Fermilab Redmine

This was the first meeting where we went around the table to discuss what was happening in our areas of Fermi. Once we made it around the room, it became apparent that we need to keep focused on “Integration” topics, as our summaries took about 90% of the meeting time. This is a very good practice and I think we need to continue doing it each meeting so that we can all keep aware of what is occurring throughout the section. I’ll do my best to shorten my list to only those items that are integration related so that we can make it around the room and still have time for other meeting agenda items!

I provided an update on the eLog request, as it is still in the hands of AD at this time. I have been in contact with the developer and he is requesting from the AD Operations Management team that FESS is provided a separate log. I will keep this group, and the FM Group, posted with the latest details.

The Software/Solution request form is now in production. We haven’t yet publicized it, and I’ll discuss with management and keep the group updated. It is certainly apparent that we need to have fully documented requests so that we know the exact intentions of the requestor and the purpose of the requested solution. I don’t think we can capture everything with this form. For instance, Larry’s follow-up email on the eLog request provided a great deal of insight into the process. I do not believe an online form will help us to capture that detail. So with that said, I think we all have agreed that the form is a good starting point.

https://fess-app.fnal.gov/app/FermiFamis/faces/softwareRequestEntry.xhtml

I briefly mentioned the “Predictive Solutions” software, as this will likely be coming to FIT for review in a future meeting. Stay tuned for more information and details on this software.

Lastly, I will follow up with management on bringing someone from FESS Engineering into the group. I think we need to have a representative from that department to keep us informed and to help collaborate on integration tactics.

Thanks for meeting today. This week we briefly reviewed the overall intentions of the group, reviewed an incoming Software and Solution Request, and Cedric provided us with a great presentation on the Metasys system.

Beginning with the next meeting, we will start to go around the table so that each of us can share any current initiatives that may be worth mentioning so that the group can better collaborate on solutions for the section. This is something that we haven’t really done as part of this meeting yet, and I think we are at a point where it makes sense to start.

We reviewed Larry Sliwa’s request for an ELog system. The ELog initiative is to create a solution similar to the AD electronic log (https://www-bd.fnal.gov/Elog) that will allow a few operators to log in and post details regarding tasks, photos, and other information to keep everyone current on operations 24/7. There are a few pieces of software that FESS already has in-place or has the ability to use, which may be suitable for this request:

• FAMIS and AppTree Mobile Priority 0 Work Orders
• Survey 123
• Look into possibly extending the AD solution to provide FESS with a separate log

After reviewing, the Facilities Integration Team collaboratively agrees that the AppTree mobile application paired with a Priority 0 work order ticket may be the solution. When a priority 0 ticket is created (using the app or the FAMIS desktop solution), it can be displayed on the web immediately using the “Zero Priority WO Search” (https://fess-appdev.fnal.gov/app/FermiFamis/faces/zeroPriorityWo.xhtml). We will have to add the ability to view attached pictures/documents inline without clicking on the work order, but this solution should work with minimal effort. I am planning to respond to Larry to let him know that this is the recommended approach from the team. I’ll wait until next week to respond to Larry with the recommendation so that everyone in this group has time to respond, if necessary. I will copy fit@fnal.gov in the response.

Finally, Cedric provided an overview of the Metasys system. I want to thank Cedric for taking the time to do so, as it was very informative.

Thanks for attending the meeting yesterday. We reviewed the charter once again, and took a look at some slight modifications that have been made with respect to the intent of the group. Essentially we added one of our main purposes, as follows:

“Collaboratively focus on facilities data initiatives, seeking integration improvement opportunities”

I had the opportunity to meet with Joe, Karen, and Mark yesterday after the meeting and we discussed the charter. It was well received.

We also continued our review of the FESS Software and Applications, looking more into the FID and CAIS systems. I thought that the CAIS review was especially useful, thanks to Steve for demonstrating parts of that system. Next time we will continue these system reviews.

Lastly, I added an additional field to the “Software\Solution Request Form” entitled, “Current Procedure”. I have placed the form into the development environment and it can be viewed at the following link:

https://fess-appdev.fnal.gov/app/FermiFamis/faces/softwareRequestEntry.xhtml

Thanks for meeting yesterday folks. We went over the following during the meeting:

- Reviewed the updated project charter. There seems to be concern about the overall goal of integration with other laboratory systems. Although the FIT team can only recommend software solutions for FESS, there may be a gap when other divisions/sections utilize software that makes use of FESS data. Please review and send revised copies of the updated project charter to me. You can find the updated project charter at the following link:

Project Charter (In Progress): https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/documents/1249

- We began the FESS Internal systems review, beginning with FID. I began to walk the group through the application and highlighted integration features, specifically. I will continue the FID review at an upcoming meeting, and also work through the reviews of all systems I manage/maintain. Once I complete the review of my systems, we will work through the systems that others in the group manage. The overall goal being that members of the team have a basic understanding of all FESS systems so that we can better review any new software or solution requests.

