2017 Vireo User Group Meeting

Dear Vireo Users Group,

A Users Group meeting was held at the Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (Austin, TX. May 23-25, 2017), and Vireo developer, James Creel, gave a presentation entitled “An Update on Development of the Vireo 4.X ETD Submission and Management System.” I would like to share my notes from these two sessions for those who were not able to attend.

First, the question on everyone’s mind is “When can I get my hands on Vireo 4?” If you or someone at your institution has the skills, the answer is NOW. The code for Vireo is at https://github.com/TexasDigitalLibrary/Vireo/branches and is updated regularly as development progresses.

For those who can’t go it alone, we are shooting for a beta release by the end of August that will be ‘feature frozen’, meaning only bugs and critical issues will be fixed. An instance will be set up for everyone to test and begin learning how the new version works.

Several very specific questions were asked about the functionality of Vireo as well. Now would be a good time to ask if you, too, have an assumption or question about what Vireo 4 will do.

I would like to take a moment to clarify what ‘custom workflows’ means and does not mean in Vireo 4.

Workflows are primarily about the fields the student is asked to fill or answer during a submission. The fields and order they are presented to the student can be customized either by degree type, college, degree level, or any other category you choose that should allow separate workflows.

There are some settings that are still at the institution level and are not part of workflows. They include dates Vireo is open/closed to submissions; dis/allowing multiple submissions; theme and style sheets (aka look and feel); embargo types; graduation months; custom actions; and access permissions (Administrator, manager, reviewer) to name a few.

If you have a question about whether a particular setting is at the institution level or part of custom workflows, please ask on the listserv and I will do my best to answer it.

Finally, a workshop “Introducing the Weaver Framework: The Technology behind Vireo 4” was also held at Texas Conference on Digital Libraries and led by Jeremy Huff of Texas A&M. We are grateful to the technical staff at Baylor University who attended the workshop in preparation for assisting in the final stages of Vireo 4 development.

Development is currently underway at Texas A&M University and the next public demonstration is scheduled for Tuesday, June 20th at 2pm CST. To join, call 1-877-820-7831 and enter passcode 555638#. You may view the screen share presentation at: https://meeting.austin.utexas.edu/vireo.

Thank you,

Stephanie Larrison
Co-chair, Vireo Users Group
Electronic Resources Librarian
Texas State University

512-245-8613
larrison@txstate.edu