Talis Engage Release 14 has been deployed to the preview site, and is available for testing.

It will be deployed to live on Wednesday 23rd May 2010, which is a shorter preview period than ususal as most of the changes are fairly minor.

The changes include several improvements to the user interface, covering contact details, record editing , subject hierarchy and advanced search.

Contacts Details

A new field has been added to the Contact records, to allow for a mobile phone number to be entered as well as the usual phone and fax numbers.

Record Editing

We’ve made a modification to the behaviour of the system when your login session times out. Previously, if you were viewing a record as a logged-in user, and you left the browser session without any activity for 10 minutes, you would get an error when you clicked on the “Edit” link for the record. Now, you’ll be redirected to the login page, and then taken back into the record edit page as expected.

Subject Hierarchy

Some users had noticed that when associating subjects with records, there were additional incorrect subjects apparently selected according to the checkboxes. This turned out to be a bug related to the way that similar subject names are encoded, and has been fixed. It should only have affected the display of selected subjects, but not the actual data, so no remedial steps are required.

Still with the subject hierarchy, hidden subjects were sometimes visible to public users. Now, users logged in with the correct permissions should see hidden subjects, but the subjects will be flagged with a “crossed-out eye” icon – and won’t appear at all to users who are not logged in.

Advanced Search

In the Advanced Search, there was a fairly restrictive character limit on the text boxes for search terms – these limits have been increased to 200 characters, which should hopefully be sufficient for most searches.

Finally, we’ve been working to improve our logging at the system level, so that when problems do occur we can diagnose them more quickly. This won’t be visible from the application, but hopefully will mean better support and quicker response to live issues.

To preview the new functionality before the full release, visit http://trial1.talis.com/engage, and log in as SysAdmin (password engage).

And, as usual, please let us know your thoughts on these and any other issues.

Talis Engage release to preview 20th May

Talis Engage Release 13 has been deployed to the preview site, and is available for testing.

The release will be deployed the live servers next Wednesday 26th May 2010.

This release concentrates on improving some of the “behind-the-scenes” behaviour of the application – to control caching of page contents, make better use of server connections to improve performance, and allow calendar events to be imported. There’s also an amendment to the behaviour of the record type editing page, affecting the fields to which you can apply indexes.

Cache Control

Most web pages are cached at some point, to improve the speed of the page loads. For some customers, the caching is done in their own infrastructure, so that repeat requests for pages are served from local copies of the content. When a user is logged in, though, pages are tailored to that user with specific content (so the text in the top-right says “Hello, Julian”, for example, and the editing options may be different). These pages should be specifically excluded from any caching, which we now do with the introduction of cache-control headers in pages viewed by logged-in users. This will avoid any risk of users seeing each others content.

Server Connections

Changes to the configuration of the Talis Platform storage service mean that applications like Engage can make better use of connections to the platform by using connections that are reused over several requests, rather than opening new connections for every request. The application has been modified to allow these “keepalive” connections to the platform, which should lead to better performance when retrieving data, and lower use of resources on the application server.

Calendar Imports

Record types that include Calendar events can now be imported . The fields for Calendar events will be those that you can normally enter when creating a record that includes a Calendar event, including the “repeat” settings. The import format is a CSV-style format as usual, and calendar events look something like these examples:

Event

Event Name|Calendar

^Event1^|^Event1 Summary|Event1 Location|03/05/2010|03/05/2010||^ (specifies location, plus start and end date)

^Event2^|^Event2 Summary|Event2 Location|03/05/2010 12:30|03/05/2010 14:30||^ (also specifies times for start and end)

^Event3^|^Event3 Summary|Event3 Location|03/05/2010 12:30|03/05/2010 14:30|repeat daily|07/05/2010^ (specifies daily repeats until 7th May 2010)

^Event4^|^Event4 Summary|Event4 Location|03/05/2010 12:30|03/05/2010 14:30|repeat on Weekdays |27/05/2010^ (specifies weekday repeats until 27th May 2010)

^Event5^|^Event5 Summary||03/05/2010|||^ (only a start date specified)

Record Type and Indexes

Not all types of field in a record are indexed for searching, so it doesn’t make sense to allow indexes to be specified on those fields in the Record Type Management pages. So now the user interface will only offer you the option of creating indexes on fields where indexing is applied, to avoid confusion. The field types that are not indexed are : address, image, binary, calendar and hyperlink. Existing record types will not be affected by this change (though indexes on those fields will not actually be included in searches). The underlying behaviour of searches has not changed, but is something that can be reviewed in the future.