FID: https://fess-app.fnal.gov/app/FermiFid/faces/faces/fimsTblProperty/List.xhtml

Thanks everyone for attending the meeting yesterday. I am sorry that we had some technical difficulties in the new meeting room and it took some time away from the meeting time.

I believe that we had some great eye openers in yesterday’s meeting after we saw the initial software request and the “Software/Solution Request” form in action. We need to build out the form just a bit, specifically requesting that the requirements be listed. We also perhaps need to drop the question about cloud/desktop…or revise it to a radio button selection. We also need include the ability to upload attachments that can be used for reference. Please send feedback to this group with respect to what else we should be adding to the form.

Use the forms below to access the software/solution request form and listing. After you log in, you need to click on the “Main Menu” option, then find the corresponding “Software or Solution Request” links on the main screen because I’ve made each of you administrators so you can review requests. The average requestor should be taken directly to the form.

Form URL: https://fess-appdev.fnal.gov/app/FermiFamis/faces/softwareRequestEntry.xhtml

Review Existing Requests: https://fess-appdev.fnal.gov/app/FermiFamis/faces/administration/softwareRequestReview.xhtml

The specific request that came in also brought into question some of our Facilities Integration Team responsibilities. To what extent do we “review” the requests? Do we really need to review enhancement requests, or requests for solutions that are targeted at specific systems such as FAMIS, GIS, or existing web applications? I do not believe that the intent of the FIT group is to debate on the best in house solution if multiple solutions already exist, but rather, we need to determine if we already have something in-house that can accommodate the request or if software needs to be purchased. If we have several solutions in-house that would work, then maybe we should recommend to the requestor each of these solutions so that they can choose which would suit their needs best. What are your thoughts? We need to determine our responsibility and spell this out more in our charter, and hope to do so before our next meeting. Please send any feedback on the charter to this group as well.

Charter (In-Progress) URL: https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/projects/facilities-integration/files

In summary, we began to review the initial “Software/Solution Request” form, as well as the initial solution request in our meeting yesterday. There was a lot of discussion as to the intention of the request, and also to the responsibilities of this group. I have invited Joe Pygott to the next meeting to discuss his solution request in more detail.

Thanks for your time, and let me know if you have any questions. Please do feel free to reply to the group and continue the conversation.

-- Follow Up --

Indeed we need to continue to build out our FESS Software Portfolio, as it is difficult to perform any software review before we know about all systems and application that are currently in-place. Please do update the portfolio if things seem to be missing…and I think if we each provide a brief presentation/overview of the systems under our purview then it will help everyone in the group to better understand the entire portfolio.

There are areas on the REDMINE wiki for data flow diagrams. I have also added another for Visio diagrams, etc. to help explain or storyboard software and/or processes where it makes sense. Dawn, thanks for offering to do a diagram of the software and solution request process…it will be beneficial to have in the end once we formalize the process. If anyone would like to add diagrams for other processes then please do so by adding them to the wiki using the following location:

https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/projects/facilities-integration/wiki/Software_and_Process_Diagrams?parent=Wiki

Please feel free to add links or references, as needed, to help make the wiki more useful for our group and for FESS as a whole.

Here’s a quick summary of what we discussed:

• Please continue to fill out the REDMINE wiki containing the FESS Software/Systems Portfolio. If it makes sense to break out the sections differently, feel free to do so.

Software\Systems Portfolio: https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/projects/facilities-integration/wiki/FESS_Software_and_Systems_Portfolio

• If possible, look into installing the Cisco Jabber client for internal messaging. This client should be within the “Windows Self-Service” for the laboratory.
• Please review the project charter and let me know if you have any final changes. If possible, please review the charter and provide feedback by 2/13. I’d like to submit the charter to Joe for final approval next week.

Project Charter: https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/projects/facilities-integration/files

• We discussed having Karen send out a FESS-Wide email notification including a survey to help us determine the section’s intent for purchasing new software this year. In the same email, we’d hope to provide a link to the form that the employees can use for submitting a software request for review. It would be beneficial to communicate the survey and form within the Weekly Lookahead report as well.
• Please send any thoughts to this group on areas where FESS may be able to make use of SIST summer students. We can communicate these ideas to FESS management.
• Dawn provided a demo of the Survey 1-2-3 tool and we discussed how soon we can begin making use of it for the purposes of our software/solutions request form and any future surveys.

