Transcript Title

vTools
Key Messages
Communicate what vTools is
What are the products
Encourage use
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vTools is a
Mission
Brand
Team
Products
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Committee
vTools Mission Statement
Providing tools to the
volunteers and staff
who support our members.
A Little History:
Developed as a result of SC 2005
Organized in 2006 as Ad Hoc Committee
Funded in 2007
Reported in SC 2008
– Accepted two items from SC2008
Meetings was first tool
Standing Committee in 2010
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vTools Team
Volunteers
Howard Michel {1}
Marc Apter {1}
Bill Ratcliff {1}
Charles Lord {1}
Eva Lang {1}
Ron Jensen {1, 2}
Dave Green {1, 2}
Gene Ressler {1, 2}
Bob Parro {1, 2}
Jim Isaak {2}
Gustavo Giannattasio {2}
Tania Quiel {2}
Contractors- part time
Jesse
Marco
David
2 prior contractors
Staff
Eugene Khusid
Khanh Luu
Tom Smith
Vera Sharoff
{1} < 2011 {2} 2011 (beginning 5th year, formal committee in mid 2010)
Terminology:
vTools Team vs Products vs “Brand”
– We develop some products
 Meetings, WebInABox, Voting
– We buy some products
 Web Conferencing tool, first pass of Voting,
Survey Tool
– We use Free software, Open-source
software, etc. when appropriate
 WordPress (GPLv2 (or later) from the Free Software
Foundation)
– Volunteers to go to one place to find tool
support
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How does a project work:
Provide an opportunity for ideas to be considered
Define a project that could be significant to volunteers
(will make life easier)
Determine requirements (volunteer and staff)
Determine Buy vs Build
Integration at the data level
Develop a pilot and learn from it
– May use a student team to develop basics
– Could be volunteer developed
– Has been a commercial product
– May require services from IEEE systems
Stretch our development $ by using most productive
resources
Refine and release into IEEE production environment
– Use paid staff
Support and enhance
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Present Portfolio
In Production:
– Meetings,
Production means SLA-based support
after an IEEE QA acceptance process
 Supports new L31 process
 100+ sections involved (100% for L31)
 Credit card handling
– Credit cards for R1-7 for sections with Concentration Banking
– Section subunits can use CC wit section’s concentration banking
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WebInABox, File Storage (for presentation distribution, etc.)
Voting
DimDim (staff, branded) [We have until Q4, 2011 to replace]
Blog and CMS tool – WordPress (staff, branded)
Survey tool – FluidSurveys (staff, branded)
Documentation: vTools Blog http://vtools.ieee.org
Pilot
– Officer Reporting
– Student Branch Reporting
Recommended Tool
– Doodle (just documentation, not branded)
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The Documentation Site
http://vtools.ieee.org
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Meetings
In production
On-line registration
Credit card support in production for R1-7
L31 Meeting report (only need to add attendee
information, only IEEE Web Account necessary)
RSS, iCal, and other feeds of meetings and
L31s
Calendar support
Badge printing, meal tickets
Notice of meeting for display on a web site
without webmaster involvement
Feeds meeting information to myIEEE
Other enhancements prototyped
Example Web Page
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What does Meetings mean?
•Easy to create a unit calendar
•Data that can be reused
•myIEEE
•RSS
•Easy to distribute meeting information
•Email with Link to meeting
•RSS
•Solves the registration and many credit
card problems
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WebInABox
Basic Section web site “WebInABox”
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In Production
Wizard-like interface for creation
Data driven
Enable a common look and feel
Calendar for all units
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pulls from Meetings tool
– Pulls volunteer data from IEEE
databases
– No webmaster involvement required
– Upload and distribute files
What does WebInABox mean?
Web presence is important.
