[Drupal] Drupal Config for Engineering and Scientific Groups at JLab

[Chris Carlin]

I added some notes from the perspective of the target group.

Be forewarned: it's definitely in the realms of a wishlist.


> Engineering Group Web Site Standard Features
>
> ===================================================
>
> *Electronic Logbook(s)* – Used to record time based events occurring in
> conjunction with some ongoing activity. Normally, logs are not modified
> after they’re written, or, if they are, the original entry is also
> preserved.
>

We would strongly prefer to be able to attach pictures to logbook entries. I
know some groups would consider it critical, especially in terms of
attaching screenshots of running experiments and equipment.

Another concern is about organization of logbook entries, things like
whether users can easily create new logbooks when they begin new projects
and shift between logbooks throughout the day. We are always working on
multiple independent projects at any given time, and there's also nesting of
projects to take into account.

Off the top of my head I'm reminded of the blogging platform serendipity (
www.s9y.org) which uses both categories and tagging of entries. It would
make sense for our workflow that we'd make a category for each hall and tag
entries by project, relevant pieces of equipment, etc.

Also, while it's not a big deal to us, I know some groups would like an
"email this entry to ___" button.


> *Online Notebook(s)* – For keeping track of laboratory, technical or
> experimental notes. Can be individual or group based. Must be able to
> accommodate various attachments.
>

Is the difference between notebooks and logbooks that significant? It seems
like they could be basically the same thing, just with more likelihood of
people wanting to re-edit entries. Features that would be good for one
(attachments, full text search, organizational tools, retrieval tools) would
at worst be a little overkill for the other.


> *Image Gallery* – The need for this varies greatly, but it’s always a
> collection of some kind of media files – audio, video, photographic, etc.
> maintaining, managing, viewing, presenting these is usually important to
> these groups.
>

This is a huge need for us, though we only need pictures.

One consideration is that we already have hundreds of pictures organized and
sitting on our group drive, and our members are happy enough with the
process of dragging and dropping to the group disk. Perhaps the gallery can
access the pictures from the group drive so we can keep the existing process
instead of going through a web-based uploader?

We have similar organizational needs for the image gallery as we have for
the logbook with tasks and subtasks. It would be nice to grant specific
non-members permission to view/edit collections of pictures on a collection
by collection basis.


> *Event Calendar* – This is a common need, either for tracking upcoming
> events like conferences, or for scheduling things like shifts for group
> members.
>

Colorized categorization of events on a calendar would be nice.

Come to think of it, it would be pretty nice if the lab's experimental
schedule was publicly published as a subscribe-able calendar like an .ics
file that we could then include in our group calendar to see it all in one
place.

~Chris
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