campus.
- worried about scope, maybe focus on technical first
- focusing on Help Desks first, and those who have FAQs. Might be a year before it's ready to advertise to faculty and students.
21 July 2005 Edson Smith, Mathematics Computer Consulting:
- have FAQs and user docs, specific to Math Dept. and their labs
- http://www.math.ucla.edu/computing/
- how to handle multi answers, like Who provides class websites?
- will think of what writeups they might contribute, and what they'd want to see
- Sophos writeups should be mandatory
- make sense to aim at Help Desks first, then students and faculty later
- strongly support idea, and consensus building approach
21 July 2005 Scott McKnight, Law School Help Desk:
- have lot of student info
- don't see why not have central knowledgebase
- have to have a place to post our Law School private stuff.
- but no reason we can't post our public stuff
- knowledgebase is not a wiki site, that's too little control
- who takes care of answering new questions? Could pool them weekly to Help Desk List serve
- would want links to other knowledgebases (Microsoft, Dell, etc.)
- could have advice questions like putting error messages into a Google Groups search
- links to help desks on campus
- want depts to post links to specific FAQs that
- hardest part is to get people to link to individual FAQs instead of top level web sites.
- How do I get computing support for Law School?
- It would be nice to know some dept. has Exchange so I could ask them support questions on a technical level.
- maybe it would be useful for groups like campus web publishers, programmers group, network admins, etc.
- somewhere on campus is a link to Gartner Group articles. That would be a good question. How do I get access to Gartner Group articles?
- Can I get Lexis/Nexis from UCLA?
- CLICC maintains list of campus computing labs, with useful info about what is provided. Useful, but only find it if you go through CLICC.
- always been a huge proponent of writeups
- most of their stuff is Intranet restricted to Law School students, staff, faculty and alumni
- might be some resistance to those who say info is already on law school website, but it's marketing
- ok to list as buying in,
- list as Law School Help Desk
- question the other day on where to find video conferencing on campus
- sites that change every time you come back are more interesting
- recently asked questions
- new input to site (e.g. last 30 days)
- one concern is that by posting their content, issues over who owns material and who can change it in ways you don't approve of
- therefore post what you're concerned about on your own site, but link to it from knowledgebase
- definitely will archive old versions of kb answers, but only visible to moderators
- knowledgebase would be more of a short answers and referral service not a content management system. Long tutorials, and writeups with screen captures would site elsewhere but be linked from knowledgebase.
- hopefully deeplinking won't be an issue with some dept's content management systems
- down the road we might want similar look to pages we point off to on dept sites
- searching great for some, browsing better for others
22 July 2005 Suzanne Stinson, Software Central:
- thinks it's a great idea
- could be marketing for other websites on campus, but no popups
- for example, many library resources are under-used
- only concern is that scope sounds enormous. Anything could go in here. On previous projects, usually start small, but maybe don't need to here.
- phase in Help Desks first and then faculty and students later.
- If it's useful for the Help Desks, then it's already a win.
- guided tours (web page linking to selected questions and answers) could be written for different populations.
- e.g. intro for new TAs, new Faculty, etc.
- acronym crazy on this campus, could use writeups explaining them
- UCLA Knowledgebase is name? Discussed other possibilities.
- check into Portal
- Sample question: campus has site license for Vignette, how can I use it?
- start list of questions that we should have
22 July 2005 Eleuteria Hernandez, Chicano Studies Department:
- likes knowledgebase idea
- She is a Student Advisor in a new department and deals with lots of questions.
- Sample questiont: Are you a club or a dept?
- Can think of roughly 10 questions right now to contribute
- Planned on working on that this Summer.
- "The more we are out there the better."
22 July 2005 Hubert Ho, History Computing:
- fine to add them
- will add more as project planning moves along
22 July 2005 Robert Kilgore: - will add notes later
22 July 2005 Rose Rocchio - SAKAI Pilot:
- agrees in principle
- will be useful for help desk staff answering SAKAI questions
- ok to list as buying in
25 July 2005 Dawn Canfield - Psychology Solution Center:
- who updates old answers that aren't accurate anymore?
- how do you catch that they're wrong?
- don't want to wait for faculty and students to find them.
