ANDS Services News

 Information about changes to ANDS systems and services.  RIF-CS schema udpates are available at the RIF-CS Schema Change News page.

ANDS Online Services Release 7.3

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^07May2012

Service Release 7.3 is scheduled for general availability on Wednesday, 9th of May 2012. The release includes a couple of bug fixes and some enhancements to the Cite My Data (DOI) Service.  The below bullet points briefly describe each change.

Add Record Screens

• The 'Save/Preview Draft' screen was updated to display the name/title of related objects and provide clickable links to the records in the registry. 
• Metadata Content Requirement warning messages for related objects have been updated to advise users to ignore the messages if the relationships have already been created from the related object to the object being added. (Note: The link will only show in both directions in Research Data Australia if the 'reverse link' flag is enabled for the data source). 

Cite My Data (DOI) Service
The service has had a number of updates following feedback from some of our early implementers.

• Messages sent from the service are now more meaningful and structured and can be requested in either JSON or XML. 
• A new URI structure for the service has been created which is cleaner, better suited to versioning and will assist in debugging issues (although there is a new structure the service will maintain backwards compatibility with the old URL structure).
• An Account Administration screen has been added to the ORCA Registry to allow ANDS Support Team to manage Cite My Data service registrations (e.g.  modify the IP address, change DOI prefix from test to production, etc.)

Others

• Updated RIF-CS Java API to support RIF-CS 1.3 Schema  
• Sandbox decommissioning

During the implementation, the ANDS Online Services (Production Registry, ANDS Harvester, Persistent Identifier Service and Cite My Data) will not be available for 3 hours on Wednesday, from 9:00AM to 12:00PM (AEDT).  As part of soft release, the Demo environment will not be available on the 8th of May from 9:00AM to 12:00PM (AEDT). 

If you require any further information or have any feedback, please feel free to contact services@ands.org.au.

ANDS Online Services Release 7.2

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^{14 March 2012}

Service Release 7.2 is scheduled for general availability on the 15^th March 2012. The release includes a number of bug fixes as well as minor enhancements based on feedback received mostly through the service desk.  The below bullet points briefly describe each of the changes. A link to the change control for each item has been included for internal ANDS staff.

Research Data Australia:

• The relation type description is now being displayed in Research Data Australia to allow for the description information be available to all users. Please take note that we will only display the description if it has 64 characters or less.
• An 'Alt Text' (alternative text) for images in Research Data Australia are now available.
• 'Sitemaps' has been implemented to assist Google discovery/indexing.
• The 'Exact phrase search' in Research Data Australia was corrected/fixed to provide an accurate result.

Add Registry Objects Screen:

• Spaces are now  being stripped when added as part of a relatedObject key.
• A RIF-CS button has now been made available for all Draft records to allow the user to view or download the record's XML.
• When manually adding records, the collection-service relation types are now available in the drop-down list. 
• Special characters (e.g. copyright '©', registered character '®' and umlauts ö) are now being accepted when adding or editing a record in the ANDS Registry.
• Resolved an issue where editing a previously harvested record could lead to validation errors in the dateModified & dateAccessioned attributes.  
• The RIFCS notes element in relatedInfo will now display correctly when previewing a draft record in RDA. 

Others:

• XML validation has been enhanced to use local/in-memory XSD for efficiency. 

During the implementation, the ANDS Online Services (Production Registry, ANDS Harvester, Persistent Identifier Service  and Cite My Data) will not be available for 2 hours from 9:00AM to 11:00AM (AEDT).  As part of soft release, the Demo environment will not be available on the 14th of March from 1:00PM to 3:00PM (AEDT).

An email will be sent out to our partners and users soon and the ANDS Online Services News page will be updated with this release announcement.  If you require any further information or have any feedback, please feel free to contact services@ands.org.au. 

 

ANDS Online Services Release 7.1

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^{13 February 2012}

ANDS Online Services Release 7.1 to be deployed on Wed, 15 Feb 2012

ANDS is pleased to announce that Service Release 7.1 will be available on Wednesday, 15^th Feb 2012. This release includes a number of bug fixes as well as minor enhancements based on feedback received through the service desk, and user acceptance and usability testing. 

Below is the summarized list of changes.

Add Registry Objects screen:

• A couple of warning messages have been enhanced (warning message when typing a word not found in the RIF-CS vocabularies, Metadata Content Requirements warning for rights). 
• A new related object search interface which allows searching for names with special characters and displays names instead of keys. Details of the selected object are also now shown in the Related Object tab.
• Examples of correct entries are now given with the majority of errors.
• Alignment of all ‘value' and ‘type' pair fields with the 'value' field always shown before the 'type' field. 
• Additional information on date formats is now given.
• New buttons on the Save Draft tab to expand the details of the Metadata Content Requirements warnings. 
• The "View this record in Research Data Australia" link on the Save Draft tab is now more prominent.
• Fixed bug with the tabs not being enabled once all the required fields on the initial Record Administration tab had been filled out.
• Message at the bottom of Add Registry Object screens has been updated to reflect the fact that data captured through the screen is validated data against the RIF-CS 1.3.0 schema.  

