Re: Kavi meeting with the UBL chairs

[Anne Hendry <anne.hendry@sun.com>]

Hi all,

In addition to yesterday's additional issues I sent out a little while ago,
here are two more problems we just ran into this morning when trying to
access info we needed during this morning's QA call:

1.
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/ubl/ubl-lcsc/
	click on the "QA Team Conference call".
	Get "Resource not found".
This was recent email, so it was on my 'Group' member page
- it wasn't something I had to do a search on from the archives -
so I would have expected the link to work if it's showing up on
my member page under the 'recent email' list.

2.
Click on 'Join' button at the bottom of 
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/ubl/ubl-lcsc/members/upload.php
	Takes you to the same 'Rerource not found" page.

Really, if anyone just goes to the pages and tries to use the system,
it doesn't take more than a few seconds before running into these things.

The current feeling I hear in the meetings is that the archives are not
working (which is true).  But now people are beginning to give up on it.

-A


Jon Bosak wrote:
> 
> Karl,
> 
> I'm including the ubl-csc chairs list this time in order to cut
> down a bit on the delay caused by having me in the loop.  Internal
> Sun demands on my time have made my ordinarily lacklustre
> responsiveness much worse recently.
> 
> | We would be happy to talk with you and the UBL SC chairs about any
> | problems you are having with Kavi. Unfortunately, you've picked a
> | time that's right on top of our weekly staff meeting. Could you
> | make this 24 hours earlier or later?
> 
> (Karl is responding to my suggestion that we meet Thursay 17 April
> at 8 a.m. California time to discuss Kavi technical issues.)
> 
> I'm despairing of finding a time when we can get together for a
> one-hour call.  Our problem is that the 8 a.m. slot is already
> taken on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Perhaps we can work
> out something together in this thread.  Remember that we have
> subcommittee chairs in both Europe and Australia, so our options
> are pretty limited.
> 
> | Also, I asked you a week ago to send us specifics on any problems
> | that you were having so that we could look into them. As far as I
> | know we haven't heard back from you. It's difficult to look into
> | solutions for problems unless we know what to look for. If you
> | could give us details in advance of the meeting then we could be
> | better prepared to have answers for you.
> 
> Anne Hendry got back to me earlier this week with some comments
> that I am only now catching up with.  I append these below.
> 
> I'll note up front that some of the problems relating to the way
> memberships were handled were caused by my failure to get you
> information you asked for prior to the transition.  I'm leaving
> these comments in to keep Anne's input intact, but everyone should
> understand that I am responsible for a lot of what went wrong with
> this.
> 
> I think the rest of what Anne has to say speaks for itself.  My
> take on all this is that about 80 percent of the problems could be
> solved simply by trusting a few of us with ftp access to part of
> the web site.  The previous system limited our access to the ubl
> portion of the site and allowed us to work very flexibly within
> that limitation.  This is starting to look to me like a hugely
> difficult set of problems that could be solved with a single
> judicious policy decision.
> 
> I don't think it's necessary to respond in detail to the comments
> below (particulary since some of those responses would be just a
> tidge embarrassing to Yours Truly); they are provided for
> background.  Also, I suspect that some of the link problems may
> have already been fixed over the last few days; we've all noticed
> the work you guys have been doing to address these specific
> problems.  I think it would be better to find *some* acceptable
> time for a phone call so that we could get a whole lot of stuff
> out of the way fairly quickly and discuss the real problem, which
> is that making everything go through a mechanical interface isn't
> allowing us to operate effectively.
> 
> Jon
> 
> ==================================================================
> 
> Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 20:17:42 -0700
> From: Anne Hendry <anne.hendry@sun.com>
> To: jon.bosak@sun.com, anne.hendry@sun.com
> Subject: Re: [ubl-csc] Need URL examples
> 
> Hi Jon,
> 
> I've spent some time this afternoon with Kavi.
> I've tried to avoid getting too close before now,
> so this is my first finer look at how the system
> operates.  Therefore, some of these reactions are
> not link-specific, but more generic issues.
> 
> Kavi issues
> 
> General
> -------
> 
> 1.
> The problem begins with the fact that Kavi makes it difficult
> to disseminate the information on the daily activity of the
> TC to the general public.  We want our work to be open to
> the general public to view.  Kavi requires a password to
> view the contents of the group pages.  If we use those
> group pages as they were intended (as repositories for