To preview the new functionality before the full release, visit http://trial1.talis.com/engage, and log in as SysAdmin (password engage).

And, as usual, please let us know your thoughts on these and any other issues.

We want Engage records to be discoverable through search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, so that users can find Engage records by their usual search methods, rather than having to come to the Engage application and repeat their searches.

That means that those search engines must be allowed access to Engage pages to index them, which they do using “spiders” that follow all the links on each site. However, that puts an extra load on the site, so we’ve had it disabled to prevent performance problems.

Our testing has shown that there were several issues to fix before re-enabling indexing:

Having done that work, we plan to enable the indexing of Engage tenancies as soon as our final performance testing and reconfiguration is completed, after which Engage records should start appearing in search engine results.

Some Engage customers have experienced intermittent issues with record inaccessibility, and our analysis has traced this to record corruption. This has usually occurred after an edit where a network problem was encountered during the save, following which the record couldn’t be read or edited (and sometimes affected the display of search results as well).

We’ve done some work to handle those situations better in the code, so that the effects on the rest of the application are minimised, but we’ve needed to identify the root cause of the corruption to be able to fix it.

If a save of a new or modified record is interrupted by a server or network problem, then we try to roll back the parts of the save that have already completed. However, that process itself can be interrupted buy the same network problems, which leaves the record in an intermediate state, which can’t be read correctly by the system.

We’ve changed the error handling in the application to avoid this situation. However, these sort of issues are notoriously difficult to test, because the network is not something that’s under our control (it’s an external dependency), and we have no way to force specific network problems to happen in order to test our error handling code. And in cases like this, we also need to simluate the effects on the state of the record data once the save-with-exception processing has completed (but again, the data itself isn’t under our direct control, because it’s saved in a remote platform store).

So we’ve invested time in building a test framework that can simulate an error in the network, whilst letting the majority of network requests complete normally. The framework is essentially a proxy for the store and network, which will pass through most requests, but intercept certain ones and respond with an error rather than allow the request to complete.

With that framework in place, we’re in a much better position to test the changes that we’ve made to the error handling in the application, not just for this case, but for any other cases where we need to simulate errors in external parts of the system.

Users should not see any further record inaccessibility issues – if you do, please contact support and let us know (http://www.talis.com/services/).

Talis Engage Release 11 has been deployed to the preview site, and is available for testing. The release will be deployed the live servers next Wednesday 31^st March 2010.

The Summary:

For this release we’ve concentrated on the display of search terms on the search results page, so you can see what you’ve searched for and how you’ve refined the search using facets. We’ve also added the ability to schedule repeat calendar events fortnightly, which was requested by several customers, and made some accessibility improvements (as required by WCAG guidelines – more of that to come in future releases). We’ve made clickable links wherever pages prompt the user to “Log in” (for example, on the full record display), and we’ve fixed the sitemap (which gives search engines a list of locations in the site that they should crawl), so that we can enable search engine spidering of Engage sites. Finally, we’ve fixed a bug in the ad-hoc report generation, which was causing some reports to fail.

The Details:

Search terms will be displayed whether you’ve arrived at the search results by using the quick search box, the advanced search, or clicking on tags or subjects (if you use them). The search terms will also be displayed when you’ve invoked a saved search, which makes it easier to see how that set of search results was arrived at. The summary line will show the terms used and also the indexes used – because the indexes can be selected on the advanced search page. The default, when quick search is used, is to search for terms in all the available indexes (listed as “All Indexes”).

So, for example, a quick search for “sport”, followed by clicking the facets for “football” and “english” in the Tags facet, will show the search summary like this (formatting can be changed using CSS):

“Results for sport in Any Index and football and english in Tag”

The search results do not yet include record types, or the extra fields from Advanced Search like record state, state change reason and date ranges – but we can add these in future development if requested.

