Ashley Griffin's dashboard

Ashley Griffin replied on October 07, 2009 17:48 to the question "Events System" in eXtension:

Sue, to the best of my knowledge the Events App does not offer import of images or documents however you can link to them as well as other published CoP wiki pages or other web sites as needed using standard html code for linking.

Check out this page to see how to add links to the Calendar:
http://cop.extension.org/wiki/eXtension_Calendar_of_Events

As for how to deal with time zones. I just make sure I indicate in the text of the event the time zone that is applicable. That way, the reader knows for sure.

Any event that is added to the Events App will be automatically published on the www.extension.org. If the Professional Development event is not for the public then I would refrain from posting it in the Events Calendar.

Your inquiry produces good ideas for how the Events App could be improved to serve the needs of both internal and external users.

Thanks,
Ashley

Ashley Griffin replied on March 31, 2009 19:00 to the idea "Add a publish button in the FAQ application?" in eXtension:

Agreed that a way to more quickly republish FAQs after minor edits would be helpful. CoPs are always asking and sighing when they see that they need to walk an existing published FAQ back thru for minor updates. Making it optional would be my vote. There will still be many instances as answers mature that peer-review/re-review will need to be done so keeping both publishing functions available would be best.

I am not in favor of removing the peer review process from the publishing workflow for FAQs. As pointed out above, many CoPs express their desire for the CoPWiki to have the same organized workflow. The process alone helps eXtension create the transformation and make our statements that published materials are peer-reviewed that much more accurate. I feel that keeping the publishing process encourages the best practices we are promoting.

Ashley Griffin replied on March 14, 2009 03:44 to the idea "Calling a consultant (ask a friend) when answering an AaE question." in eXtension:

This is a good idea and could also be a way to attract and get help from unadaptive faculty. But I understand Aaron's point and think it could be put on the wish list.

Ashley Griffin started following the idea "Calling a consultant (ask a friend) when answering an AaE question." in eXtension.

Ashley Griffin replied on March 05, 2009 02:18 to the idea "Let an expert indicate they are working on a question?" in eXtension:

Ben, this will go a long way to communicate what is going on with a question being answered. I agree that 24 hours is a bit long to hold a question ransom but I do not know the ideal time frame. 2 hours may work fine since experts can extend the time - but if Larry's example is common then that expert most likely will not be available to keep extending the time they are working on a response. We might ask the CMB on Monday what they think?

Another concept that I know would help push answers thru faster is the ability to compose a response and then assign it to another expert for further answer or review if desired. I myself have wanted validation of a response prior to answering an incoming qt and to date have just entered my response in the comments box - forward the qt to another expert and asked them to review my answer and either insert it as a response with their changes or email me so i can go complete the answer. This has been a work around, not sure if others have done the same but for the really tough qts folks might at least get things started, get confirmation by asking others to tweak and potentially decrease our response time and get higher quality responses captured in the process.

Thanks for working on this.

Ashley Griffin replied on February 24, 2009 20:14 to the question "Can't download or view video - getting very frustrated with all this" in eXtension:

Cindy:

Not sure what your needs are for this video but these and other clips are now also available in the eXhorses channel of YouTube if that helps.

Ashley

A comment on the question "Can't download or view video - getting very frustrated with all this" in eXtension:

James, I was able to right click, download and view the video with no problem. Not sure what is causing Cindy's problem. Here is the public site page where all the video pages can be found: http://www.extension.org/pages/Horse_... – Ashley Griffin, on February 24, 2009 20:02

Ashley Griffin replied on February 13, 2009 02:53 to the problem "Login is presenting an error" in eXtension:

ok, Craig just sent me a message and told me what i was doing wrong. Maybe this will help others that come in.

The error message you are getting is because the URL you have bookmarked contains the .../account/login. If you remove /account/login from the bookmark you will not get the error message.

Ashley Griffin replied on December 16, 2008 21:30 to the idea "New template?" in eXtension:

Jill, Thanks for posting your idea in Get Satisfaction.

eXtension is currently working on details to better outline content collaborators and so far they have been referred to as Partners. Some partners have been non-profit industry groups that have the same mission, vision and values as a CoP and have agreed to the same contributor license and are subject to peer review, etc.

All Sponsors of eXtension to date have type of funding to the representative CoP. In this case, has this conference offered any funding dollars to help Animal Manure Management?

If not, then maybe they are requesting Sponsorship status because they put a dollar amount on their contributions. eXtension is recognizing gifts in kind but at this time I am not sure if it falls within the Partner or Sponsor status.

Ashley Griffin replied on December 10, 2008 15:19 to the question "Hot Topic button on eXtension Home" in eXtension:

Just for the sake of recording the Idea of organizing content by Audience... The following suggestion was emailed in by Rick Koelsch

Could your dynamic web page to which the hot link will connect have two or three major sections each with their own tag?