- report on oldest queries, for moderators to check out
- could be responsibility of that service, e.g. wireless, BOL, etc. to update their info.
- comments will alert us
- Should have disclaimer, "If this doesn't help, or you find it to be wrong, please tell us, using the Feedback form below."
- Fine to list as buying in in principle.
- Will discuss with staff and think of how to use it and any other concerns.
- Will recommend who else to talk to.
25 July 2005 Judy Justus - External Affairs Help Desk:
- how technical would this be?
- Sample questions:
- How to deposit gifts.
- Question on Advance - Donor database.
- full text search
- Thinks it's a good idea. oke to list as buying in in principle.
- Will send URL.
25 July 2005 Scott Harvey - Network Operations Center:
- Help Desk for Campus Backbone Network
- Without knowing which direction it will go, but just from the sheer fact of having everything in one place, it seems like a fantastic source of information.
- same way as search engines grew.
- do have FAQs
- contact Help Desk for Phones - Mike Quirk
25 July 2005 Mike Quirk - CTS Telephone Repair:
- customer training only for voice over IP
- more for broken phones
- For example 1223 will tell you what phone number you're at.
- Have a number of common questions he could contribute .
- Sometimes there are simple things person can do or check a broken phone.
- also contact Customer Training - Lisa Sergy
- OK to put him down as buying in.
- sounds really useful.
25 July 2005 Jackie Reynolds - AIS:
- update on knowledgebase
- who to talk to on UCLA Portal?
- Gwen ?McCurry - CTS chosen to be technology tab coordinator in Admin Portal
- Kirsten Gabbe - coordinating Portal, knows all about it
- Are we duplicating efforts?
- HR question - How do I hire someone?
- Proof of Concept of knowledgebase by end of Summer.
26 July 2005 - Gwen ?McCurry - CTS:
- talking about knowledgebase in context of UCLA Portal Project.
- talk to Greg Partipilo about Portal.
- Sounds like an interesting idea.
- Any time you can get information quicker, it's always helpful.
- Hard part is how do you maintain it so it doesn't go out of date or inaccurate?
- More focused first. Get successful implementation first.
- Focusing on Help Desks first is good idea.
26 July 2005 - Darryl Itagaki - MCCS:
- No longer in Help Desk game, refer me to Ralph Bowman, Jr., best guy to talk to, manages both help desk and support for MCCS.
- Nice centralized location for people to go to.
- Get simple stuff done and right referrals.
- sample question: If you want slides made from ?PowerPoint, how do you do that?
- UCLA is such a hodgepodge from student point of view.
- 80% of MCCS users on clinical side, for most part their computer issues are specific to particular MCCS applications.
- Lot of interns and med students might find answers in knowledgebase though.
- Thinks it's a good idea. Don't know how much Med Center will use it.
- The more you have written down and available, the better it is. Some people will find it.
27 July 2005 - Rick Stearnes - CTS Student Technology Center:
- manages help desk and services for residential halls
- the more resources that people have, the happier they will be.
- Got to start somewhere.
- It might change as we go along.
- RSS feeds or other notifications may be useful.
- will buy in to concept, let's see where it goes.
28 July 2005 - Kaya Mentesoglu - International Institute:
- Has some FAQs.
- Likes idea, please include him. OK to list as "buying in."
27-28 July 2005 - Jim Carter - Math: (via email)
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 10:50:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jim Carter <jimc@math.ucla.edu>
To: Mike Franks <franks@ssc.ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: let's talk about making a UCLA Knowledgebase (fwd)
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:53:54 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Mike Franks <franks@ssc.ucla.edu>
> To: "Smith, Edson" <edson@math.ucla.edu>
> Subject: let's talk about making a UCLA Knowledgebase
>
> Please take a look at this very rough writeup of a plan for a UCLA
> Knowledgebase, and then let me know when I might talk with you about it.
>
> http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/consortium/index.pl?KnowledgeBase
This concept is interesting. I may not be the best person to make comments
on it because I'm not on the front line helpdesk, but here are a few points
off the top of my head: (Sorry for the mixed metaphor -- think Dilbert :-)
For software: it sounds like you're building a "wiki". Check out software
under that keyword. http://www.wikipedia.org/ is a big and famous Wiki
operation. But I have no hands-on experience managing one of those.
