Dgroups2 – milestones and progress

Here again is the dgroups interface, larger this time, because at least one reader found the previous screen dump too small. As you can see a number of people have continued to test the platform and make comments on features as they are added. As you would expect, people’s reactions are mixed. There are features which are seen as an improvement on dgroups 1 while others  are generating questions. All the comments have been logged – using the system itself – and will be reviewed.  Thanks again to all those who are putting in their time and patiently learning how things work.

Today, however, we reached a significant milestone. WA Research has completed the major part of the development they planned to meet the criteria set out in the contract. This means two things:

1. The core migration team has started more systematic testing of the platform, confirming what works and identifying issues to be looked at. We’ll keep you posted on progress.
2. We need to plan for an increase in the numbers of people – and groups – who are exploring and testing the new system. These preparations need to start with the people who create groups – called coordinators in dgroups 2.  We will be arranging briefing and discussion meetings with those people (called creators in dgroups 1) next week.

Feels a bit like Christmas, really: starting to wonder what’s going to be delivered.

Pete Cranston

Dgroups – a Bellanet sized hole

In 2002, Bellanet, IICD, OneWorld, DFID, and UNAIDS Southeast Asia got together to build Dgroups on top of some existing workspace applications that Bellanet had developed and were providing one by one to their partner organizations. For those  of you that don’t know, the original Dgroups platform uses two pieces of software: the Lyris mailing list manager plus ”front end” software written by Bellanet staff. The platform developed over the next three years with Bellanet staff and  contractors providing technical support to the 20 plus organizations that joined the partnership. Euforic was brought in early in 2006 to help coordinate the partnership and develop a roadmap for Dgroups future development. Since Bellanet Ottawa closed in 2008,  the platform has been technically hosted and supported by IGLOO in Canada, with Euforic still providing coordination and ICCO acting as administrator and banker.

Why on earth is this useful or important information?

1. “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone”, as a Canadian once sang. Igloo and Euforic and a host of individuals across several Dgroups communities have done a great job in maintaining the platform since Bellanet Ottawa ceased operations. But the real contribution and value of the work Bellanet did, mainly behind the scenes, only became apparent when they were no longer there. A platform based on more than one software tool is always more difficult to manage, especially the relationship between the two tools. With their experience of building the platform, Bellanet staff knew how to tweak and manage it to keep it going smoothly. That has meant a steep learning curve for Igloo, which cost them a lot of time and energy – and many others disturbed weekends and sleepless nights. However, one of the members of the migation team, Sarah Kerr, is ex-Bellanet, which re-connects us directly to that experience and knowledge. For example, Creators and Administrators are in the middle of cleaning up the data on dgroups – identifying defunct groups, working out what to do with groups originally started by Bellanet, and so on. It was a relatively quick task for Sarah to run a mini-programme to reflect those changes – which she did on Monday 24th, so people should now see the changes they have made on the system properly. (Sarah is going to join us in blogging – and in case there is any confusion, this picture is the Canadian singer not Sarah).

2. User support for Dgroups has always started with administrators and group creators from member organisations. This included Bellanet for their own groups, but they also provided technical support and learning to administrators and creators. When the platform moved to IGLOO, this support role moved with it, but without the time to properly carry across that deep knowledge, which has created enormous challenges for all involved.

3. It’s useful as a basis for understanding the way Dgroups is changing. Firstly, the new platform is provided by one organisation, WA Research, which runs it as one integrated operation. Secondly, WA Research provide this platform already to 27 partners, and manages its development according to the needs – and budgets – of those partners. In that sense they operate like Bellanet, but on a different basis, since their income depends on the smooth operation of the system and they don’t have a whole range of other tasks and functions in the way that Bellanet did.

4. I haven’t seen anywhere in public, at least on the web, a public acknowledgement to the people who worked in Ottawa for Bellanet of the really good job they did for us with Dgroups. It took creativity, mountains of hard work and networking to build up the platform. I for one am very grateful, and want to say so in public. Thanks folks.

Pete Cranston.