Calendar events now have an extra entry in the “Repeat” dropdown when creating the record of “repeat fortnightly”. As you’d expect , selecting this will give you an event which appears in the calendar on the same day every other week..

The sitemap for an Engage site can be seen at a specific url which search engines look for – for example, http://trial1.talis.com/engage/sitemap.xml. Generated by the system, the sitemap gives a list of pages in the site that a search engine should examine, following any links found there, and indexing all pages so that they can be found by queries in the search engine. The sitemap includes subject and tag pages, which should enable search engines to most pages in the site. For the search engine spidering to be activated, we also need to configure our servers to allow that activity, which we will be doing once our impact testing is completed. After that, Engage record pages should start appearing in search engine results, which will drive more traffic to Engage sites.

Some ad-hoc reports have been failing when records had particular combinations of field values (specifically, in the hyperlink and image fields). The result of doing an ad-hoc report that included some of these records was an error message in the list of generated reports on the Admin->Manage Reports page. These reports should now work as expected.

The Preview Site:

To preview the new functionality before the full release, visit http://trial1.talis.com/engage, and log in as SysAdmin (password engage).

And, as usual, please let us know your thoughts on these and any other issues.

The December release of Talis Engage enhances the Reporting area introduced in last month’s release.

 A new monthly report has been added, to find and disable deadlinks in records. All hyperlinks, images and file links in records are tested, and replaced with a “Link not working” message if found to be not working correctly. A report is then generated and made available to the SysAdmin user (or other authorised users) in the Create/Manage Reports area, listing the records and urls affected.

 The records will still contain the original hyperlinks, images and file links, but these will now only be visible when the record is edited. Once the edit had been saved, the record will display the links again instead of the error messages.

Only the most recent month’s deadlinks report is kept, so if you want an archive copy, you should download it for local storage (reports will download as CSV by default).

We’ve also introduced Ad Hoc reporting for searches.  Once a search has been carried out by an authorised user, a Create Report button will be available on the left-hand side of the screen. The report will be queued for processing, and will appear in the Create/Manage report area in Admin (under the Ad Hoc reports section) – users will only see their own reports.  

 The current status of ad-hoc reports is displayed on this page - to track progress, you can click on the Refresh button at the top of the screen. Ad-hoc reports are not over-written, but can be downloaded and saved locally.

Finally for this release using customer feedback raised at the Engage User Day on 17th November, text boxes have been expanded for the edit record function.  (This sizing can also be changed using your CSS design).

To preview this functionality prior to the full release, visit http://trial1.talis.com/engage and login as SysAdmin with the password engage, from 2nd December onwards. Release to the live service is scheduled for the 9th December between the hours of 5:30 and 8:30 pm.

We encourage you to view the preview and feedback any comments.

This week saw the first Talis Engage User Group, and I heard some great insight into how some library services are positioning themselves as the key point of contact throughout the Council for information services, using Talis Engage.

Magda Robertson, CINDEX Project Manager at Camden Libraries told the group that the library can become the hub of information services and provide added value across the Council. She explained that this could place the library service in a strong position to provide information services in this way, especially with likely departmental cuts in the coming months.

The User Group met to discuss their different implementations, share experiences and to consider how Talis Engage should develop in the future. As part of the day, a number of Talis Engage users spoke about how it was being used in their local context. Edinburgh Libraries for instance are using Talis Engage to help reflect the new focus for the Council – neighbourhood services. Starting the project in August, they hope to go live next week and have focussed their attention on 4 key areas of information: health, leisure and culture, education and life in the community. Their work with Talis Engage will also tie in with their wider web strategy of “Your Edinburgh”.

I was interested to hear how Coventry Libraries had utilised Talis Engage, creating their own local subject directory tailored to their data. Their ongoing work with the Adult Education Service is proving fruitful, as they now promote their courses using Talis Engage too.