MF: I've been using wikis with my student programmers and the few committees I'm on for several
years, but no, I don't think that's appropriate for the knowledgebase. I trust everyone on the
committees, but not everyone at UCLA. I'm thinking more of a database of text questions and
answers. The permissions would go like this:
- anyone at UCLA who can login through ISIS and is even partially
employed by UCLA is allowed to post answers. Their name and dept. will
show up on the post. They can go back and edit their post, and check
a box to be emailed if someone comments or modifies their post.
- anyone at UCLA who can login through ISIS can add a comment to a
posting, but their name and dept. will show up.
- the 43 UCLA Help Desks can designate staff as moderators. Moderators
can edit or remove ANY post, but their name and dept. will show up.
- anyone can anonymously suggest questions that should be answered.
Though if this proves to be a problem, we can back off and make these
question suggestions limited in viewing to the moderators. Or, limit
to a UCLA login to suggest a question.
JC: Agreed, the social concept of a wiki is "useful grafitti" which is not
appropriate here, but I was thinking of the preprogrammed facility to post
new articles and to add content. I wonder if there's a wiki program whose
user identification component is sufficiently non-(nonexistent) that it
could be adapted to do what we want?
Alternatively, or as a supplement to the wiki's own search feature, I've
had good experience with HTDig as a general purpose small scale search
engine. http://www.htdig.org/
MF: I really don't want to build a content management system. Major content will reside on dept.
sites, and the knowledgebase answers will link there. So I don't think we need a file based
search engine. If I don't find something better, I plan to build it in PHP and MySQL and MySQL's
search facilities are pretty good.
JC: Response #1: the strength of a search engine is full text indexing, like
what Google does, without relying on the content provider having
useable keywords in the right places on the input form. A SQL engine can
do no better than a serial search of the entire corpus, while there are
tricks such as trigram vectorization which the search engine can use to
good effect. (I don't know if HTDig uses that particular technique, but it
does something magical and uses plenty of disc space to do it.)
Response #2: If the corpus is nonlocal, a serial search is impossible
anyway.
Response #3: This is what HTDig is made for: you sic it on a prespecified
list of root URLs and it crawls through them, everything not password
protected (unless you provide the password, which is what we're doing for
one index of internal documents). HTDig doesn't care if the corpus is on
your own web site or elswhere.
While it's likely that some of the software will run on Windows, you're
going to have a whole lot more freedom of action if your server's OS is
Linux. (But no glitzy GUIs, awww.)
MF: I'm with you there. I've been using Solaris for years. My main job is the class websites in
Social Sciences. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/classes/.
We can host this until it gets huge or taken over.
Helpdesk people don't put enough articles into our own departmental
knowledge base. Having them make two writeups will be like pulling teeth.
MF: That's a question I should have been asking. How many departments have their own knowledge
bases. I'm hoping to subvert them with a much more useful campus knowledgebase or work out a
data export arrangement or API.
CLICC has a knowledgebase, but much of it is private. Ours will be entirely public, so they'll
only want to share some of theirs. What is yours built on?
JC: We're using Perfect Tracker http://www.avensoft.com/pt7.html
Another important point is that this is aimed at Help Desks Staff first, then Staff Groups, then
faculty and students. The logic is that if it serves Help Desks well, it's already accomplishing
a lot. And they'll be the ones to keep it going. And we can experiment more with the Help Desks
as our first audience.
I wonder if there could be a XML ontology that could be grafted onto the
departmental K.B. software, so new articles could be uploaded automatically
in a useable form to the central database, either by department push or by
central suck.
MF: I'd be very interested in working on that.
Several commentators mentioned Google searches, and how outsiders spotted
and viewed UCLA departmental writeups as a result. Sharing our knowledge
with the world community is good, and is good use of our bandwidth. It's
also good for our people to use the world resource. I hope you can read
Polish, because the Polaki often have good answers!
MF: Nope, but I see Brazilian stuff every now and then on the PHP programmers list I'm on.
And I read Portuguese, slowly.
Your reference "Community Knowledge Sharing in Practice: The Eureka Story"
was very interesting.
MF: I should read it then.