Web usage is declining
More unit web sites are out of date
– WebInABox allows a system that can be
neglected
http://webinabox.vtools.ieee.org/
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Voting
Electronic Election for local units
– In Production
– Supported all units for 2010 elections
that chose to use it
– Can support elections for units other
than Sections, Chapters, Affinity
Groups
Blogs and Surveys
Sections Congress 2008 Requests
– Blogs
 Wanted ability to publish a section leadership blog
 Eliminate need to write HTML
 Adopted WordPress Enterprise
– Can be used as a unit web site/CMS
– IEEE Branded Templates for GeoUnits and others
available
– Hosted by IEEE
 Desire to move larger web sites off Joomla and
Drupal
– Surveys
 Wanted ability to create easy surveys of members
 Adopted FluidSurveys
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What do Blogs and Surveys
mean?
Tools to allow engagement of member
Don’t require html skills
Allow them to be immediate.
Have RSS feeds to allow members to
pull data
Display RSS feeds to add data to blog
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DimDim What it is
Web Conferencing service to Geographic
Organizational Units for online meetings,
webinars, training, demos and presentations.
(not an electronic meeting service)
• The service is available to Geogaphic
Organization Units
• DimDim Enterprise Edition hosted by DimDim
• Our license allows multiple simultaneous
teleconferences with up to 50 attendees
• Uses a scheduling interface
• More details available at
http://ewh.ieee.org/mu/top40/
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DimDim Challenges and Solutions
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Land line number is not toll free, DimDim software allows
meetings to be overwritten by other volunteers without
warning (same teleconference room only)
We created FAQ Blog that goes over:
• Easy Start and Rules of the Road
• Ways of making toll free calls using Skype, Google Voice,
and DimDim built-in VoIP
• Where to get help on DimDim
Blog is updated as we learn more about what users need
A new service vendor will be adopted prior to the end of the
IEEE contract with DimDim (now owned by
Salesforce.Com)
What does Web Conferencing mean?
It supports unit webinars
It supports electronic training sessions
It doesn’t support electronic meetings
without a conference call
It allows recording of meetings for
reuse
It reduces travel costs
It allows people to attend meetings that
distance or time may otherwise not
allow.
e-Notice Issues
Large amount of staff time is dedicated
to e-Notice mailings
There is a wait queue for mailings
Tool is lacking some features such as
log of e-mail contents and RSS that can
be consumed by myIEEE
Unsubscribe functionality can be
improved
Process is lacking automation
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e-Notice Proposed solution
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Core functionality will be based on e-mailing code from
vTools.Voting
Aimed toward simple mailings: section, chapter, affinity
Access will be based on volunteer role
Will provide simple filters by status and grade
Will restrict frequency of mailings
Attachments restricted in size
utf8 encoding for multilingual support
Mailings will require quick and simple approval by staff
Complex mailings will be handled by “old” e-Notice
• E-mails requiring approvals by volunteers from multiple
OUs
• Custom mailings: society mailings, staff mailings, etc.
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e-Notice replacement
Preliminary release feature request:
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Mail merge (Name, ID, Section, etc)
Archive of messages (do we include attachments?)
HTML support (Multilingual support)
Moderation (Approve/Reject. Rejecting gives volunteer chance to
edit)
Click-thru tracking
Limit # of message (3 per week max?)
Scheduling
Attachments (Limit size)
Header & Footer (Unsubscribe information in footer)
Future release feature request:
– Allow members to specify frequency of mailings from a list (Daily,
weekly, monthly, etc) and specify text only or HTML only.
– HTML support with image upload (optimized by system)
– Move attachments to web storage and only send out links
– Bounced email module
– MS Word document support (Converts to HTML automatically)
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Geographic support
Each Region has an Information
Management Coordinator
– Plugged into the GeoUnit Operations
Committee
– Plugged into the vTools Team
– Provide regional advocacy and expertise
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Product enhancement process
Individual Product
Feedback from
Users and Staff
Prioritization
List of enhancements
Prioritized list
of enhancements
for a product
vTools Project
Prioritized product
enhancements
Possible new
products
Class or
volunteer
prototype
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Evaluate
Costs,
Benefit
Evaluate
Staff support
Evaluate
budget
Review with
MGA
Committees/
Staff
Produce
Roadmap
Questions?
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