Calling all Dgroup leaders

Last week we sent a message to everyone on the DGroup Administrators’ Announcement list.   It had 5015 email addresses subscribed.  You probably received a copy of the message.  If you did not see it, and if you are a leader, facilitator or administrator of a group hosted on DGroups, please go to www.dgroups.org/groups/administrators/ and join this group so that you are sure to receive future important announcements.

We have been looking more closely at who are the Administrators of the current dgroups.  There appear to be 4187 of us.  This analysis does not yet take into account which groups are active or inactive.  Also casual observation suggests some people use more than one email address.

Those who are good at math will notice that there are 927 email addresses on the Adminstrators’ Announcement List who are not currently administrators of DGroups.   There were also 702 bounces from our message to that announcement list.  These are going to require further investigation.

Some facts you might find interesting… and things we need to know

90% of dgroups have between 1 and 5 Administrators.  There are 117 groups with no Administrator.  Around 1% of groups have more than 10 Administrators, with one group having 419 and another 288.  The next largest is 51 then 47, 46, 32, 30.  We are contacting the coordinators who support these groups with large numbers of Administrators to better understand what circumstances lead to such arrangements

79% of Administrators are responsible for only one dgroup, with 3% being responsible for 10 or more groups.  The largest number of groups administered by one person is 173.  There are five Administrators who are each responsible for more than 100 groups.  8 of the top 10 Administrators are also DGroups Coordinators, working for organisations which are members of the DGroups Partnership.

Peer Support Group

We also have four Administrators’ Peer Support Groups (administrators-en, -es, -fr, -pt).  They have a total of 1402 members, with some people being subscribed to two or more of the different language communities.  Not all of the email addresses on these groups are registered as Administrators, and there are many Administrators who are not on these groups.  Most members of the peer support groups are also members of the announcement list.

Further discussion among group leaders will also take place, in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, on the Administrators’ Peer Support Groups.  If you would like to join, please select from the following links and then click “join”

• DGroups Administrators Peers Support Group (English language)
• Administradores de Dgroups (Español)
• Administrateurs de Dgroupes (Française)
• Administradores Dgroups (Português)

Dgroups2 Migration: The Big Picture

Here’s the big picture of our journey to Dgroups 2.

Path to Dgroups 2 - keyword: continuity

Alpha phase – at present we are making sure the Dgroups 2 platform allows one to perform all activities one is used to. Dgroups is all about email: consequently most of our work now is about tuning the new platform to offer what is needed to continue smooth operation mailing list operation.

This is purely software development and testing operation: we work against a list of requirements for the new platform making sure we cover all aspects of important functionality of the existing one. The work is divided in three functional areas: email, web user interface, and user profile features.

Beta test – as soon as we complete all the major features, we’ll open up the platform for an increasing number of existing Dgroups users to look around, try new things, see how their groups will look like.

At this stage, the platform will have all major functions available, but those will be rough around the edges. We’ll continue polishing and working as you look around. We’ll all communicate a lot about what you like or not and whether we’re missing something crucial that the majority of you were able to do with the old system. During this period, we’ll provide you with a copy of your data from the live Dgroups site, but only to look at – you will still use the existing live site to run your groups.

If you are feeling good about what you see and are tolerant towards technology, go ahead and create a few new groups using the new platform. Sure, it won’t be 100% finished, yet it won’t be crashing either.

Transition – when we’re sure it all works well, we’ll ask you not to create new groups on the existing live site, but to use the new one. Existing groups might still function on the old site for a while, but all new stuff goes through Dgroups 2. At this stage, we’ll have full support in place, all email messages will pass through the new platform and continue to the old one – thus the new one will be a mirror of whatever is going on with the current platform.

We want to give you some time to check the new platform and look around, learn the basics without pressure – your important groups will continue to run on the existing platform you already know so well.

Switch – once you get to know enough of the new platform to send and receive messages, approve new members, add resources, …, we’ll just flip the switch and immediately the new platform will start sending messages instead of the old one. All messages will already be there, we’ll copy all resources in advance. No downtime.