Camden Libraries already have an enviable reputation for excellent community information management, and their work to implement Talis Engage will feed a number of other vital Council systems; linking records with nationally required databases such as the Parent Know How Directory . The ability to add and amend records once and it feed a number of other systems removes any duplication of effort for staff, allowing them sufficient time to maintain the service.

This was the first Engage User Day and it proved a valuable day for all. It’s hoped that the next one will convene in the Spring. To find out more about the Talis Engage User Group, please contact danisha.bathia@talis.com.

The November release of Talis Engage see’s the introduction of the new Report Management functionality accessible from Admin through the Create/Manage reports icon.

 Talis have populated this area with a standard report and this will be automatically populated for you on the 1^st of every month, overwriting the previous month’s report each time. This report will allow you to view all records with a last check by date falling in the current month from the preceding year. If you require to keep an archive of all the standard reports generated it is advisable to save them locally. This functionality will only be viewable to SysAdmin users and those users have been given specific Create/Manage reports role permissions.

 To download the example file on the preview site please ensure that you add a .csv before you save.

 Talis will continue to enhance this functionality in forthcoming releases.

 We have started to refine the Advanced Search function. We have now added a “Clear Search” button at the top and bottom of the Advances Search page. Also, you are now able to search within specified associated search without defining search criteria. Such searches will detail all records within the selected subjects.

 Finally for this release, we have linked the export function to the record and field role permissions, allowing greater control over record access.

 To preview this functionality prior to the full release, visit http://trial1.talis.com/engage and login as SysAdmin with the password engage. Release to the live service is scheduled for the 11th November between the hours of 5:30 and 8:30 pm.

 Please be aware that the preview site will only be available with the new functionality for 1 week only.

 I encourage you to view the preview and feedback any comments.

This month’s release of Talis Engage has focused on the communication of faults, with focus on how such messages are communicated to your end users, and with emphasis on how it is logged at the back end to help diagnose a swift solution.  In past releases, we have maintained and improved product resilience ensuring that errors encountered are at a minimum.  With this release, if an unexpected error is encountered during a search, the following message will be delivered:

‘The system is unable to carry out your request due to an unexpected problem. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. Please click here to return to the home page.’

A key feature in this release is the ability to view scope notes should they exist on subjects via the Browse index in public view.  If a scope note exists, hovering over the subject header will reveal a pop up box detailing the note. To demonstrate the feature, please hover over the Business and Industry subject header in Browse.

We have also applied a fix regarding the registration of User names.  Users registering for Talis Engage may have a user name exceeding 25 characters, and whilst the application is able to accept any amount of characters, the login box can only accept a maximum of 25, causing errors on login.  This has now been addressed with the addition of a note to this effect being added to the registration page and also, should the user attempt to create a User name with more than 25 characters, the cursor will stop at 25 and will not accept anything further.

To preview this functionality prior to the full release, visit http://trial1.talis.com/engage and login as SysAdmin with the password engage. Release to the live service is scheduled for the 7^th October.

Please be aware that the preview site will only be available with the new functionality for 1 week only.

The September release of Talis Engage once again has built upon the resilience of the product. Users will see that navigating search results as a logged in user no longer produces the message “You have entered an invalid search term”. Along with this, we have addressed several other areas in the product where sort and navigating search results have produced errors.

A key new feature in this release is the ability to delete record owners and contacts from the system. A warning will appear before you delete, allowing the user to be able view all records that the owner/contact is attached to. By deleting the owner/contact, all links to records will be dissolved and no further maintenance for that owner/contact will be necessary.

Searching for contacts has now been enhanced.  When a list of contacts is presented in Admin, all additional information based on the “publically visible” check box is now displayed, making it easier to identify duplications for maintenance purposes. This level of detail will be available to all users who have roles that allow them to view contacts and users accounts. By selecting the Edit contact link, a new button has been added at the bottom of the screen to allow users to view all records associated with this contact.

An enhancement has been made to the Calendar functionality. If list view is chosen, an actual list will be produced of calendar events. We have also ensured that the days of the month are listed with their full names and not the abbreviated form.

To preview this functionality prior to the full release, visit http://trial1.talis.com/engage and login as SysAdmin with the password engage. Release to the live service is scheduled for the 8^th September.