Individual and Family Finances (tag: fiscal crisis home)

Farm and Ranch Finances (tag: fiscal crisis farm)

Small Business Finances (tag: fiscal crisis business)

A comment on the question "Hot Topic button on eXtension Home" in eXtension:

This process should definitely be automated and as simple as adding a category to appropriate pages or faqs. eXtension needs an attractive organized landing page for these emerging issues to enable better marketing and direct linking.

The CMB attendees indicated the desire for all the articles not to be intermixed in one long alpha list, but separated by topic area. A later follow-up email even suggested organization by audience types which have not been defined. This all leads me to the question of how we will accomplish this without an "In this Resource Area". Overall I don't want to complicate the situation by organizing content this way nor increase the management - however when asked, the CMB felt strongly about the need for organization.

As a phase one we might omit this feature for Monday's launch and see how much content is really there and if sub-dividing is even warranted. I just wanted to bring this up to see if there was some solution that might address this earlier rather then later. Overall this may only be a concern for wider spread crisis and when multiple CoPs are involved.

At this point I wish I had not explained to the CMB how the articles would be organized using just the one category - but they would have seen it eventually anyway. – Ashley Griffin, on December 10, 2008 02:37

A comment on the question "Reveal Authors" in eXtension:

True and I think we can use IEEE LOM. We just need to better define the contributor role tags - maybe add to the drop down of listed roles with a descriptive analogy for each so the CoPs can more easily see what is the most appropriate choice for their activity. Taking the feedback from Mike's committee might help us identify terms that better relate to contributors and then we can pair them with the IEEE LOM set. – Ashley Griffin, on December 06, 2008 18:10

A comment on the question "Reveal Authors" in eXtension:

This is definitely true. The committee’s discussion revolves around using metadata to generate reports needed and maybe even tweaking the contributor role tag to better-fit contributor needs and work. The committee members indicate a desire to make it more applicable so it is useful to them if they can get something back like a personal report outlining the metrics of their contributions for different contributor roles.

There are some CoPs who are starting to add their own author information in the article itself but unless we are able to quantify that for P&T I think we are missing the boat. It is hard enough now for CoPs to dig for data when it comes to reporting. It is even harder for eXtension to create cumulative data for deployed content but this is another topic we need to work on. – Ashley Griffin, on December 05, 2008 08:37

A comment on the question "What should the "print" view look like?" in eXtension:

This works and ensures that information is not lost. Like it : ) – Ashley Griffin, on December 04, 2008 18:34

Ashley Griffin replied on December 03, 2008 17:22 to the question "What should the "print" view look like?" in eXtension:

Should we have the url of the page listed in the footer of the print view?

Right now there is no way that person receiving a printed copy could find eXtension or the specific source for the page unless they started with searching for eXtension. For example: This may be important if County Agents print materials and use in programming as handouts, etc.

FYI: corrected my view of the print by simply clearing cache.

A comment on the question "What should the "print" view look like?" in eXtension:

The universities were only listed as text links, this screen shot is much improved over what i see, Thanks – Ashley Griffin, on December 02, 2008 01:45

A comment on the question "What should the "print" view look like?" in eXtension:

Latest Firefox - no upgrades needed – Ashley Griffin, on December 02, 2008 01:30

Ashley Griffin replied on December 02, 2008 01:02 to the question "What should the "print" view look like?" in eXtension:

Looks good. Going back to my original example:
http://www.demo.extension.org/pages/F...

Can we remove the two links at the top of the page?
* Select a different institution
Local Extension offices near you

Not sure if they are printing this that they need this information on the page.

Thanks for all the hard work - still need to actually print a copy tomorrow too.

A comment on the question "What should the "print" view look like?" in eXtension:

the copy sent to the printer of this page breaks the page just after the page subtitle "Last updated.." and then goes to the next page for the actual information. - wasn't expecting that. – Ashley Griffin, on November 20, 2008 20:39

Ashley Griffin replied on November 20, 2008 20:36 to the question "What should the "print" view look like?" in eXtension:

Some of the style issues with our print friendly version include:
- image locations - would it be best to have them all move to the left or right for the purposes of this print version?
- eX logo might look better in color like the institutional signatures
- placement of eX logo might be considered right justified in line with institional signature to help move content up
- entire print version needs more padding on the left side - text sort of runs into the left margin - haven't tried to print it though :)
- text links like the one here for "forages" should just be removed from this print version because all links are showing up as (pages/forages/) and although it appears to be a link in the page it is not clickable
- since the more information section links are not clickable we might not display that information
- and not sure we need to display the comments on an article page.

Removing the more information and comments from the footer will help clean the print version up a bit.

These comments reflect the discussion Henrietta and I had yesterday but we may come back with more.