The Great Beyond – on February 20, 2009, we’ll shut down the old Dgroups system forever. That day on, we’ll work hard on new and exciting things to make Dgroups the best place on the Internet for international development community to conduct their dialogue.

Untangling the Dgroups threads

This stage of a project is a bit like preparing for an international trip: trying to collect together bits and pieces, addresses, contacts, passport, loose change…and do I need anti-malarials? The equivalent in this project is getting to grips with the current status of groups in dgroups. The international community who use dgroups are very mobile – in and out of organisations, in and out of communities and groups – and sometimes changing names and emails. As with all online communities, it is sometimes difficult to keep in touch with these movements. Our situation is made more complex because of the handover from Bellanet to Igloo, the organisation which now supports dgroups. Bellanet started dgroups, and pretty much kept up to date with the changes until they it was closed down last year. However it has been harder for Igloo who haven’t got the history, nor people who have experience of how Bellanet operated.

So our priority has been to fully understand the reality of groups – how many are currently active, how many are dormant (not currently active but likely to be in the future) and how many should have been closed but weren’t? I have to confess here, for example, that when I was at OneWorld several groups were started for projects I was involved in that shouldn’t be still be there – but still are because I didn’t make sure they were closed. There is also the important issue of what we are calling ‘orphan groups’, groups that don’t currently connect to a current member of the dgroups partnership. Bellanet, for example, set up lots of groups. Those ‘owned’ by IDRC transferred out of dgroups to an IDRC server but lots of groups, including some large active ones, aren’t currently linked to a member.

We are clear that all groups that want to migrate to the new dgroups will have the opportunity to do so which is why we are spending a lot of time at the moment sorting out these issues. We have started the process by contacting the creators of dgroups, who are working through the lists at the moment.

We are also keen to re-activate the peer-support groups that were busy in the past but have been less so recently. Peer-support is an important way to share knowledge and spread limited resources between larger and smaller communities. We have contacted all the listed administrators: we are placing bets on how many bounces there are.

Meanwhile, we have also been focusing on the email system, making sure the new platform can support the email functions that have always been – and will continue to be – a central part of dgroups. The four of us in the migration team are experimenting with a trial environment at the moment and, as planned, we will invite a small number of people to join us over the next couple of weeks.

Pete Cranston

Dgroups speed-geeking

At a recent FAO and CGIAR knowledge sharing course, participants chose Dgroups as the application they most wanted to learn (share?) about in a ‘speed geeking‘ session.

See what they thought of Dgroups!

What’s New: Hierarchical Dgroups

We are introducing hierarchical groups as part of Dgroups 2.0 to help structure relationships among groups that sometime exist. Sometimes one communicates on a topic that has both general and specific components that are naturally organized in a hierarchical relationship.

Our Migration Group Hierarchy

Our migration team is using this hierarchy to simplify communication. Our top-level group, ‘Migration to D2′ deals with general communication around migration. This group also serves as the entry point for all people we’re involving in the work around the migration process. Yet, we have some specialized topics, like data analysis, observations on the behavior of the new platforms, meeting coordination, and similar. For these specific topics that include only a subset of people involved, it makes sense to treat them separately. This is where the hierarchy comes in: we dedicated a sub-group for each of the specialized topics.

The interesting part is how the platform deals with hierarchy membership: all members of the sub-groups are always members of their parent groups, all the way to the top. If we invite someone to a sub-group, that someone is automatically a member of the parent groups (but not the sibling groups). Membership always propagates upwards. 

Conversely, an administrator of a group is automatically administrator of all sub-groups. Of course, one can assign a new administrator of a subgroup, who in turn can administer all sub-groups of that group, but is only a member of all parents. Quite a mouthful to say, yet simplifies user management greatly.

There is no limit how many levels of sub-groups one wants to create, except maybe in practicality of writing an URL that is 1000+ characters long. Each group still gets its own mailing list and a document library, and outside of the URL and membership rules, it behaves like a top-level group.

Dgroups 2 – What Will be Different?

Simone, the first to give a comment, speaks for many of us: what will be different? Our aim with this blog is to introduce you gently to the changes and more importantly, to get your feedback on the things with the current platform that gave you trouble the most and what you liked the most. 