> documents, calendar info, etc) then we make that information
> inaccessible to the public.  This is against the nature of
> the standards process. The standards process is an *open*
> process.  At least people certainly have been used to OASIS
> operating that way.  If we now require passwords in order
> for people to view the work of the TCs, that is a significant
> change in policy which I'm not sure will be very well received.
> I think this is the single most important problem with the current
> implementation.  Why do we need a password to get to TC information?
> Why is this information now restricted?  This is a serious
> collaboration inhibitor.  The driving factor appears to be
> revenue for OASIS, but this could backfire.
> 
> 2.
> The inability to place documents in a static area of the web
> site is essential for maintaining continuity of information,
> particularly if that information only changes infrequently
> (eg. UBL Events Calendar).  There are currently 2 problems,
> one which is mentioned above in terms of not having public
> access to all information on the web site, but even if that is
> solved, the current document areas only show the last couple
> of documents or just the day's email messages.  How do I
> easily get yesterday's or the day before or the week before
> to find a document that hasn't changed since it was posted?
> It seems I would need to go back out and use the public lists,
> if it was in an email, but if it was not in email, we don't have
> the ability to easily retrieve it, that I can see.  We need a web
> site area where we can place and periodically update information
> that is not appropriate to send in email and requires more
> continuity/availability than an email message or document
> that quickly scrolls out of site.  This is one of the features
> that was provided by the OASIS server disk space and ftp access,
> and is still needed.
> 
> 3.
> We require a 'work area' that is semi-invisible and can be
> organized and reorganized without too much concern, but
> provides the ability to store/share documents.  Kavi
> imposes structure, but the structure is too flat and
> also too time-sensitive to provide this feature.
> The OASIS server was being used as such a disk repository,
> with ftp access giving the ability for manipulation
> (although limited) of files.  We had a many levels of
> directories to organize the content.  We lack this in
> Kavi - to my knowledge there is no way to build a heirarchy
> of information within the Kavi structure.  It's unclear
> to me why the ftp and disk access is being removed, and
> there is no viable alternative provided.  Two examples
> of the use we had for ftp to the OASIS site are:
>   a) the lcsc 'working area' where we had many documents
>      in various forms of finalization that could be
>      accessed easily by the chairs and editors and
>      provided a backing store that could be easily
>      manipulated; they were all accessible at once
>      in one place.  We no longer have that in Kavi.
>   b) I was storing our comments on disk on the OASIS server.
>      This was working very well, and helped to keep things
>      organized.  What does Kavi offer to replace this?
>      How can I get that functionality back?  I am now
>      storing this info on my system at home.  This is
>      not a good idea (no backups!)  I would like disk
>      space again.
> 
> 4.
> Kavi places all email/docs/rep lists/etc from all subsc's
> in one list.  This is not practical - I need to be able to
> sort the mail and other info by SC and SubSC.  I just looked
> at the 'customization' page.  This is too much overhead.
> It was just fine to go to the mail list link and look at
> things 'by date' or  'by thread', or whatever, and be able
> to do a search otherwise.  Where are those features?
> 
> 5.
> I noticed that our minutes html document has a broken gif.
> How do we place html files in Kavi so that all their
> images, etc go along with them?
> 
> 6.
> There seems to be information missing.  For instance,
> the membership list of the ebXML IIC contains only 2 people.
> Perhaps this is because only two of the people on the
> alias have formal OASIS membership.  However, if that
> is the reason there are only two people listed, this
> is a brutal way to transition people who are volunteering
> their time on these efforts.
> 
> 7.
> People are still not getting email.  Please check to
> see if robert.shanbaum@gerbercoburn.com is on the UBL TC
> and UBL LSC lists, and if not,let me know what needs to be
> done to add him.  It's not reasonable to take the membership
> of such a large organization and expect everyone to drop
> what they are doing to fix these problems.  This should
> have been scoped out before-hand and all requirements
> communicated.  The original email aliases were available
> and could have been mapped against the OASIS membership
> list *before* the rollout. Then a staged roll-out would
> have been appropriate so people (chairs) could have been
> walked through the changes.  It's still not too late to do this,
> since there are still many changes to be made to the system,
> and still email list discrepancies.  This should be done in