However, your major problems are going to be getting
departmental helpdesks to feed tips to the center, and getting them to
consult the central resource regularly.
MF: Agreed. That and getting answers to give their context clearly.
Xerox had a unified organization
and multilayer escalation machinery to keep these functions tied together.
Your situation is much harder.
MF: Yup, but the real key is the data mining you can do once it's in place. I hope that will prove
enticing and interesting to the moderators and Help Desks. And encourage them to fill in gaps.
- what are the big questions today?
- what questions are coming up empty? Do we not have answers, or should
different keywords be added to an answer to get it to match?
- what questions aren't being searched? Should they be advertised better?
I'm also hoping to search out FAQs all over UCLA and encourage their owners to allow us to
compose questions with answers that link to them.
That could be a contest, what is the hardest to find information at UCLA, and where did you find
it? Or, most interesting information? For example, dialing 1223 on a campus phone will tell
you what phone number it has. (I'm sure there's more interesting info than that.)
What do you think?
James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)
28 July 2005 - Alan Wood - Design|Media Arts Lab Help Desk:
- has FAQ but almost all very specific to their users only
- e.g. login info, printer, creating website
- almost no Q&A on apps, but just because they haven't written them yet
- concept sounds useful
- have nothing to contribute at the moment, but not to say there isn't stuff they'd like to see in there.
- OK to list as "buying in" to concept
28 July 2005 - Kathleen Copenhaver - Registrar's Office:
- Has Registrar FAQ. http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/
- Wouldn't want to duplicate anything. And there's a lot already there.
- For every FAQ question you have to duplicate it. Extra workload.
- Kind of stuff on Registrar FAQ is technical and legal.
- Take the question, can you audit classes at UCLA? That leads to all sorts of questions normally.
- Wouldn't want to allow comments on policies that they're implementing. Policies come from UC, UCLA , Academic Senate, not up for discussion.
- No comments allowed option, would that help?
- A few generic questions that point to Registrar FAQ might make more sense.
- Any questions aimed at new instructors?
- FAQ is definitely student oriented.
- Would be interested in what are most frequently asked faculty questions.
- In principle likes the idea of going to one place for answers to broad, questions.
- Doesn't want to see duplication.
- See College Academic Counseling, AAP, Athletics extensive student knowledge has quite a good website. Really rich in policies. But only for College.
- http://www.college.ucla.edu/up/counseling/
- Would want general questions to get people over to that website.
- Would be interested in generic questions.
- Glossary definitely needed.
- For faculty, should point to Faculty Handbook, Teachers Guide, and Senate publications. http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/links/faculty.htm
- Analysis and Information Management is a rich site for faculty.
- http://www.aim.ucla.edu/
- Willing to sit down a focus or workgroup to come up with some general directory questions or keywords.
- Concept is good but be careful of undermining sources of information.
- Can only list her as individual in Registrar's Office.
- "buys in" with reservations
29 July 2005 - John Talbert - URSA Online Help Desk:
- Thinks knowledgebase is good idea. As students come in, big university can be very bewildering.
- has a whole bunch of depts participating in URSA Online Help Desk.
- distributed email and help support, phone goes to Registrar's Office
- represent a broad group of depts, questions get funnelled out
- questions are very detailed
- Sample question: tried to enroll in a class, but requires PTE, what do I do?
- Registrar's has big part of URSA.
- Admissions, BAR Account, Summer Sessions, etc.
- Not going to rewrite things, instead point to original one URSA website.
- Has new student guide.
- Likes idea of identifying groups and focusing info for them. After mention of how some depts. might make a web page called "What new instructors need to know." which points at a list of selected questions.
- Everyone should have an FAQ, email address and phone number.
- UCLA Portal project is really critical. That will bring a lot of stuff together.
- Likes everything being public.
- Discussed role of comments. Place for students and others to express their opinion.
- URSA downtime ten years ago was greater than now, partly as response to student comments.
- URSA Online Home Page has Help and Suggestions separate links. Those suggestions and comments drive their development.
- Having students involved helps development.
- Will it be mostly technical? Probably at first, but would like to have other UCLA stuff too. And Library stuff.
- Portal - much more action driven. They brought in web expert who pushed toward actions people need to know how to do, instead of having website organized by departments.