Here are a few notable changes you’ll see with Dgroups 2.0 platform; a short list for now, with more detailed blog posts to follow soon:

• You can change your email address whenever you feel like!
• Hierarchical groups – any group can have as many sub-groups as needed to support hierarchical nature of your collaboration.
• Stronger focus on self-service – much more things to pass on to members and admins: invitation emails to let new members fill their own profiles; online requests for group creation …
• Some terminology changes: creators will become coordinators to better reflect their role.
• Great search engine with support for faceted filtering.
• Tighter integration between email and web – in addition to mailing lists we’re used to, there are other things you can get email from and email to (and rss as well).
• Full support and product management – we intend to provide first- and second-level support for everyone - depending on organization’s and coordinator’s policy, of course.
• We’re aiming for 99.99% uptime.
• Your data will move to Switzerland, to a secure hosting center approved by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission.

Our strategy for the migration is to keep your ability to do things the same as before and remove as many limitations as possible. Dgroups 2.0 is first about letting you conduct your Development through dialogue in a smooth manner and get technology out of the way as much as possible.

Dgroups2 progress and plans

We are off!

This blog is the product of a meeting last week in The Hague. It brought together four members of the core project team – Damir Simunic (WA Research – the company selected to deliver dgroups 2.0), Hapee De Groot (Hivos), Mark Hammersley (leading on Communications, amongst other things) and Pete Cranston (Migration Project Manager), as well as Peter Ballantyne (Dgroups coordinator) and Christian Kreutz (Dgroups Executive Committee member from IICD).

After looking at the data from Damir’s initial analysis we outlined principles, phase plans and milestones for the next six months.

We agreed four basic principles:

• All groups, together with their users, will be offered the opportunity to migrate to the new system
• Migration will be organised around clusters of groups, organised by creators or members of the dgroups partnership associated with the group
• We aim to deliver a managed, exponentially increasing migration process
• We will communicate actions and progress, regularly, through as many channels as appropriate

Phases

Learning and Evolving: from now until the end of October, WA Research is building the first prototype application. Starting with the core team, we will be inviting some of the people who have expressed interest in testing to work with us in shaping that platform

Beta Testing: from 1st November for about 6 weeks, we will invite more people and their groups to participate in beta testing the platform. There will still be lots of opportunities in this period to help shape the final product.

Switch over: sometime in late December, the new platform will be complete and live – and some groups who have been part of the beta testing will operate completely in the new environment.

Migration: Late December into January 2009 – the majority of groups will migrate in this period

Completion and Decomissioning: during February, any remaining groups will be migrated to the new platform, and the orginal platform will be retired – to survive perhaps in the wayback machine.

If you have any queries or suggestions, please either write to me (pc AT euforic.org) or leave a comment here in this blog.

Dgroups 2.0: Build and Migration

The Dgroups Executive Committee agreed a contract with WA research to build the next version of Dgroups. The contract was signed last week, Thursday.

WA Research SA has been in operation since January, 2002, with a mission to build and support collaborative solutions for the international development sector. Customers include the World Health
Organisation, the United Nations Staff College, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and a number of other international and non profit
organizations.

WA have developed a collaboration platform called ECS. It was originally funded by the WHO and Implementing Best Practices (IBP) consortium, which includes more than 20 organisations involved in
reproductive public health (http://www.ibpinitiative.org). ECS is used by more than 25.000 active users and is rapidly growing. WA Research approach is summarised at http://edgeof.net/.

This is a MAJOR milestone for Dgroups – we have been planning this next step for a long time now.

If all goes to plan, we should have the new platform ready by the end of the year, with the migration complete in February.

We recognize that we have much to do in a short time-frame. It will also lead to some changes in the way Dgroups operates. We aim to make the transition as smooth as possible, and we count on your help in this.

To anticipate any problems and to minimize disruption, we are putting together a migration team to oversee – and communicate – the process and all the various steps; I am sure you will here from them very soon with more details, and requests to help beta test the new service.