lucas taylor, cms communications meeting 1 26 november 2015
TRANSCRIPT
Lucas Taylor, CMS Communications Meeting 1April 18, 2023
Lucas Taylor, CMS Communications Meeting 2April 18, 2023
Video-conferencing tools choice: EVO or Vidyo ?
Working model, already agreed by expts and CERN- Expts define needs, CERN/IT provides services, expts pay (most) bills
EVO meets most of CMS needs so why consider other options?- Continually seek to improve communications in CMS and minimise costs- Major external procurements need to consider all suitable suppliers
CERN assessed the market, finding two strong candidates- EVO: > 80 % of usage is LHC, HEP developed (~5 FTE) - Vidyo: many users. Licensed by Google, Cisco (~ 100 FTE, commercial)
CERN/IT (+ expts) will now assess the tools in terms of - Do tools meet CMS needs? Functionality, quality, scale, ease of use…- Are the risks acceptable? Technical, commercial, etc.- What is the total cost of ownership? Licence fees, support, etc.
CMS shall take an active role in this assessment/decision
LT Draft Proposal for EVO / Vidyo Assessment Process
Is Vidyo a candidate to meet
CMS needs ? EVO in Production
Migrate to Vidyo
No
Does Vidyo production service
meet CMS needs?
Which system is better ?
…functionality, costs, risks…
No
Yes
Yes
Aug 2010 Mar 2011
Establish fullVidyo service
Vidyo pilot service
EVO in Production
Vidyo in Production(trial service)
Oct 2010
Vidyo
Jun 2011
•Bridge Vidyo to existing systems as an additional option to EVO
•Start with test room (354 / 1-016) and test group (Computing Ops)
•Extend to all CMS meeting rooms at CERN and exercise by all CMS
Vidyo in Production
EVO
•Need to pay for both EVO and Vidyo for overlap period
•CERN / IT is exploring the costs
• If Vidyo is chosen, may re-coup costs (nature of licensing model)
•Need broad and clear consensus
•Need broad and clear consensus
A CMS for CMS ?Preliminary views on Web Content Management Systems
Lucas Taylor, FermilabCMS Head of Communications
(Web) Content Management Systems
DG Communications group has identified a number of general problems with CERN Web sites - No coherent architecture to domain: cern.ch- Poor navigation and search does not work- CERN does not have a website, too many top-level (entry) pages- Many problems – bad URLs, data duplication, unmanaged “design”
(as distinct from content)
DG / CO recommends (CERN Strategic Communication plan) the site-wide adoption of a Content Management System (CMS) which enables you to - Publish in one place, reuse in many- Manage design separately from content- Navigate, filter, version, support multiple languages - Workflows (create content, approve, publish, revise, revoke, etc.)
A lot of resonance with issues we face in CMSCMS Web Systems
Internal Web pages and services- Organisation / projects: people, management,
institutes, plans, schedules, resources, secretariat …- Communications: Email lists, news, blogs,
meetings, videoconf. …- Documents & Publications systems- CMS operations: e-logs, user support,
monitoring, SW dev. …
External Web pages and services- Scientists: papers, notes, contacts …- The public/press: physics, photos, movies,
educational resources …
Main Technologies
Linux, Mac, (Windows)
Apache, Tomcat
Firefox, Safari, (others)
html, css, PHP, Java, Python
Twiki, Emacs, Dreamweaver
Oracle, mySQL
e-groups, Hypernews
Indico, EVO
CDS, DocDB, EDMS
Twitter, YouTube
… and more …
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
CMS Web Systems
Internal Web pages and services- Organisation / projects: people, management,
institutes, plans, schedules, resources, secretariat …- Communications: Email lists, news, blogs,
meetings, videoconf. …- Documents & Publications systems- CMS operations: e-logs, user support,
monitoring, SW dev. …
External Web pages and services- Scientists: papers, notes, contacts …- The public/press: physics, photos, movies,
educational resources …
Main Technologies
Linux, Mac, (Windows)
Apache, Tomcat
Firefox, Safari, (others)
html, css, PHP, Java, Python
Twiki, Emacs, Dreamweaver
Oracle, mySQL
e-groups, Hypernews
Indico, EVO
CDS, DocDB, EDMS
Twitter, YouTube
… and more …
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 1: Muddled CMS Web entry point(s)
Too many CMS “Home Pages”- With sub-optimal design & content
Working on single CMS entry point branching out to- Public Web site- Collaboration Web site
Design, navigation and content still need a lot of work
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 1: Muddled CMS Web entry point(s)
Too many CMS “Home Pages”- With sub-optimal design & content
Working on single CMS entry point branching out to- Public Web site- Collaboration Web site
Design, navigation and content still need a lot of work
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 2: Too many sites. Poorly maintained.
CMS is large, complex, distributed, diverse, and hard to manage
There are 245 (!!) “official” CMS Web sites at CERN
- Plus the Twiki, and an unknown number of non-CERN sites
CMS Web entropy is ever increasing - It is (too!) easy to create new Web pages / sites- Maintenance is boring, responsibilities are ill-defined
Users do not have a culture of expecting good quality Web services. Resources are not made available.Slides presented at brain-storming
discussion with CERN / IT, CERN Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 2: Too many sites. Poorly maintained.
