08.22.08

What’s that date again?

Posted in TC Process, general at 9:10 am by Mary McRae

It seems that we’ve been launching new Technical Committees at an amazing pace and that’s a good thing. The OASIS TC Process has some very strict rules around the timing of a new Technical Committee launch to ensure that the requisite steps are completed as quickly as possible. All those rules can lead to quite a bit of confusion, particularly when trying to plan backwards – say, from the date of the first meeting, or the Call for Participation announcement. My notebook is full of such scenarios – each time a new date is suggested the planning starts again.

In an effort to make your life easier, as well as mine, I’ve built (with the help of Rob Weir at IBM) a spreadsheet that does all the calculations automagically. Enter a date in a yellow cell and each of the other milestones will display not only a date, but the day of the week (scheduling a conference call on a Saturday afternoon could result in poor attendance). There are three separate tables on the first worksheet tab:

  1. Submission Date Scheduler – enter the date of the planned/actual draft charter submission the OASIS TC Administrator to see the dates for each following step
  2. Meeting Date Scheduler – enter the planned date for the first meeting (either teleconference or face-to-face) and the charter submission date as well as all interim dates are created
  3. Call for Participation Scheduler – enter the planned date for the Call for Participation announcement and all prior and following dates are displayed

I’ve created a video tutorial to go along with the spreadsheet; the spreadsheet itself is available in both .ods and .xls formats.

There’s another tab in the workbook that will show the minimum timeline from Public Review through OASIS Standard ballot results announcement. More on that in the next post.

08.08.07

Public vs Member-only URIs

Posted in TC Process, spec writing, spec-related at 4:17 pm by Mary McRae

When trying to access an information asset created by an OASIS Technical Committee and uploaded to the OASIS document repository, you may be challenged to enter a user name and password. The OASIS Technical Committee Process requires that all work of any technical committee must always be publicly available. So where’s the disconnect?

Like many content content creation systems, the software in use by OASIS Technical Committees was designed around a notion of “workgroups” where only those who are part of the group can view the information stored. When an information asset of any kind is uploaded into the document repository, a URI is generated in the following format:

http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/{tc-abbreviation}/
download.php/{uid}/{filename}

where:

  • {tc-abbreviation} represents the short name of the technical committee (i.e. dita),
  • {uid} represents a 5-digit unique identifier, and
  • {filename} represents the actual name of the information asset.

This URI is only accessible by OASIS members; that is, someone with an OASIS login and password.

There’s a little trick that will convert any URI in the format above into one that is publicly accessible. Replace “apps/org/workgroup/{tc-abbreviation}/” with “committees” and the resource will become accessible by all.

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/
download.php/{uid}/{filename}

If you are passing along a URI for information that has been uploaded into the document repository, please be sure to use the publicly-accessible version. If you are trying to access a document but are asked to enter a user name and password, convert the URI to bypass the challenge.

NOTE: All information assets uploaded to the OASIS Library (docs.oasis-open.org) are publicly accessible; there is no notion of “workgroup.”

06.28.07

SLAs

Posted in TC Process at 1:52 pm by Mary McRae

Are you aware that there are published SLAs (a/k/a turnaround times) for TC Administration tasks? While the TC Process defines several explicit SLAs, we have tried to fill in the gaps. If you’re planning your schedule to target a particular date, you’ll want to take these into consideration. Of course my goal is to turnaround requests as quickly as possible, but oftentimes there’s already a queue.

Here they are:

  • Announcement of Public Review: 5 business days
  • Launch Committee Specification Ballot: 5 business days
  • Launch other Special Majority Ballots: 3 business days
  • Create Subcommittee: 3 business days
  • Announce ballot results: 3 business days
  • Requests to use external facility resources (such as systems support): 5 business days
  • Publish standing rules: 5 business days