- The URSA website has changed Help Desk calls to more complex questions.
- Workload could decrease for Help Desk with this knowledgebase answering simpler questions (or pointing to where the answers are).
- Rating answers helpful or not, could be useful.
- Sample interesting question: What films have been shot at UCLA? Has list of films shot at UCLA from IMDB. http://us.imdb.com/List then put location=UCLA. I found 47 when I tried this.
- Last phase targeting anyone who has FAQs.
- Likes idea of doing FAQs sooner rather than later.
- Help Desk Consortium Meeting one of best groups because talked about things like spyware and how they solved it. So practical, very worthwhile meeting.
- What problems are people at Help Desks seeing every day?
- Can't think of any downside.
- OK to list as buying in. URSA Help Desk.
29 July 2005 - Sam Brown - Arthur Ashe Help Desk:
- Help Desk phone support for internal staff
- primarily Windows shop, deal with thin clients, terminal services, what is complex password, printing issues
- sure that other groups on campus are using terminal services and complex passwords
- email support for students, related to web apps,
- ISIS questions, can't login
- use Registrar data to do live lookups on student info
- sometimes Registrar info doesn't show that they are, or that they haven't paid fees.
- have interfaces with MCCS.
- overall it sounds like a great idea
- in terms of moderator workload, how much would be required? It's all voluntary.
- what is critical mass? How many answers will it take before this is useful to anyone?
- ok to list as buying in, at least to concept.
- list as Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center Help Desk
- Have to talk to staff person directly on help desk, but maybe 20-25 questions to put in.
1 August 2005 - Max Kopelevich - Physical Sciences:
- can certainly see the value to the help desks. Without question
- have been thinking about this on a divisional level, but makes more sense at campus level
- very good starting point
- if it's resounding success, people may use it in ways we didn't expect
- don't have a formal help desk
- people view this initially as extra work
- could be work avoidance eventually
- would have to prime it with significant work
- probably will change dynamics of users and help desk, but will have to wait and see.
- OK to list as buying in to the concept
10 August 2005 - Slobodan "Jovca" Jovcic - OID, formerly GSEIS:
- what about site-specific material. At GSEIS, most problems are unique to them.
- definitely want moderated comments. At one site, you're allowed to comment on each section, and it is filled with silly comments. You can turn them off, but you lose the occasional useful one. Better to have moderators clear out the useless comments.
- OK for comments to post immediately, and moderator can remove silly stuff.
- For GSEIS, talk to Peter Kovaric.
- Talked about "application review database" idea and could possibly do this in knowledgebase instead of in custom program.
- e.g. What experience have people had with program X?
- Answer could be a group answer, or collection of comments. Moderator could gradually incorporate comments into body of answer.
- Or, we could allow multiple answers.
11 August 2005 - Jason Frand - Anderson Computing:
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 15:06:27 -0700
From: Jason Frand <jason.frand@anderson.ucla.edu>
To: Mike Franks <franks@ssc.ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: UCLA Knowledgebase
Hi Mike,
Gabe Ruiz runs our faculty support operation and would be your contact. It would be great if we
could all share documentation and such on systems we commonly support. Thanks for putting this
together,
jason
11 August 2005 - Zoe Borovsky, Center for Digital Humanities:
- could we use knowledgebase for Zoe's Software Assessment Database idea? Yes.
- Do we need multiple answers feature, or can we do it with comments?
- Really liked way Matt Bazar set up Web Assessment for Egyptology.
- http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/egyptology/UEE/index.htm
- categories and types would be keywords
- browse section, shows abstract, review and allows multiple reviews.
- suggest a resource, could suggest new software to be evaluated. Name, email, URL and brief characterization.
- answer is sort of aggretated answer. Others like this will be Ruth Sabean's, Who offers service X at UCLA?
- Do we need ability to have multiple answers, or just use comments?
- What if we decide comments as a whole, aren't useful, but this use of them isn't?
- If we can't get student workers info right away, ok to go with just campus directory employees, but MUCH better to get student workers for proof of concept.
12 August 2005 - Gabriel Ruiz, Anderson Computing:
- thinks it would definitely be very helpful
- would definitely buy in
- would have writeups to contribute
- have Outlook deployed in IMAP environment. Not same as Exchange environment.
