[Working Groups] IT Call – May 13, 2014

The IT Working Group met to discuss progress on addressing feedback and bugs in the Portal, recent work to include data visualization functions, efforts to expand Geoportal’s ability to recognize and display new link types, and issues around harvesting metadata from ArcServer. You can read the call notes here. 
Members of the IT Working Group continue to make progress on improvements to the ODP by making modifications to the Geoportal configurations or UI code. All the code and issues are tracked using our Github repository. Anyone can add issues or if you’re a code ninja, can be given permission to help develop and submit commits. You can see our Github repository here: https://github.com/Ecotrust/wc-data-registry.
A large portion of the discussion focused on improvements to the UI so that we can recognize and advertise new link types that our partners provide. When we first tested and launched the WCODP, we were dealing with only a specific set of standard link types that our partners were providing (i.e. WMS, KML, REST, ZIP) but as we expand registration of new partners and data formats there is need to have the UI recognize and publish these links. Esri Geoportal staff have provided much help in addressing this problem and we should have progress shortly.
Finally, the group discussed the emerging issue of harvesting metadata from ArcServer. Given that a large majority of our partners are using this software to publish services, it represents a great opportunity. The REST service include descriptive service metadata that Geoportal can harvest and translate to a Dublin Core record. Currently, ArcServer admins can help improve this metadata by filling in the metadata form before publishing their service. You can read Esri documentation on this here: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//015400000579000000. Its not a perfect system, but there are some improvements Esri is considering to enable ArcServer to publish more formal metadata. You can Vote for this idea here : http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=08730000000bv1TAAQ.
The IT Working Group is always looking for more feedback on how the ODP can better meet user needs, lets us know if there are improvements you would like to see.