CMS is large, complex, distributed, diverse, and hard to manage
There are 245 (!!) “official” CMS Web sites at CERN
- Plus the Twiki, and an unknown number of non-CERN sites
CMS Web entropy is ever increasing - It is (too!) easy to create new Web pages / sites- Maintenance is boring, responsibilities are ill-defined
Users do not have a culture of expecting good quality Web services. Resources are not made available.Slides presented at brain-storming
discussion with CERN / IT, CERN Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 3: Incoherent tools, style, navigation
No coherent choice of hosts - Twiki, afs, Nice, sharepoint …
No coherent style - > 245 personal tastes
Navigation is miserable
There have been recent attempts to standardize more (header, sidebar, css)- Well-motivated but still not enough
(does not cover 244 of the 245 sites)- Should we adopt a full Content
Management System ?Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 3: Incoherent tools, style, navigation
No coherent choice of hosts - Twiki, afs, Nice, sharepoint …
No coherent style - > 245 personal tastes
Navigation is miserable
There have been recent attempts to standardize more (header, sidebar, css)- Well-motivated but still not enough
(does not cover 244 of the 245 sites)- Should we adopt a full Content
Management System ?Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 4: Many documents are not managed at all
Estimate ~ 100k CMS documents so far, many informal but containing valuable knowledge - ~50% already in iCMS, Indico, CDS,
EDMS- ~50% scattered about on various
Web sites, private disks, etc.
CMS recently started using DocDBto harvest these documents- Fermilab product- Running on CERN / IT systems- Will integrate/migrate to iCMS + CDS
in longer term
Estimate total CMS by extrapolation from Pixel
group
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 4: Many documents are not managed at all
Estimate ~ 100k CMS documents so far, many informal but containing valuable knowledge - ~50% already in iCMS, Indico, CDS,
EDMS- ~50% scattered about on various
Web sites, private disks, etc.
CMS recently started using DocDBto harvest these documents- Fermilab product- Running on CERN / IT systems- Will integrate/migrate to iCMS + CDS
in longer term
Estimate total CMS by extrapolation from Pixel
group
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 5: Hard to find (correct) information
… as a result of issues 1-4 …
It is very hard to find information- CMS Web lacks a well-designed (navigable) structure- No coherent search function for the many Web sites - Even Google often fails – many pages are protected
Much information of importance is duplicated, incomplete, out-of-date or plain wrong- People often create new pages (esp. on the Twiki) because they
cannot find existing ones or are not able to fix them - Then the new pages slowly decay, being neither updated nor deleted
As a result, CMS has poor access to its own knowledge base - This leads to inefficiencies, reduced competitiveness, or even errors - Longer term, we risk losing crucial CMS knowledge
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Issue 5: Hard to find (correct) information
… as a result of issues 1-4 …
It is very hard to find information- CMS Web lacks a well-designed (navigable) structure- No coherent search function for the many Web sites - Even Google often fails – many pages are protected
Much information of importance is duplicated, incomplete, out-of-date or plain wrong- People often create new pages (esp. on the Twiki) because they
cannot find existing ones or are not able to fix them - Then the new pages slowly decay, being neither updated nor deleted
As a result, CMS has poor access to its own knowledge base - This leads to inefficiencies, reduced competitiveness, or even errors - Longer term, we risk losing crucial CMS knowledge
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Next Step – Review CMS Web systems (June 2010)
Outcome: written requirements and a strategy for all CMS Web systems, including recommendations of key technologies
Membership: up to about a dozen people including - CMS Head of Communications (Chair)- Significant CMS “customers”: Management, Physics Groups,
Publications, Computing/Offline, Secretariat, Outreach- CMS experts: iCMS developers, Webtools …- External experts: e.g. CERN/IT, FNAL, ATLAS …
Modus Operandi: dynamic sub-groups, e.g. “Content”, “Design”, “Technologies”, etc.
Review should explicitly address the potential role of Content Management Systems
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Next Step – Review CMS Web systems (June 2010)
Outcome: written requirements and a strategy for all CMS Web systems, including recommendations of key technologies
Membership: up to about a dozen people including - CMS Head of Communications (Chair)- Significant CMS “customers”: Management, Physics Groups,
Publications, Computing/Offline, Secretariat, Outreach- CMS experts: iCMS developers, Webtools …- External experts: e.g. CERN/IT, FNAL, ATLAS …
Modus Operandi: dynamic sub-groups, e.g. “Content”, “Design”, “Technologies”, etc.