- about 10 questions to contribute initially, very conservative estimate
- If all contributions are extremely dept specific, this project may not be that useful. But, it may still have unintended consequences, such as in the case above, making it easier for another email admin to find out about Anderson's Outlook with IMAP setup.
- Fine with volunteer approach
- Likes rollout plan.
- 1st target Help Desks
- 2nd target Staff groups
- 3rd target faculty, staff and students
- OK to list as buying in, list both help desks: Anderson CS Response and Anderson Technology Services
24 August 2005 - Libbie Stephenson, ISSR Data Archives: via email
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:01:32 -0700
From: Elizabeth Stephenson <libbie@ucla.edu>
To: Mike Franks <franks@ssc.ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: let's talk about making a UCLA Knowledgebase
Great - just had another thought - we might also want to include something that helps users
understand what they can reasonably expect in terms of "help" - sometimes there are high
expectations that can't be met, or the user is asking for help on something that we do not
cover in the archive, or we don't have the resources to do it.
What this project can bring out is the idea that we are in a relationship between help/services
and users - and that it is always moving along, improving, adjusting, etc. That's how the use
of technology in the way you propose is helpful because it is not all one way.
I also think there may be places where different knowledge sources have the same information
to share but perhaps in different ways or there may be chances to collaborate to expand on
or improve the knowledge base by collaborating with other units. It might even result in
some resource sharing or savings ... maybe that is expecting too much?
best, libbie
At 03:51 PM 8/24/2005, you wrote:
Libbie,
Thanks. Glad you like it.
At this point I'm looking at setting up a proof-of-concept in the next few weeks.
Mike Franks
On Wed, 24 Aug 2005, Elizabeth Stephenson wrote:
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 15:48:50 -0700
From: Elizabeth Stephenson <libbie@ucla.edu>
To: Mike Franks <franks@ssc.ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: let's talk about making a UCLA Knowledgebase
Hi Mike,
yes, I know it has taken me a month to read and get back to you - I liked what I saw
and the compilation of everyone's comments was interesting. So, where are we now
with this?
best, libbie
8 September 2005 - Mike Franks
- With Wing Kai Chan's help we installed three possible PHP/Mysql alternatives and didn't like any of them for use as a base.
- Decided to write a proof of concept knowledgebase using Ruby on Rails. This may be a major sidetrack. We'll see. For notes, see Kb Schema, where we'll store the structure and functions and Rails Knowledgebase.
12 September 2005 - Robert Miles, OID ITS (Information Technology Services) Help Desk
- thinks it is a great idea.
- thinking about who would he get from his staff to act as moderator?
- will think about what kinds of questions might want in it.
- their shop is so small don't have any FAQs at the moment. People tend to call them directly.
23 September 2005 - Sarah B. Watstein, Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services
- met briefly to discuss knowledgebase concept
- she likes the idea, buys into the concept
- will meet again later for more detail
5 January 2006 - Mike Franks - Update
- still working on proof of concept knowledgebase to let us start entering and testing this.
- Dawn Canfield sent this article in a different context Why Wikis Work and though a wiki is too loose for this, the article mentions some interesting ideas.
- Excessive rules of governance result in several very bad outcomes…including .. Delayed availability to those who need it (example, issues with a new software release);
- “Flag It or Fix It”
- mark their submissions as editable or not editable.
- we can achieve the wiki effect with accountability by allowing help desk staffs to login and edit anything but saving every version of each edit, with their names attached.
15 March 2006 - Mike Franks - Update
- Ryan Nguyen now doing the programming of the proof of concept knowledgebase. We hope to have something to demo at the April 12th combined CSC/Help Desk Meeting. Here's a link to his mockup pages.
- I submitted request for domains knowledgebase.ucla.edu and kb.ucla.edu for this project.
21 March 2006 - Mike Franks - Update
- Weekly meeting with Ryan Nguyen about progress of proof-of-concept knowledgebase in Ruby on Rails. He's working on some bigger projects at same time.
- making progress, hope for alpha by April 1, with time to solicit questions before April 12 meeting.
- showing dept(s) affiliation of person posting an answer may sometimes not be good, if an employee is answering something outside the exepertise of their dept. Compromise is to give choice when posting answer, with default of not showing.
