MyEd Updates 2014/5
One of the major projects over summer 2014 has been the update to MyEd. Behind the scenes we've moved from uPortal 3 to 4, although for most users the clearest changes are the excellent work done by Learning Teaching & Web on the new theme. The migration itself has taken months of effort, with many portlets (applications running within MyEd) essentially requiring to be completely rewritten for the new version. The configuration of the two systems are not directly compatible, and tools had to be developed to update and maintain configurations for over 100 channels (the small sectons seen by the user, such as "Learn" or "Staff Details") across three different environments (development, test and live), testing each of these changes both in isolation and integrated into the complete system.
Many of these channels also depend on other applications (such as accommodation, event booking, Learn, etc.) which in some cases needed to be modified and those modifications tested. Extensive load testing was performed to ensure the systems would handle the very high load anticipated for any major university service at the start of term. Hopefully this helps to give an idea of the scale of the project.
So what next for MyEd? Mobile support was disabled in the current deployment, but a project is currently underway to add support for mobile devices for a number of core parts of MyEd. I'm sure many will be pleased to know this is expected to include both campus maps and timetabling, with email, calendar, Learn and a number of other tools available at launch. Naturally both iPhone and Android platforms will be supported, with full details to follow.
Testing Times – hubs, nodes and grids
I have been doing some basic testing experiments within the SSP. I thought it was a good time to try out Selenium GRID which brings cross browser testing to selenium and Appium for mobile testing.
So I thought I would share how I set up some basic settings to get started with Selenium GRID and Appium.
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Path: A new stack of PHP, Yii and Oracle
Path has been through a variety of environments over its two-and-a-bit-year life. When it was a student project, it started off on servers run by EUSA. It then moved to IS's webhosting environment. Now it's on a proper supported LAMP infrastructure, with three environments and the sort of features you might have come to expect. This is fantastic news for Path's future, but it hasn't been the steadiest journey.
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uPortal release 4.10
uPortal version 4.10 has been recently released, which has lots of great new features, most notably the move over to a Bootstrap 3 responsive design.
http://www.apereo.org/uportal/download/uportal-4-1-0
We're also pleased to note that Ross Nicoll in Development Services has contributed to this release. That's great to see, and hopefully something we can do more of in subsequent releases.
Thanks Ross :)!