I did not mention it in the meeting, but I am setting up a mailing list named fit@fnal.gov, to which I will subscribe each of you. We can use this mailing list for our discussions.

We had some good discussions regarding the FESS Software/Systems Portfolio (In-Progress), software and systems review process, and location data standards.

Please continue to fill out the REDMINE wiki containing the FESS Software/Systems Portfolio, as time allows. This is an important step towards our ability to accurately review any future software or systems requests. I appreciate everyone taking the time to list any software that FESS is using which is not yet identified on the wiki page.

Software\Systems Portfolio: https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/projects/facilities-integration/wiki/FESS_Software_and_Systems_Portfolio

We discussed some of the questions that need to be present on the software/systems request form. We are outlining each of the required questions as a first step towards choosing the best system to use for capturing these requests. We captured the questions and required features of the request form on the wiki, so please review and bring any additional suggestions to the next meeting, which is scheduled for 2/7/2019.

Request Form Questions and Requirements: https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/projects/facilities-integration/wiki/SoftwareSolutions_Request_Form

We began discussing the migration of the laboratory systems to utilization of the new location data standards. In this meeting, Dawn presented a brief overview of the location data, why it is important, and how it will impact some of the other FESS (and laboratory wide) systems. It is important that not only new systems implement the location standards, but existing systems also contain the same standard data. As a first step, we are planning to take a development version of FAMIS and update the locations to utilize the new standards, since FAMIS is one of the systems that will be impacted the most and it is utilized lab-wide by other divisions/sections. The next system to be converted will likely be Sunflower.

Lastly, we should finalize the project charter soon, so if you have any suggestions for changes or additions to the charter then please let the group know.

Thanks for attending the first Facilities Integration Team meeting yesterday. We had some great discussions regarding the overall goals for this team, as well as good ideas on how to proceed with reviewing new requests. I’ve attached the IN PROGRESS project charter for your review. Please remember that we wish to keep the project charter high level at this time, and not very long. The overall goal for the team is to develop and implement a process for reviewing software, specialized hardware, and database enhancement requests (I’ll refer to everything together as “technical solutions”) for FESS. Please review the attached charter again and let the group know if you have any comments.

We also discussed adding a few new members to the group: Josh Kenney (Engineering), Jason Countryman (FM), Brian Petersohn (FM). Please let me know if you have any objections to adding any of these individuals to the group. If we add these three, we will have representatives from each part of FESS, so I believe that the team will be able to do an even better job of performing successful technical solution reviews.

We discussed some different options for generating a form that would allow FESS employees to submit technical solution reviews. The following options were discussed:

- Service Now (seems to be the least suitable for our requirement)
- Engineering Comment and Compliance
- Survey 1 2 3
- Online FAMIS Work Order Submission Form

I believe Dawn is going to put together a demo of Survey 1,2,3 for us…so thanks to Dawn for doing that. We can review and select one of these options at the next meeting.

Lastly, we discussed the need to put together a portfolio of FESS Software/Applications/Database Solutions. I believe that everyone agreed to move forward with using REDMINE for this purpose (at least for now), so I created a REDMINE repository and Wiki page to capture the FESS Portfolio. Please use your SERVICES username/password for access.

https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/projects/facilities-integration/wiki

Update: The database upgrade for Redmine is complete as of 10:20 CST

The database behind Redmine is being Upgraded on Wednesday Jan 16

The Change on Service Now says the outage will be at 09:00 - 16:00

A new version of the Protocol Compiler is available. It has been tagged with 'v1.1' so, if you have it checked out, you can get this version by specifying the tag:

$ git checkout v1.1

It hasn't yet been released in the console environment.

The protocol compiler is documented in the project's Wiki: https://cdcvs.fnal.gov/redmine/projects/protocol-compiler/wiki

Changes from the previous version:¶

• Although there have been updates to the protocol compiler over the past ten years, we never associated releases with a version number. With this release we're starting so bugs can be reported against a known version. We've arbitrarily chose this first version to be "1.1".
• The version keyword still works, but now also generates a warning since it is deprecated. It will be completely removed in v1.2.
• The names of anonymous structures have been simplified. Although this could cause compilation errors, most code accesses fields in the structure rather than specifying the structure by name.
• The C++ generator understands two, new options: --c++-header-only and --c++-source-only, which prevents the generator from producing both a header and a source file.
• The C++ generator moves some internal functions deeper in its namespaces so that two or more protocols can be used in an application. Previously an application using more than one protocol would get "duplicate symbol" errors from the linker.
• The Erlang generator now defines enumerations using the type() directive.
• The Erlang generator generates more-efficient unmarshal functions.