V 0.1.3

Owned by m
Last updated: Mar 17, 2017
10 min read

The Digital Manufacturing Commons has always used an agile process to provide users with the latest updates so users can have an opportunity to help us test our site and to allow users to give us feedback which allows them to help push the platform in the right direction. Though we have always used an agile process, as well as advertised that we use this process, we have not always been very verbose about what features have been added to site. Going forward, users will see updates from us, roughly every 2 weeks (inline with our Sprint Burndowns) with details as to what changes have been made and why we've made the decision to make those changes. We'll also will be including what issues/bugs we have been able to fix/patch. Read on for more details.

Features for Users

Site Map (Feature Changes and Bug Fix Locations)

This section explains where users will be able find new feature on the site.

    • Portal.opendmc.org
      • Header
        >Maintenace Banner
        >Flex-box menu
        • DMDII Portal
          • MemberDirectory
            >Member Filter Updated
            >Member Filter UI Update
            >Default Logo
            • Member Organization Profile Page
          • Projects Directory
            >Quick LInks
            >Quick link for Academics
            >Quick link on PIPs
            >Filters updated
            >Project Filter UI Update
        • Marketplace
          >Major Layout Update
          • Application Profile Pages
             >Time App Uploaded Available
            >Application Category Available
            >New Marketplace Categories 
        • Explore
          • Organizations Search
            >Default Logo
            • Organization Profile Page
                             >Organization Admin Cards Highlighted
               >User card format updated 
               >DC Added as a State for location reporting 
          • Activities
            >Events List Update 
          • Individuals
            >User card format updated 
            >Default Images
            • User Profile Pages
              >Default Images 
        • About
          >Updated About Page (New UI) 
        • User Drop-down
          • Workspaces
            • Services
              >Apps return answers more quickly
              >3 Physics Applications
              >Docent App Available 
      • Footer
        >Time Stamp of last deployment
    • Confluence
      >Release Notes Available 
    • GitHub
      • Repositories
        >DMC ACONS Repository
        >Docent Repository

New Features

This section explains why these new features have been included in the release.

    • Organization Administrators Acknowledged on Organization Profile Pages
      • Currently verified users can now visit their organization profile page as well as and organization profile page and easily know who the organization administrator is. Organization administrator user cards now show up with a green boarder around their card as well as a green admin medal that is found to the left of there name on the the organization profile page.
    • Version Time Stamped in Footer at Build-time
      • Users when visiting the website can now quickly see when the website has been last deployed with fixes, features or brand new content by the development team by scrolling to the bottom of any page and they will see the time stamp of the last time a machine part of the stack was last updated. This also makes it easier for developers to check if the feature they have been working to implement have been applied tot he website as well as check if cache is being applied to the website.
    • New Marketplace Layout
      • Users who have visited the DMC Marketplace may have notice that the page would show all applications in a relatively small space located in a single carousel. This page has had a revamp done to it, now organizing all applications by their application category, making it easier to find application relevant and of interest to users.
    • Organization Profile Page User Cards Update
      • In order to reduce the amount of information being shown to visitors of site at one time, a green details button has been added to all user cards. This gives users a much cleaner interface.
        • For Organization Admins as well as Site Wide Administrators, this change means that to either verify a user, decline a user from the organization, or change a user's access level, they will need to click on the details button to do these actions.
        • For users, this means that they will need to click the details button on their own cards to leave their organization, or to request organization access. Also in order to get descriptions and contact information straight for the user card on this page, users will need to click on the details button to get this information as well.
    • Organization Profile Administrators
      • Organizations administrators are now easy to find on the organization profile pages making it easier for users and members or organization to know who they need to reach our to if they have questions as well as making it easier for other organiation administrators to find other administrators. This also makes auditing easier from a visual standpoint. Users of the website will find that organization odministrator cards are now highlighted in green and also have a green admin button associated with their cards. Both of these feature are viewable from the organization profile pages.
    • Default Logos for Organizations

      • If an organization has not yet had the opportunity to or has chosen not to upload an organization logo Organizations will find that in the following location on the site, users will see this image placeholder.