> one operation now for all the tcs.  [I suspect that this issue
> belongs to me almost entirely -- Jon]
> 
> 8.
> Search is not scoped in a way as to be useful.  I can search
> all groups or one group, but not the groups I belong to.
> Some of the things on my home page relate to my groups
> (documents, mail, etc) and some relate to all of OASIS
> (company members, search, etc).  I don't see any capability
> to search for individual items (documents, etc). or to
> limit the scope to a set of dates.  Perhaps I don't see
> this and it's there somewhere.
> 
> 9.
> Communication of the benefits would be helpful here.
> I don't recall seeing any notification on the OASIS
> site that there would be a transition and for the
> general public, who may have come to visit over the
> past month, to understand what is happening and why.
> There's nothing there now to ease the uncertainty
> of people who are going to the site and finding
> everything changed and a lot broken.
> 
> 10.
> The one feature I've found slightly useful is the calendar,
> but I think I could get a calendar for less headache.
> 
> Specific link problems
> ----------------------
> 
> 1.
> If I follow a link to http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lsc/,
> then click on a link from that page to another (old-style) link
> within OASIS (eg. http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/) I am
> redirected to
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl
> and can no longer use the 'Back' button to get to the page(s)
> I came from ('Back' simply puts me in a continuous a redirect
> 'loop' over and over back to
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl.
> 
> 2.
> I have a lot of bookmarks (and I'm sure I'm not the only one)
> to the tc pages.  These are some where I get errors:
> 
> a.
>    http://oasis-open.org/committees/archives/ubl-lcsc/
>    http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/msc/200204/ Not Found
>    http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lsc/200204/industry.pdf Blank page
> 
> b.
>    From a January email to lcsc from Tim:
>    http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-lcsc/200301/msg00010.html
>    gets you to http://lists.oasis-open.org/css/top.css and 'Not Found'.
>    and then if I hit the 'Back' button after that I get 'Network Error:
>    connection refused', and can't go back.
> c.
>    From http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-lcsc/ click on the
>    200301 (January 2003) 'by date' link.  You get the same problem
>    as above:
>    gets you to http://lists.oasis-open.org/css/top.css and 'Not Found'.
>    and then if I hit the 'Back' button after that I get 'Network Error:
>    connection refused', and can't go back.
> d.
>    After this, no matter what link I click on that lists page I
>    get the same error.  I think it kills the server.  As a matter
>    of fact, at this point, if I go all the way back up to
>    http://lists.oasis-open.org/ and choose *any* of the tc lists,
>    then try to view any of the list by clicking on any of the 'by *'
>    links, I get the same error.  I do think if the server is not dead
>    now at least it is not answering requests.  Kavi appears brittle.
> 
> So I've spent just a little over an hour now and have found these
> problems.  I only had to go through 10 of my old email messages to
> get this many issues.  I believe it should be up to OASIS to test
> this software and do a proper staging before rolling it out into
> a production system.  I wonder if any requirements-gathering was
> done, because the issue of public access to the TC work seems
> fundamental, and not to have been considered in the choice of
> how to roll out this software.  I think it's possible the
> software may be able to be configured to provide global
> access, but I haven't heard of this being tried out.
> 
> It certainly needs more off-line testing.
> 
> -Anne
> 
> ==================================================================
> 
> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 13:15:22 -0700
> From: Anne Hendry <anne.hendry@sun.com>
> To: jon.bosak@sun.com
> CC: anne.hendry@sun.com
> Subject: more kavi issues
> 
> 1.
> From my 'Members Only' page, a 'search groups' for 'thistle tower'.
> produces the following search results:
> http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/search.php?search_val=Thistle+tower&search=Search+Groups&search_workgroup_id=all&search_documents=1&search_mail=1&search_ballots=1&search_action_items=1&search_events=1&search=1&month=4&year=2003
> (I have attached a copy of the page in case you can't retrieve it.)
> 
> Firstly, the search was done on April 8th, but some of the messages
> are dated after this! (eg. April 29 2003, April 30 2003)
> Secondly, some of the links are broken (eg. link to Jon's posting).
> 
> Really, really not a good sign.
> 
> 2.
> Going through the private web pages, doing 'view all' on email for the lcsc,
> clicking on 'month' for 200303, gets:
> http://www.oasis-open.org/archives/ubl-lcsc/ubl-lcsc.200303.gz,
> and a 'not found'.  Are the archives supposed to be gzipped??
> 
> -A
> 
> [I've omitted the sample output -- Jon]