Discussion-points for Confolio Launch

During first half of 2010 we have had some Skype-meetings where we have discussed the current state of Confolio and what we need to consider and improve for a launch to a wider audience. This is planned for the EHA Congress 2011 in London.

This page serves to collect all these points in the meetings and discuss it further in the meeting in Stresa 16-17th of September 2010

Policy

• Who should we let have access to the Confolio system?
  • Should it be members of EHA, members of an NS somehow associated with EHA. What about National Societies outside of Europe and H-net?
  • Practical question 1: How can we verify that a user should be granted access? For EHA members it is possible to do a check with email-adressess of the user. To include for example members of ASH could get a bit more problematic as they are outside Europe and we do not really know what type of information we have the right to store about them.
  • Practical question 2: How do we let them in? This is of course closely related to the question above. For a wide usage of Confolio we need to make as "effortlessly" as possible to join if the person is allowed in. Should perhaps each member of EHA get an account automatically? If only members of EHA are allowed in it could be quite easily checked as EHA keep each members email-adress. The adress can be used by the memeber to sign up for the Confolio and the rest can be solved automatically by the data-system (this is hopefully not too technically complicated).
• How can we control that no abusive, illegal or inappropriate material is uploaded or linked to?
  • Self-regulation is one possible method where a user have the possibility to report an item in the portfolio. For example by adding a warning-button that can be pressed by any user.
  • We also already now have this checkbox that needs to be checked before submitting any material, would this be enough? (The label for the check-box says: "This resource has been pre-checked according to the rules of the H-net project")
  • What would be considered abusive and inappropriate? Some kind of document deciding that would perhaps be needed, ie the "rules of the H-net project" as in the sentence above
  • In the worst case a user might have to be removed, what would be the policy here? Three warnings and then out? In case this is necessary or an account needs to be removed for other reasons it is possible to extract all the data from an account into a zip-file and hand over to the user. A policy for removing users (perhaps also for removing inactive users) needs to be developed.
• How much space a user should be allowed to use.
  • This is tricky as we do not really know how much files a typical user uploads. Initially this limit could be kept at around 3-500 Megabyte per person, but only reveal it to them when they are reaching the limit. In order to acquire more is to upload popular material. Ie, a person who uploads or links to things that are often used should be provided with more space.
  • To not have a restriction could be an option, though we would then need to see a bit more how the user are using the system and how fast the disk-space becomes a problem.

Evaluation and improvements

• Survey for masterclass participants about experiences of using Confolio
  • Some kind of evaluation after the Confolio has been used in the masterclass should be done, what question should we ask.
• Future improvements, what more would we like to be possible in the Confolio system? Both things that possible within H-net and after.
• Improvements "after" H-net: How do we continue the work afterwards and how do we decide if new features are to be implemented?

Support Tutorials

• Text tutorials/manuals for the main functionality will be developed. However, as much as possible should be "self-explanatory", ie the user interface should be as intuitive as possible.
• Video tutorials: Alongside using text-tutorials/manuals, it is also possible to create short instructional videos and put them online. How much effort this takes depends of course on how fancy we want these to be.
• Some kind of support (email or phone?) is necessary alongside the tutorials.