- copyright notice (steal from wikipedia?) to posters of answers that everything put in knowledgebase is copyright UC Regents
- decided that questions don't need to show name of poster. No real use, plus it makes it harder for us to the edit question
- Should notify questioners that their question may be reworded for clarification.
- Should automatically email questioner when its answered.
- Employees can see all unanswered questions, but students can't.
28 March 2006 - Mike Franks - Update
- Weekly meeting with Ryan Nguyen and Mike Lee about progress of proof-of-concept knowledgebase.
- Ryan and Mike Lee - KB
Rails 1.1 released, and Ryan updated it on his Powerbook
Julie is updating Lighthttpd to newer version that fixes a problem with file upload.
Also upgraded Ruby to 1.8.4 (from 1.8.2)
Then Ryan will upgrade Rails.
On his machine he has
- can add a person
- can change their level
- can add a question
- can't view it or add answer yet
31 March 2006 - email from Ryan
The UCLA Knowledgebase is in early development.
Here’s what it CAN do:
1. add topics/questions
2. answer topics/questions
3. a very simple search, that searches the answer of the question (not the title yet)
4. I refer to a topic/question and it’s answer as an article. Articles are versioned
5. you can view versions of an article
6. you can tag an article
There are four roles.
1. level1 – students
2. level2 – staff
3. moderrators
4. administrators
-As of right now there’s no difference between level2-staff and moderators
-administrators have the ability to change the roles of a
particular user (only Mike Franks and Mike Lee are administrators so far)
Here’s what you CAN NOT do:
1. comment
2. view a list of questions you didn’t submit. You can search and then view. but there’s no handy list yet
3. you can’t revert to a version
4. you can’t search tags or titles
5. you can not delete articles
6. you can not do anything that’s not listed under the things you can do
URL for development environment hidden for now.
http://kb.ucla.edu and http://knowledgebase.ucla.edu will be
used for the rails production environment which is not yet set up.
if there are any bugs, post them here: URL hidden for now.
4 April 2006 - Mike Franks - Update
- Weekly meeting with Ryan Nguyen about progress of proof-of-concept knowledgebase in Ruby on Rails.
- syntax for formatting text taken from Textiles ROR module.
- http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/ruby/redcloth/
- Next programming:
- default for now will be that ISIS login gets you staff privileges (will be more restrictive later when we have way to know if someone is staff)
- simple list of all articles - by date created
- total number of articles
- identify urls and make them links
- what about URLs that start with www instead of http:// Is that enough? Not sure yet.
- design question - fixed width or fill screen? Currently fills screen, we're both leaning toward fixed width (800 pixels) for easier reading.
- tried view versions but had bug
- only staff and above can see versions. ie: only if you're allowed to answer question can you see previous versions
- Ryan is saying all staff should be able to edit any answer otherwise what to do when someone has heavily modified their answer? Advantage is easier for staff to correct and edit other answers, more likely more people will contribute. I like that.
- In that case what can moderators do that makes them special?
- delete questions and answers
- delete comments
- anything else?
- what about backup?
- code is in subversion on Ryan's computer
- I'll ask Shinn to do 7day backup of mysql like we do on Classweb server
- kb center only shows up when you log in
- what should go on Home? We both agree for now, list of questions should go there, in descending order
- decided deletes will retain the question and answer and versions just marked as deleted. This goes to the don't throw anything away credo. Might want to find questions that have been deleted.
- All bugs should be reported with Trac. Don't need to login, just leave email.
11 April 2006 - Mike Franks - Update
- http://kb.ucla.edu is live and in beta.
- Ryan added auto-linking of URLs, list of contributors to each answer, and a Forum for discussing how to use this.
- preparing for announcement tomorrow at CSC/Help Desk Meeting
12 April 2006 - Mike Franks - Update
28 April 2006 - Mike Franks - Update
- 79 questions and answers posted
3 May 2006 - Juan Tan - School of Public Affairs
- explained about Help Desk Directory, and he's adding SPA's
- explained about KB and he agrees to be on list as "buying in to concept"
- Only two months in the job yet, so not sure how much to add to knowledgebase.
Last edited Wednesday, 3 May 2006 at 16:40 by Mike Franks