Review should explicitly address the potential role of Content Management Systems
Slides presented at brain-storming discussion with CERN / IT, CERN
Depts, LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
Joint Meeting of CERN Departments and the LHC experiments, 18 May 2010
CERN / IT – David Foster (IT Deputy Dept. Head) … leading the discussion plus Christian Isnard, Tim Smith, Andreas Wagner
CERN / DG Communications Group – Dan Noyes CERN / GS Dept. – David Widegren CERN / HR Dept – Catharina Hoch CERN / KTT – Manuela Cirilli (formerly ATLAS) ATLAS – Shaun Roe, Steven Goldfarb, Kathy Pommes, Joao
Pequenao CMS – David Barney, Marzena Lapka, Gilles Raymond, Lucas
Taylor
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=95230 Group was given a name: ENTICE (Enterprise Needs for Tools and
Infrastructure for Content Exploitation)
Some general points arising from the discussion
Common solution, architecture and services are desirable Connectors are required to all existing repositories (Indico,
CDS, EDMS, etc.) It may be now “too easy” to create websites and publish
content - What is really official information is unclear
The management of content and its tagging etc. must be the responsibility of the content providers
A clear message is that open-source solutions are mature and credible with major public websites based on them- Based on well-known “LAMP stack” (Linux, Apache, MySQL,
Perl/Python/PHP)- Sharepoint usage is growing at CERN but is still perceived as
difficult to go beyond the “out of the box” options, finding external expertise is hard, considered as windows centric and expensive.
Towards a “CERN/LHC World Wide Web Strategy”LT asked to propose a CERN/LHC-wide framework to joint CERN/expts meeting on 9th June:
1. Questionnaire. Goal: Prepare a top-level summary of needs and issues- Participation: one contact person per CERN Dept. and experiment - Format: questionnaire to establish purpose of Web(s), formats, technologies,
issues faced (e.g. top five items). Tool to measure no. sites, pages, users, etc. ? - Output: standard summary table (~1 page) per Dept. / experiment
2. 1-day Workshop 1: Goal: identify common goals, issues, potential solutions- Participation: few people per Dept. / Expt. in dynamic working groups- Format: short sessions per topic, focused (provocative) discussions of goals, issues
and solutions, incl. potential role of a Content Management System- Output: concise written summary (< 10 pages, rapidly produced, not polished)
3. Broad consultation in CERN Depts. and Expts. Collect external advice.
4. 1-day Workshop 2. Goal: Draft “CERN/LHC World Wide Web Strategy” - Participation: a few people per Dept. / Expt. Plus a few external experts.- Format: Plenary. Discuss sections of a pre-agreed skeleton plan. Sketch out the
content/conclusions. Identify people to write text within < 1 week after meeting. - Output: (consensus) recommendations to CERN and experiment managements,
including potential role of a CERN-wide Web Content Management System
5. Decision by CERN and experiment managements
June 2010Sept
AugustJuly
DocumentManagement
System
Information (Web) Systems
Needs, Reviews, Decisions
Jan
– Ju
n, 2
010
(wor
k al
read
y in
pro
gres
s)20
11
Adopt a CMS ?
(Content Mgmt System)
Select / deployCERN-wide
CMS system
Address pressingneeds
Priorities
Lower
Address need to improve Communications efficiency (e.g. Email, Calendar, blogs,
meetings, forums, etc.)
Need to clean up
information Systems (Web)
Make new physics pages (iCMS / Twiki)
Review / define Web
Strategy (CERN-wide ?)
Set up interim document mgmt system (DocDB)
Need new physics results pages
Need to collect and secure ~100k
existing documents
Migrate documents to coherent CERN system (e.g. CDS-
based)
Assess situation
Identify issues
1) Home page(s) muddled2) Too many Web sites (245). Old. 3) Incoherent tools, navigation, style4) Many documents not in system5) Hard to find (correct) information
Harvest documents
from all sub-systems
Jul –
Dec
20
10
Hig
h
No
Yes
Clean up Web sites
(using current
systems)
Clean up Web sites
(using a CMS)
CMS Information Systems – Proposed Roadmap
DocumentManagement
System
Information (Web) Systems
Needs real resources (people): CERN/IT, CMS Communications
Group, CMS sub-systems
Needs, Reviews, Decisions
Jan
– Ju
n, 2
010
(wor
k al
read
y in
pro
gres
s)20
11
Adopt a CMS ?
(Content Mgmt System)
Select / deployCERN-wide
CMS system
Address pressingneeds
Priorities
Lower
Address need to improve Communications efficiency (e.g. Email, Calendar, blogs,
meetings, forums, etc.)
Need to clean up
information Systems (Web)
Make new physics pages (iCMS / Twiki)
Review / define Web
Strategy (CERN-wide ?)
Set up interim document mgmt system (DocDB)
Need new physics results pages
Need to collect and secure ~100k
existing documents
Migrate documents to coherent CERN system (e.g. CDS-
based)
Assess situation
Identify issues
1) Home page(s) muddled2) Too many Web sites (245). Old. 3) Incoherent tools, navigation, style4) Many documents not in system5) Hard to find (correct) information
Harvest documents
from all sub-systems
Jul –
Dec
20
10
Hig
h
No
Yes
Clean up Web sites
(using current
systems)
Clean up Web sites
(using a CMS)
CMS Information Systems – Proposed Roadmap