        • Organization Profile Page
        • Organization Search page
        • DMDII Members Directory Search Page

          • DMDII Organization Profile Page not yet implemented

    • Default Pictures for Users

      • If a user chooses not to or has not had the opportunity to upload a profile picture, in the following location they will see this image placeholder.

        • Individuals search page
        • User Profiles Page
        • Users' Organization page

    • Marketplace Revamp

      • The Marketplace has received a face lift. Users would have noticed before that the marketplace only had one section, specifically the new section. Applications are now categorized by application category, making the browsing and searching experience much easier and natural.
    • Marketplace Application Comparing
      • Previous to this release users were not able to compare application from the marketplace page. Instead users needed to add all applications they were interested in comparing, an then needed to visit some marketplace application profile page and click on the compare button from there. The marketplace now natively supports being able to compare services. In the future this will help user choose between application they are interested in using but want to discover what may be different between application versions as well as find how they compare from a popularity stand-point and more.
    • Marketplace Faster Report Time
      • Users would have noticed previous to this release that free demo applications would have taken up to 8 seconds to return an answer. This update allows applications to return an answer within 3 seconds for most applications.
    • DMDII Project Directory - Project Browse-By Filters
      • When visiting the DMDII Project Directory, users will notice the Browse-By filters that used to appear on the lett hand side of the screen and were not always completely legible have been moved and can now be found to the left of the search bar
    • DMDII Member Directory- Member Browse-By Filter
      • Much like the Projects Filter, the members filter has been moved to the left of the search menu found on the DMDII Members Directory page.
    • DMDII Member Filter Categories
      • DMDIIs official categorization for DMDII partner type are Academic/Non-Profit, Industry, and Government. Previous to this release, the filters counted Academics and Non-profits as separate when they are actually one in the same. This issue has since been fixed.
    • Application Upload Time and Category
      • Application Upload time as well as category can be viewed from the Application profile page. Previous to the release, the ability to read this information was not displayed to the user but was listed as a piece of information a user would expect to recieve.
    • DMC Site Maintenance Banner
      • Before this release, the DMC did not have a way to reach out to active users to let them know that we would be updating the site and that work they may have done could be lost during that time. We now have a banner that we will be able to enable 2 days before the update is set to take place. Going forward, we will be enabling this banner before updates.
    • Site Menu Flex Box
      • When visiting the website in a shrunken browser, users can now click on menu items using a hamburger drop-down menu, making it easier to acess the site on a smaller device.

New Content

The DMC finds it important to introduce new content along with bug fixes and new feature each sprint to give users of the website a reason to continue to return to the website. Below is a list new pieces of content users can find on the website.

    • Benefits Quick Links
      • Users will find documents in the DMDII Project Directory Quick Links section where they can view, or download the following materials:
        • Benefits for Academic Institutions
        • Partner Innovation Projects Overview
    • About DMC Page
      • The About page on the DMC has gotten a revamp. More information about the DMC's Vision Mission and much more is available to view and read. Log in to read all this information.
    • The DMDII Members List has been updated to take into account new members as well as members who have left.
    • New Applications
    • Docent in the Marketplace
    • New Events
      • The Events list in the Activities section has been updated with new DMC, DMDII and UI LABS Events to help user keep up to date.
    • DMDII Project Thrust Areas
      • DMDII's Official Thrust areas have been updated. Thus we have added the new thrusts to our filter list as well as supplied them as categories for new and existing Projects. The DMDII Projects teams will be updating all DMDII Project Thrust Areas in the Projects Directory and once completes, Thrust Areas that have been discontinued will be removed from the filter
    • New site-wide administrators onboarded
    • Marketplace Application Categories
      • Application categories have been expanded by a bit. Application categories now include
        • Fundamental Calculations - Physics
        • Fundamental Calculations - Engineering
        • Fundamental Calculations - Fracture Mechanics
      • All applications that were set as just Fundamental Calculations have been updated to be in set to have their new category
    • Application Logos for previously added applications
      • Old applications have new application logos associates with the category their application is coming from.

