Smart Talk Newsletter May 2008

New Corporate Web Site Unveiled

We've adopted a new, shorter name too

You may have noticed that rsmart.com has a new look. If you haven't, then go check it out. In addition to a cleaner look and better navigation--finding content is much easier-- our site now includes new information about our clients and partners. One new feature is case studies that highlight our client success stories. If you'd like your institution to be highlighted, please contact Mike Zackrison. Other new capabilities are planned. Some of these are based on your feedback, so thanks for making constructive suggestions!

By the way, rSmart recently changed its name from "The rSmart Group" to just "rSmart." We started phasing in this change a few weeks ago and expect to change all of our materials to reflect the new, shortened name in the next few months.

Kuali News

Kuali Days VI Focuses on Success Stories

Kuali Days VI, which took place in Chicago earlier this month, was, without question, the most exciting Kuali event yet. Well over 400 people from 70 institutions and eight countries attended sessions that, for the first time, covered the entire range of Kuali systems--everything from student services to financial and endowment accounting and from Kuali Rice with enterprise workflow to research administration.

Some of the most exciting sessions were those that focused on actual evaluation and migration efforts. Kymber Horn of the University of Arizona and Troy Fluharty of Colorado State University reported that both UA and CSU have successfully migrated their chart of accounts and data to KFS, and UA can now generate financial reports. Both institutions accomplished these critical tasks while working with rSmart in a try-before-you-buy situation that allowed them to test KFS in their own environment with their own data.

According to Horn, "The University of Arizona, with help from Colorado State and rSmart, has made amazingly quick progress in migrating our chart of accounts, beginning balances, and vendors to the Kuali Financial System. This collaborative effort and our hands-on work with KFS have greatly helped us understand how the system can meet our needs. And using our own data for our users to react to is much more helpful than having them try to conceptualize what KFS might look like with our data."

The next Kuali Days is planned for California in November. We look forward to hearing more from these and other Kuali users at this meeting.

CLE 2.5 Documentation Available

Guides, overviews, video tutorials, and more

As an rSmart customer, you have access to a wealth of documentation on the Sakai CLE, and never are these resources more important than when you first get started with the CLE and when you upgrade. So, if you're upgrading to 2.5 or are even considering it, you may want to peruse both our updated standard documentation set and our new offerings.

Each release of the CLE is supported by updated versions of the rSmart Sakai CLE User Guide, Administrator Guide, and Customization Guide, as well as online help and detailed release notes that outline the functional enhancements and technical fixes included in the release. For 2.5, our information architects have already released most of this material, along with a wide range of other resources, including 2.5 tool overviews, a quick start guide for Instructors, and video tutorials on topics such as changes in site navigation, new tools, and more.

That said, we're still busily working on 2.5 documentation--most notably, the Administrator Guide, which has been completely revamped. We'll be uploading this guide and several more video tutorials shortly.

To see an up-to-date list of available materials and access those that catch your eye, see the KB article, Getting started with the Sakai CLE. We've posted a link to this article on the RSN home page so you can find it easily.

We hope you'll find these resources helpful. As always, we welcome your feedback, suggestions, or ideas on information that might further enhance your understanding and use of our Collaboration and Learning Environment.

Smart Tip of the Month

Spell check feature in the CLE's rich text editor

The rich text editor used in the CLE is the FCKeditor. This editor interfaces with ieSpell, a spell checker that works only with Internet Explorer. The following information is from the FCKeditor web site.

As the name says, ieSpell is an extension for Internet Explorer that does spell checking at the client side. It is quite simple and efficient, but it runs on IE/Windows only.

To use ieSpell just set the following configuration in fckconfig.js: FCKConfig.SpellChecker = 'ieSpell'. The first time a user runs the Spell Checker, he/she will be automatically informed that ieSpell is not installed and will be redirected to the download URL (the URL can also be configured).

When running FCKeditor with ieSpell with non-IE browsers, the "Check Spell" button will be automatically disabled.

Attention, ieSpell is free for personal use. Commercial licenses are available for very low prices. For more info about ieSpell, its licensing, configurations and more, go to http://www.iespell.com/.

This tip and dozens of others are available to all RSN subxcribers
For more time zone values, see this KB article.

CLE Functional Test Procedures Posted

Several of you have requested that we make our functional test procedures available. Accordingly, we've uploaded a PDF that contains the complete suite of positive path functional test procedures with which our staff tested the 2.5 release. You can access that material here.

These procedures may be implemented by anyone: Testers do not need to have any previous knowledge of the application.

Upcoming Events

Sakai Boot Camp at Marist College

June 2 - 6
Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, will be hosting a 5-day Sakai Developers Boot Camp from June 2nd through the 6th, 2008. The boot camp will be lead by Aaron Zeckoski, Senior Research Engineer, Cambridge University. Participants in the course will gain a better technical understanding of Sakai and the process for making and contributing changes to the Sakai framework. There are a limited number of seats available for Sakai developers interested in attending. There is no cost for attending the workshop. If interested, contact Earle Nietzel or Howard Baker. Click here for additional information, including prerequisites, travel options, etc. The agenda is also available.

9th Sakai Conference

July 1 - 3
Come to Paris, France, this summer for the 9th Sakai Community conference! The dates will be Tuesday-Thursday, 1-3 July, with pre- and post-conference sessions and activities on Monday, 30 June and Friday, 4 July. All meetings and conference sessions will be held at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie.

Whether you're a longtime member of the community, a new face, or are simply interested in learning more about Sakai, you're sure to profit from the extended face-to-face interactions that take will place nearly 'round the clock among designers, developers, pedagogists, faculty, students, user support specialists, system administrators, educational and collaborative technology managers from all over the world.

For general information about the conference, please contact Mary Miles. We--that is, those of us at rSmart who are fortunate enough to be going--look forward to seeing you there!

NACUBO 2008 Annual Meeting

July 12 - 15
Billing itself as the networking event of the year for business officers in higher education, this year's NACUBO meeting is scheduled to take place in Chicago, Illinois. To register or simply to obtain more details about the program (including pre-conference workshops, conference sessions, speakers, events, etc.), click here.

Campus Technology 2008

July 28 - 31
Do you want to learn how to survive--and even thrive--in a Web 2.0 world? If you do, then come to the Westin Waterfront Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, for Campus Technology's 15th annual summer conference. This year's conference offers a blueprint for adapting to the new demands of Web 2.0 teaching and learning, both in and out of the classroom, and explores how educators are coping with the ever-increasing demands on their resources, skills and time. You'll come away armed with tricks, tips and techniques to survive and thrive in the "Next Gen" educational environment. For more info, click here.