RIF-CS Support:

•  The ‘RIF-CS' button has been enhanced to allow users to view or download the complete RIF-CS XML. 

Manage My Records screen: 

• A popup confirmation message has been implemented on the Manage My Records screen when deleting published records. 

Research Data Australia/ANDS Registry General:

• Monthly broken links reporting - report on external links within records that are considered dead/broken (404, time out, etc.). 
• A more friendly calendar widget has replaced the existing widget used across the ANDS Registry. It now allows users to go back further than 100 years.
• The ‘Help' link on the Data Source Account screen now points to the Content Providers Guide. 

Spatial Coverage Support

• When entering iso19139dcmiBox spatial values, a semi-colon at the end of the final parameter is no longer required, in line with the Dublin Core standard.  
• Proper display of non-dcmiBox/kmlpolycoords spatial types is now available. 
• Proper display of spatial coverage provided in ISO31661 and ISO31662 formats is now supported.
• Updated the Google Maps API across RDA and ORCA to correctly use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and prevents warnings/errors on page load. 

Development/Release strategy

• Migrated existing registry codebase to the Git version control system to improve development process (manageable parallel development branches) and provide a consistent software deployment mechanism. 
• Made the ANDS Software publicly available at github.com/au-research/ to enable collaborative development and ensure the most recent release code is readily available for use.
• Revised the software versioning system (to mirror the ANDS release strategy) and made necessary structural changes to codebase to provide a pathway for "upgrades" from one version to the next.
• Updated database schema "Installation script" for users installing a fresh version of the registry to be consistent with the current ANDS registry schema.
• Provided an updated version of the ANDS Harvester source code (required for use with ANDS release7 or greater).
• Deployment of code to software environments is now done under a controlled deployment mechanism (to ensure consistency and prevent ad-hoc changes being made).

Demo Environment

• The ANDS Demonstration Environment ("Demo") has been updated and repurposed to provide a technical testing sandbox for ANDS staff and external providers to use. The software on this system will now mirror the production system and a snapshot of the production registry will be imported. 

For comments or queries regarding this release, please email services@ands.org.au.  Thanks.

 

Prototype Controlled Vocabulary Service is up and running

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^{06 January 2012}

The ANDS controlled vocabularies prototype service will allow research organizations to create, manage and query "controlled vocabularies" relating to their research datasets.

The service has now been deployed as a rudimentary and experimental prototype that provides query access to the widely used ABS ANZSRC Field of Research Codes. The service is designed for Australian organisations managing research datasets that require use of controlled vocabulary terms in their data or metadata values.

• Prototype Controlled Vocabulary Service information: http://ands.org.au/services/controlled-vocabulary.html
• Prototype Controlled Vocabulary Service technical documentation: http://ands.org.au/services/prototype-controlled-vocab-service-technical-description.pdf 
  

 

ANDS Online Services Release 7.0

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^{07 December 2011}

ANDS Online Services Release 7.0 now available!

We are pleased to announce that the implementation of ANDS Online Services Release 7.0 is now complete.  All services, including Research Data Australia, the ANDS Collections Registry (Production and Sandbox), Cite My Data and Identify My Data, are now online and available.

 This release features the following key changes:

• an enhancement to the usability of ANDS Collections Registry and the display of Research Data Australia
  
• RIF-CS schema updates (v1.3.0)
• new services : Cite My Data (DOI) transition to production and Controlled Vocabulary service pilot launch.
  

To assist you in this new release, please refer to Day 1 Help Material [PDF]. This help sheet covers the common questions you may have on the new functionality.  You may also find the following related documents handy and useful:

• Non-technical guide to Release 7
• Using XHTML text formatting
• RIF-CS 1.3.0 documents
• Cite My Data Service page   & Cite My Data M2M Technical Description document [PDF]
  

Please note that the Sandbox environment continues to be available for partners to use.

We will closely monitor the performance of ANDS Online Services in the next few days however, we would greatly appreciate if you could advise services@ands.org.au promptly of any problems you encounter.  We will do our best to ensure that issues are addressed as quickly as possible.

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^{28 November 2011}

• Option to relate all records from a data source to a single "keystone" record
• Data source timezone selection on harvest scheduler
• HTML text formatting
• Identifiers transformed into clickable links
• Harvester error messages
• Date format examples for temporal coverage on manual record entry screens
• Enhancements to warning and error messages on manual record entry screens

• Controlled vocabulary service
• Production Digital Object Identifier (DOI) service

• Research Data Australia
• ANDS Production Registry
• ANDS Sandbox Registry
• ANDS Identify My Data (PIDS) Service
• ANDS Cite My Data Service

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^{04 November 2011}

Release 7.0 of ANDS Online Services will be implemented in early December.  We are currently targetting 7 December.

The  following is the list of new functionality included in this new release:

• Support for RIF-CS 1.3.0 across all systems
• DOI Service: transition from pilot to production "Cite My Data"
• Controlled Vocabulary Service: launch pilot with ANZSRC Codes
• Research Data Australia: 
  • create a minimalist generic version for download, including install scripts  (to be delivered after the release).
  • automated linking of records where a provider has opted in to this automation
  • allow a limited set of HTML formatting in record descriptions and address lines 
  • transform DOIs and Handles to resolvable url's where a provider has opted in to this transformation
• Harvester: 
  • packaging for download
  • time zone selection for harvest dates and times
  • customisation of error text for major errors
• Manual data entry screens: 
  • enhance warning/error messages
  • on-screen information on temporal formats
  • removal of leading & trailing blanks 

For more information on any of these features, or questions or concerns about the release, please email   services@ands.org.au.

 

ANDS Online Services Release 6.1 available this September

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^{21 September 2011}

ANDS Online Services Release 6.1 is here!

The implementation of Release 6.1 of ANDS software is now complete. All services, including Research Data Australia, the ANDS Collections Registry (Production and Sandbox), and Identify My Data are now online and available.

We have created the Day 1 Help Material  [PDF] covering (in brief) the key questions you may have regarding the new Registry functionality.

Further information is available from:

• your ANDS Liaison Officer
• the ANDS website: ORCA Assessment Workflow Technical Guide [PDF]
• the ANDS Community Bulletin Board (Software Releases forum)

Please note that the Sandbox environment continues to be available for partners to use.

We would value any comments or feedback you have on the new-look Research Data Australia and/or the new assessment workflow functionality in the ANDS Registry. You can submit these through services@ands.org.au

As with all new software implementations, there may be some initial hiccups across the next couple of days. If you could advise services@ands.org.au promptly of any problems you encounter it will help us to smooth these over as quickly as possible. We are particularly interested in response-time issues, as the new release includes a whole new search infrastructure which should result in a better user experience.

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^{17 September 2011}

Important Update:

The scheduled down-time for ANDS Online Services on Tuesday 20th September 2011 has been re-scheduled to this Wednesday 21 September.

The release of ANDS software has also been moved to Wednesday 21 to accommodate training and communications requirements.

All ANDS Online Services, including both Sandbox and Production Registries as well as Research Data Australia, will be unavailable 9am
(AEST) through 5pm (AEST) on Wednesday 21 September. Services will be as normal on Tuesday.

For further information on software releases and scheduled down-times, please contact services@ands.org.au or your ANDS Liaison Officer.

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^{13 September 2011}

Release 6.1 of ANDS software will be implemented on 20 September 2011

The following are the new features of R6.1:

• Research Data Australia new look and feel
• Assessment Workflow within the ANDS Registry

We will be sending out more information on the 20th, and further information will be available on the ANDS website and Bulletin Board.

Please note that all ANDS online services, including Sandbox, Production and Research Data Australia, will be unavailable 9am (AEST) through 5pm (AEST) on Tuesday 20 September.

Sandbox users will need to have AAF login credentials before they can use the new assessment workflow functionality. Those users whose institutions are not yet members of the AAF will need to apply for an ARCS identity from: https://idp.arcs.org.au/idp_reg. Your ANDS Liaison Officer can help you to work out whether you need to do this or not.

More information: Release 6.1 Flyer [PDF]

 

Volunteer Researchers needed!

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^{30 August 2011}

Do you have access to the internet and an hour spare? Would you like to earn a $50 book voucher and contribute to the support of Australia's researchers?

ANDS is building the Australian Research Data Commons: a cohesive collection of research resources from all research institutions, to make better use of Australia's research outputs.

Our research portal, Research Data Australia is about to get a makeover, and we want to know what you think about it before it goes live. We need an hour of your time to look at the site and complete a survey, anytime that suits you between 13 and 16 September 2011. You can complete the survey from any PC with internet access. All responses are kept anonymous.

If you can help, or you'd like more information before signing up, please email services@ands.org.au.

More information : Usability Testing Flyer [PDF]

 

Important: Migrating existing ARCS IdP SharedToken to your Institution's AAF IdP

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^{01 August  2011}

If you have recently received a mail from ARCS (through help@arcs.org.au) informing you that your institution is now a member of AAF, it is important that you migrate your AuEduPersonSharedToken from the ARCS IdP to your home institution's IdP. This migration will allow you to have continuous access to the manual records you have uploaded and to identifiers or handles you have minted using your ARCS IdP account.

How to port your SharedToken value from your previous Identity Provider to YOUR INSTITUTION Identity Provider:

1. Close your current browser sessions and open a new session.
2. Visit ARCS Access Service and select your existing account Identity Provider from Select your identity provider list (select ARCS IdP).
3. You will be redirected to the login page of your existing Identity Provider (ARCS IdP). Please enter your username and password to log in to ARCS Access Service (if this is the first time you access ARCS Access Service, you have to register first in order to obtain your digitally-signed ARCS IdP sharedToken)
4. Once you have successfully logged in to the ARCS Access Service, open the "Your Account" page and click on the "signed PDF" link beneath your displayed SharedToken value. Save this PDF document, your SharedToken Ownership Statement, to your local machine.
5. Email this PDF document to your institution's IdP contact or Helpdesk (If you do not know who your IdP Administrator is, or you do not know who to send the sharedToken for migration, please follow the "How to get instruction for migration" below)
   

Once you've ported your SharedToken value to your institution IdP, please visit https://services.ands.org.au/home/orca and login using your institution's IdP account to check your access.

NOTE: At this point, you should be able to manage your previously entered manual records or handles.

We also recommend that you do the following:

1. Cease accessing ANDS Online Services via your existing IdP. Instead, only access via your institution.
2. Advise your existing IdP institution that you have ported your SharedToken to your institution via their HelpDesk.

How to get instruction for migration:

1. Access https://access.arcs.org.au/user/editAccount.html.
2. Select your home institution (e.g.  Australian National University)
3. Enter your institution's identity provider account and password (e.g. u1234567)
4. Select " I have an existing account".
5. Click on "Email instructions".

You will then receive an email with the "How to port your SharedToken" instruction and the email address of the contact person in your institution.  Just follow the instruction and you should be able to access your records using your new AAF account.

If you have any question regarding the migration, please contact customerservice@arcs.org.au or please email  services@ands.org.au. for further assistance.

 

New version of packaged ANDS software available

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^{19 July  2011}

A number of ANDS partners have made use of the packaged version of ANDS COSI/ORCA (Registry) and Harvester software that is available for download from the ANDS website.

We are pleased to advise that we've now put up a new version of COSI/ORCA for download. The new version supports RIF-CS 1.2.0. (The Harvester software does not require an update to utilise the new version of RIF-CS.)

This software is available for download from the technical resources page on http://ands.org.au/resource/techdocs.html.

Note that although the software does come with installation instructions, the installation itself is a relatively technical task. This is something that should be undertaken by IT Support staff rather than end users.

If you have questions about this software, please email  services@ands.org.au.

 

ANDS Online Services Release 6 available end of June

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^{30 June 2011}

ANDS Online Services Release 6 is Here!

More information: Release 6 Flyer [PDF]  | Day 1 Help Sheet [PDF] | or email   services@ands.org.au.

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^{03 June 2011}

The following is the planned list of functionality for Release 6 implementation this end of June.

• Search speed improvements in Sandbox and Production
• Citation exports from Research Data Australia to Endnote and Zotero (these are bibliographic software tools)
• A function that will prevent a data provider from using a key that is already in use in the ANDS Registry
• Better handling and presentation of harvested logos in Research Data Australia
• Automatic two-way links between related objects in the ANDS Registry. This is a double opt-in feature. The default will be ON for records within your data source, and OFF for records outside your data source
• OAI-PMH delete capability
• A new and much improved mapping of the metadata held in the ANDS Registry to Dublin Core at the ANDS OAI-PMH harvest point
• Web services to support the upcoming Cite My Data (DOI service) pilot
• Two-way exchange of party records between ANDS and the NLA. Party records will only be provided to the NLA where a data provider has agreed to this (default is OFF) and has provided an ISIL.

For more information on any of these features, or questions or concerns about the release, please email   services@ands.org.au.

ANDS Online Services Release 5 - Changes to data entry and to Research Data Australia

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^{12 April 2011}

A new version of the ANDS Online Services system will be made available on 13 April 2011.

This new version will include:

• a new, user-friendly data entry facility for the ANDS Registry that allows manual entry of RIF-CS v1.2.0 records. These new data entry screens will be be made available in the production and sandbox systems.
  
• the addition of an 'NCRIS Partner Spotlight' feature on the home page of Research Data Australia.
  

More information: Release 5 Flyer [PDF] | Summary of screen changes | Day 1 Help Sheet [PDF] | or contact services@ands.org.au or your ANDS liaison officer.