Quality Assurance

We take the release of new functionality on our platform to be very important and that when done, the quality of that code as well as its usability needs to be relatively bug free. During this minor release, we have gone through to make sure that the bugs fixed as well as the new features have been checked and vetted. Feature that were tested and found to either to be of bad code quality, feature work unexpectedly, or that simply do not cover the full spectrum of the required set of functionality were not merged into our master code base and not deployed to our production platform found at https://portal.opendmc.org.

Bugs Fixed

With our ever growing code base we are not always able to catch bugs before we release new features. Below are feature we have found after new features were release and we either discovered these ourselves or we were informed of them by tickets from users. We encourage our user-base to let us know when they encounter bug on our website so we can make the user experience as bug free as possible.

    • Portal Quick Links space formatting issue
      • Users and Super-administrators would have notices that when new quick links were added to the DMDII Projects page, quick links with long titles would run over to the next line but would make it hard to distinguish between one quick link and the link found below it. This bug was addressed in this fix, and users as well as super-administrators will notice that extra space now exists between quick links on this page.
    • DMDII Content Delete
      • Verified users that are not site wide administrators would have noticed that on the DMDII Member Directory page delete buttons would be visible next to the DMDII Events and News posted content. These buttons were reported not to work, though cause users confusion as to why they might have access to this. Due to this we've hidden these delete buttons to all but site wide administrators.
      • Site-wide administrators would have noticed that the delete button the appears next to the Calendar widget related events did not actually work. To remove confusion and simplify the amount of ways possible to delete DMDII Member Events, we have removed this button and only left the one found next to the main event section.
    • Marketplace Cards Text and Image Run-over
      • Users who visited the DMC Marketplace, may have noticed that when viewing some cards in the marketplace would have text run over on top of the application logo/image. This bug has been addressed and users should no longer see this issue.
    • Organization Profile Contact Information
      • Some users who's organization are located in Washington DC may have notice they were unable to last DC as their organization "state." Now organizations from the District of Columbia are able to appropriately list their organization as being from DC on their organization's Contact Tab.
    • DMDII Project Directory - Quick links
      • Previous to this release, users and site-wide administrators would have noticed that quick-links with long names would be difficult to differentiate. More space has been made between posted quick links to ensure that users can easily find the information they are looking for.

Features for Developers: Code-base/Infrastructure

Below you will find a list of all improvements we've made related to our code-base.

    • New Git Repositories
      • We've added new repositories to GitHub account which include docent-dome, as well as dmcacons. Our Manufacturing Readiness Assessment (MRA) tool has been renamed to Docent and its source code can be found in the docent-dome repository. Our administrative scripts are being abstracted and consolidated from the machines repositories the scripts run on and moved to this new repository. Find these repositories as well as all of our other GitHub repositories at https://github.com/dmc-uilabs
    • Static Content Re-Architecture
      • We have made architectural updates to our frontend code to allow us to much more easily update static content that needs to appear in multiple places. In the past this was done by either hardcoding the static content in each of the appropriate folders for the pages that needed the updated content, or by hard coding the information into our datafactory file. The new rearchitecture allows us to easily update this static inforamtion in .json files store this information and is then reference later in the code for each of these pages. This release included making this conversion for the following static content on the site: DMDII Thrust Areas, Organixation States, and Marketplace Application Categories.

Security Improvements

Security is and always has been an important aspect of the DMC platform, this being so, below are the security improvements that we've include in this release.

Contributing

Those interested in contributing to our project, we urge you to look to our contribution wiki page: https://digitalmfgcommons.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DMDIIDMC/For+Contributors

Contact Us

If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us. You can reach us using the following methods: