Ginkgo Street Labs is pleased to announce the availability of CiviVolunteer 2.3.0 and Angular Profiles 1.1.0 for CiviCRM 4.7.31 and above.

Learn the essential features of CiviEvent in this two hour on-line course designed for new-users of CiviCRM.  

We will create an on-line event in CiviCRM that can be linked to your website and discuss the best practices for registration and how to add and modify a profile in an event registration page. You'll learn how to send event reminder emails, track participants, make a participant list, create an event report and much more!

A little while ago the team here at Compucorp wrote about Shoreditch, the first CiviCRM “theme’ extension. Over the past few months, we’ve been hard at work on a series of updates and changes ready for the theme’s release in a few weeks time! With much of the work on this first stage now completed we’re pulling back the curtain to give a peek at what’s in store.

 

This one is for my good friend Milen... Sometimes he frustrates me, but he always forces me to think...

Introduction

So if you've done any Liferay 7.x CE or DXP development, you may have encountered something similar to the following in your build.gradle:

dependencies { compileOnly group: "com.liferay.portal", name: "com.liferay.portal.kernel", version: "2.6.0" compileOnly group: "org.osgi", name: "osgi.cmpn", version: "6.0.0" }

For the Maven users out there, I'm not going to include the pom equivalent, but I'm sure you can figure out how it would go.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see developers make is the selection of the version for modules they use. For example, I'm using portal-kernel version 2.6.0 above. This is really old; the Liferay Maven repo reports it was released in June, 2016.

And currently it looks like the latest available version is 2.62.0. You can see all of the available versions here.

So why do I pick such an old release? I certainly don't want to link to such an old version that likely has bugs or issues. Shouldn't I be picking the 2.62.0 version to get the latest?

Picking Old Versions

The Definitive Answer: No

Okay, so here's the skinny...

When you are building a module, you are not really linking to a jar. You are not including 2.6.0 or 2.62.0 or whatever into your module, you are only including meta information for the OSGi container that you need portal-kernel.

We as developers, we know that we always want to use the latest version available, when possible, so we get bugfixes, performance improvements, etc. So most of us want to grab 2.62.0 and use it as the version that we declare.

In OSGi, however, we never declare a specific version, we're always using a version range.

When I declare that my version is 2.6.0, the OSGi container thinks that I'm actually indicating that I want version [2.6.0,3.0.0). That's a version range from 2.6.0 up to (but not including) 3.0.0. This offers me a great bit of flexibility.

I can deploy my module to a Liferay 7.0 GA1 container or I could deploy it to the very latest Liferay 7.0 DXP Fix Pack 41. My version range means my module will work in all of these environments.

If instead I stuck with the 2.62.0 version, OSGi will treat that as [2.62.0,3.0.0). This version range is so narrow, it will not work in any of the 7.0 CE GAs and will actually only deploy to 7.0 DXP FP 40 or later.

So the version is not really the version you get, it is the minimum version you need to function. The OSGi container, it has some version of portal-kernel, you may or may not know what it is in your environment(s), the container will determine if the version it has is acceptable to your version range and may (or may not) start your module.

So, as a rule:

You always want to pick the oldest version you can get away with (relative to the major version number).

Wait, oldest you can get away with? What does that mean?

Oldest You Can Get Away With The minor version numbers don't increment because you do a new build or antying like that. Liferay bumps the minor version when there is changed code in the API.

For eample, the com.liferay.portal.kernel.dao.search.SearchContainer class. I recently was copying a chunk of code from a certain Liferay DisplayContext class to emulate how it was handling the paged search container views.

I had my portal-kernel version set to 2.6.0 like I always do, and the code I copied went along something like this:

SearchContainer searchContainer = new SearchContainer(_renderRequest, getIteratorURL(), null, "there-are-no-rules"); if (isShowRulesAddButton()) { searchContainer.setEmptyResultsMessageCssClass("there-are-no-rules"); }

Although I copied and only changes the strings, the IDE had the setEmptyResultsMessageCssClass() line marked as an error and it told me No Such Method errors. This made no sense because I literally lifted the code straight from the Liferay source, how could the method not exist.

Well, that comes back to the version range. Since I indicated 2.6.0, my code had to compile against 2.6.0 and this method doesn't exist in the SearchContainer interface from 2.6.0. I looked in Liferay's build.gradle file and found that they had used portal-kernel version 2.13.0. I changed my version to 2.13.0 and my compiler error went away.

So this tells me that, somewhere between portal-kernel version 2.6.0 and 2.13.0, this method was added to the SearchContainer interface. Since my code needs that method, the oldest version my code will work with is not 2.6.0, but more like 2.13.0.

Actually I guess it is possible it could have been added to the interface in 2.7.0, 2.8.0, etc, up to 2.13.0 so, if I were really a stickler about it, I could find the actual version where the method was introduced. I tend to value my time a lot, so instead I just settled on the version Liferay was also using.

Now, though, most of my modules use the version as 2.6.0 except for those that use this SearchContainer container code, this one uses version 2.13.0.

Why not just use 2.13.0 and keep everything the same?

Using Different Versions for Different Modules

Well, it comes down to flexibility. Most of my modules will work fine using the older version. This particular portlet uses a function in a SearchContainer that maybe I do or maybe I don't really need. If a client asks to run my portlet in their GA1 environment that might not have this version, well I can change the version in build.gradle, comment out the line using the setEmptyResultsMessageCssClass() method (and anything else that was not yet available) and then build and deploy my code.

In its current form it needed 2.13.0, but with a few modifications I could get a version that worked w/ 2.6.0.

Tripping

Or, how about this, this will really trip you out...

I create one bundle that has [2.6.0,2.13.0) for the portal-kernel version range dependency that doesn't use setEmptyResultsMessageCssClass(), then on my second bundle I use version range [2.13.0,3.0.0).  Users can deploy both bundles into an environment, but OSGi will only enable the one that has the right version available.

It gets even better. You might deploy this to your GA1 envirronment where the first bundle starts. But then you upgrade to GA2 and, without changing anything from a deployment, the second bundle starts but the first does not. Completely transparent upgrades because my version ranges control where the code runs!

Conclusion

So I'm at the point where I hate the label "version". For a normal developer specifying a value in build.gradle, it means what version do I want to compile against. As we've seen, to the OSGi container it specifies the minimum version the module needs in order to start.

So even though it goes against your developer nature, avoid the latest version. Always use the oldest version your module needs.

 

David H Nebinger 2018-03-23T18:28:39Z

While CiviCRM has undergone major updates and re-organization under the hood since the platform was started in 2005, it's User Interface has largely remained the same. This is all about to change with the introduction of the new Shoreditch Theme for CiviCRM.

 

At the end of this February Agiliway released the updated version of our Graphical CRM Calendar. Now CiviCRM extension contains a number of new cool features which make its use much easier and much more comfortable.

First of all, we updated CiviCalendar to support the latest version of CiviCRM.

• Advisory ID: DRUPAL-PSA-2018-001
• Project: Drupal Core
• Version: 7.x, 8.x
• Date: 2018-March-21

Description

There will be a security release of Drupal 7.x, 8.3.x, 8.4.x, and 8.5.x on March 28th 2018 between 18:00 - 19:30 UTC, one week from the publication of this document, that will fix a highly critical security vulnerability. The Drupal Security Team urges you to reserve time for core updates at that time because exploits might be developed within hours or days. Security release announcements will appear on the Drupal.org security advisory page.

While Drupal 8.3.x and 8.4.x are no longer supported and we don't normally provide security releases for unsupported minor releases, given the potential severity of this issue, we are providing 8.3.x and 8.4.x releases that include the fix for sites which have not yet had a chance to update to 8.5.0. The Drupal security team strongly recommends the following:

• Sites on 8.3.x should immediately update to the 8.3.x release that will be provided in the advisory, and then plan to update to the latest 8.5.x security release in the next month.
• Sites on 8.4.x should immediately update to the 8.4.x release that will be provided in the advisory, and then plan to update to the latest 8.5.x security release in the next month.
• Sites on 7.x or 8.5.x can immediately update when the advisory is released using the normal procedure.

The security advisory will list the appropriate version numbers for all three Drupal 8 branches. Your site's update report page will recommend the 8.5.x release even if you are on 8.3.x or 8.4.x, but temporarily updating to the provided backport for your site's current version will ensure you can update quickly without the possible side effects of a minor version update.

This will not require a database update.

Patches for Drupal 7.x and 8.3.x, 8.4.x, 8.5.x and 8.6.x will be provided.

The CVE for this issue is CVE-2018-7600. The Drupal-specific identifier for the issue is SA-CORE-2018-002.

The Security Team or any other party is not able to release any more information about this vulnerability until the announcement is made. The announcement will be made public at https://www.drupal.org/security, over Twitter, and in email for those who have subscribed to our email list. To subscribe to the email list: log in on drupal.org, go to your user profile page and subscribe to the security newsletter on the Edit » My newsletters tab.

Journalists interested in covering the story are encouraged to email security-press@drupal.org to be sure they will get a copy of the journalist-focused release. The Security Team will release a journalist-focused summary email at the same time as the new code release and advisory.

If you find a security issue, please report it at https://www.drupal.org/security-team/report-issue.

updated 2018-03-22: Added information about database updates

updated 2018-03-27: Added information about patches

updated 2018-03-28: Added information about CVE and identifiers

On a sunny Monday  in early March another great meet up, organised by Graham and Marcus was kindly hosted by Macmillan Cancer Support.  You might wonder what a Rotary Club, charities from entirely different fields, and a developer with a host of varying clients have in common apart from the obvious need to manage organisational relationships and data with an excellent open source CRM.    

The California Association of Voting Officials (CAVO), and OSI Affiliate Member, is working on several fronts to promote the adoption of open source software in voting systems. In addition to being featured in an upcoming documentary, the group has recently partnered with a California-based elections reform group, focused on limiting the influence of "big money" in politics. Their work has recently seen success at the federal level in the US as well.

CAVO's Brent Turner will appear in open source voting documentary, "The Real Activist." Slated for release this summer, the film will include an interview with Brent Turner of OSI Affiliate Member CAVO, as well as coverage of the groups work to promote open source software within US elections' voting systems. The documentary highlights Turner's efforts and CAVO's mission to secure the United States election systems through GPL licensed open source software. Famed narrator Peter Coyote also stars in the film along with former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and many political notables.

One of CAVO's (www.cavo-us.org) recent successes has been to involve California Clean Money in the push for state legislation, as well as the solidification of the San Francisco open source voting system project.

Turner, along with Bash Shell creator Brian Fox, have been pushing to include open source language in voting legislation, and have secured interest from Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently introduced the "Securing America’s Elections Act". Fox, who also serves a National Association of Voting Officials Board Member, said, "We are pleased to see Congresswoman Gabbard leading the country toward safe and secure election systems. The open source software language in her legislation, in addition to the necessary paper ballot component, will give appropriate security direction to the nation's election officials. Congresswoman Gabbard is appreciated as a pioneer advocating the science of protecting our democracy."

"The language in the Gabbard bill is a good start " adds Turner, "the race is on to see if we can get the election system secured before it's too late."

People interested in the subject of open source voting are invited to attend the CAVO TOWN HALL meeting on March 28th in San Francisco, California.

Image credit, Vote by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

We are excited to announce that registration is open for CiviCamp SF Bay Area 2018 — the first-ever low-cost daylong meetup in our region specifically designed for current CiviCRM users and non-users who want to explore CiviCRM.

When businesses consider how to implement digital transformation, they often focus on the improvement of back-end systems and how to reach customers across multiple channels. However, many successful, cost-effective digital transformation strategies also depend greatly on design.

Reducing misconceptions about design can aid in removing company silos, which is critical in aligning business, design and development teams for operational success.

What is design? According to usability expert Jared Spool, design is the rendering of intent. This can include aesthetic improvements, but doesn’t always and is definitely not limited to aesthetics alone. When utilized effectively, the positive effects of applying design principles to solving business problems can be seen far and wide. However, many companies may be unaware of how to maximize the value their designers can bring to the table.

A Customer-Centric Approach to Implementing Effective Digital Business Strategies

Why is it so important to focus on users when creating a design strategy? At the end of the day, it’s your users who most affect your business’ bottom line — prospects, customers, coworkers and many others. Figuring out who you are solving problems for is half the battle. Once you have that, you have real people who can help you evaluate whether or not your work is actually effective. All too often even designers can end up only paying lip service to customer- or user-centric design, so what are some ways businesses can actually execute this?

1. Get Designers Involved Early

The sooner designers can become embedded in your business strategy, the more effective your communication and planning can become because they will have a clearer understanding of not only the problem you’re trying to solve, but why that problem is a problem for your business, and by extension your customer.

One of my favorite misunderstood Steve Jobs quotes is: “Customers don't know what they want until we've shown them.” This could be interpreted as possibly some typical Jobsian arrogance. However, what it really means is that, generally, people’s ability to break down and get to the root of issues is limited. And to really understand problems, you must not only listen to what people are saying — you have to really examine and study their actual behavior. In doing so, a designer can then better understand the needs and issues affecting an audience and create an experience that both illuminates these issues and solves them for improved customer service through design.

This applies to design within business because all too often projects are brought to designers in a mostly finished state, meaning that a designer’s creativity and input is largely stifled due to the constraints of a project being almost complete. Project managers bring wireframes and ask designers to either “brand” it or “make it fit with the rest of the site.” Sometimes this works because you have an exceptional project manager who has a very deep understanding of the issue and how to solve it. However, those cases are the exception, not the rule. Most often, the improvements that could be made possible through a designer’s input are unable to be implemented, as doing so would likely cause delays and overhauls to affect the project.

Instead, when you’re first starting the project and reviewing problems and goals, include a designer in those meetings so that they can already start to develop a deep understanding of the whole problem so they can provide a more comprehensive solution.

2. Review Effectively

The better a company is at reviewing designs, the better they become at creating a great end product in the most efficient ways possible. Here are four guidelines that are helpful in the review process.

1. Set Clear Goals - At the top of this list of goals should be measurable ways in which a company can improve the design. For example, does a screen in question help the user accomplish the task efficiently? Goals should not include “Make this screen appealing to my sense of aesthetics.” By tracking the customer journey and how it is affected by design, strategies can become much clearer and more effective in their implementation.
2. Know Where You Are - Provide stage-appropriate feedback that makes the most of each aspect of the review process. For example, wireframe reviews should receive feedback regarding structure and flow, not color. Doing so prevents confusion and unnecessary complications.
3. Present the Problem, Not the Solution - Improve the effectiveness of design strategies by improving not only the frequency and timing of their interdepartmental communications, but how these departments discuss the topic of design. Designers provide solutions, so a business should provide designers with problems for them to solve, rather than a strict, predetermined solution for them to implement without their own input.
4. Provide Scenarios, Not Opinions - Instead of saying what you don't like, provide a useful scenario that a designer can address and solve through their creativity. This can help prevent subjectivity for better results that solve problems in ways others may not consider.

These principles will help your business make the most of the review process and improve your intercompany collaboration regarding design. By putting users at the focal point of the review process, it helps remove (potentially) egotistical subjectivity from the equation because you are now focusing on the needs of others instead of personal opinions.

3. Inform Designers with Data

Everything you are producing should be measured. If you don’t know how your current projects are performing, you cannot improve as needed. Tools such as Google Analytics, Liferay Forms and Hotjar can all provide insights concerning how users interact with your projects and websites online.

Frequently testing allows for continued growth and the ability to properly address problems. Providing in-depth data with tools such as Google Analytics and Hotjar can inform and help designers in new ways through concrete information. Data can’t always tell you the whole story, but it can give your designers greater context and help them make more informed decisions.

With these concrete insights, companies can see what areas are performing the best and what complications may be negatively impacting users. When used appropriately, data will help guide future decisions while still embracing the reality that people can be irrational and numbers can’t predict the future.

As mentioned earlier, examining people’s behavior is key to understanding the underlying problems in any site and using data intelligently will help streamline the solution process.

Putting It All Together

Introducing design early on in your business processes can help put customers at the center by providing a figure to focus on, evaluate for and measure. In turn, this more streamlined, efficient process will provide measurable value for your business.

Enhancing Your Customer Experience

Great design can play a major role in enhancing the customer experience, but there are many elements within successful CX. Learn more in our guide to these four strategies.

Read “Four Strategies to Transform Your Customer Experience.”   Paul Takeo Hanaoka 2018-03-20T16:30:12Z

With the GDPR implementation deadline looming, organizations in both the private and public sector are amping up their efforts in order to achieve GDPR compliance in time.   At the Liferay Digital Solutions Forum, Liferay UK's annual event last November, we gathered three thought leaders who now stare GDPR in the face on a daily basis. Cybsafe CEO Oz Alashe, UK Cloud’s Commercial Director Nicky Stewart and Everis’ Data Management and Analytics Technical Manager Oscar Alonso all joined me for a panel discussion, representing the private sector, public sector and the consulting realm respectively.   Mike MacAuley, General Manager of Liferay UK, kicked off the conversation by asking about the first step towards GDPR compliance and interestingly the topic of mindset was immediately raised. “GDPR is About Respect For Data” “GDPR [is all about] respect for data as it applies to individuals,” Oz Alashe explained to the audience.   “While we all look at the mountain of work that needs to be done to become [GDPR] compliant, rather than just looking at GDPR as something we have to legally comply with, [let’s] actually consider GDPR as something which is a very, very good thing,” he said.   Part of that respect, according to Nicky Stewart, is about having an educated workforce:   “[Your first step should be to] educate staff about GDPR. Then, ensure you have 2-3 people in your organization who have an absolutely sound [legal] understanding of what GDPR is and how it’s different from existing legal requirements,” Stewart said.   Again, the emphasis on mindset and education was intriguing. Alashe’s positive take on GDPR was refreshing, and as this article will continue to show, it highlighted the benefits that GDPR brings to the table — like increased transparency and trust between organizations and data subjects.    Stewart’s input was equally imperative. All staff handling data need to be aware of the implications of GDPR, while each organization should appoint a handful of leaders who understand the legal landscape well enough to massage data protocols into compliance. The Risks of Falling Short Alashe went on to describe the next steps for an organization that has altered its mindset to be more accepting of GDPR. According to him, it’s about, “understanding what data you hold, where it is, how it’s stored and how you look after it.”   Oscar Alonso was of the same opinion, stating that he was, “not sure whether most brands even know where all their customer information is, which is why we’re creating tools [to help our clients locate their data].”    Nicky Stewart also echoed Alashe’s input, stressing to the audience how important it was to first and foremost, “understand what data you are holding, where you are holding it, and what the legal basis [is] for having that data.”    Undoubtedly, all three of our panelists were on the mark here. The first practical step towards GDPR compliance is identifying what data you currently hold, and how it’s being used. Once you know that, you’ll know exactly what the following step should look like.    Before long, the panel discussion turned to the risks of falling short of GDPR compliance. I put it to the panelists that, while organisations tend to focus on the financial impact of not being GDPR compliant, perhaps the bigger risk is reputational damage and losing the public’s trust.    “There will be a number of organisations who attempt to prepare for GDPR but won't quite meet the mark. Some will take the risk and wait to see what happens,” Alashe claimed.   But he also emphasised that falling short of GDPR compliance isn’t, “just about the [GDPR] fines.”   “The thing that's really hard to calculate is everything that comes with the loss of the public’s trust,” Alashe said, “and these fines or cautions are all declared, [so the consumer will be aware], that can all get very painful.”   Just to remind you of just how steep those financial penalties are, a “lower level” GDPR infringement exposes an organisation to a fine equivalent to €10 million or 2 percent of their annual revenue — whichever is higher. For “higher level” infringements, the fine is doubled to €20 million or 4 percent of annual revenue. Very painful indeed.   Yet, you can’t help but agree with Alashe that the true risk is not the money itself, but the reputational damage a GDPR fine or caution could cause. That’s because all fines and cautions will be declared publicly — making a brand’s incompetence in regards to data privacy the talk of the town.  Blurred Lines: The Private Vs The Public Sector  GDPR does not discriminate between public and private sector entities by holding them to different standards, and yet there are differences in why and how those two industries make use of customer data.    Mike put it to the panel that in the private sector, brands want to leverage consumer data for marketing purposes, to spot trends and to ultimately boost their bottom line. In the public sector on the other hand, data collection is simply part and parcel of identity management, as individuals need to be identified for purposes such as tax, housing and general identification. So, while both parties are concerned about how GDPR non-compliance may hurt their reputation (not to mention their pockets), it’s fair to say that they have different reasons for why they want to harvest, store and use consumer data.   Thankfully, our panellists hailed from both sectors, so we gleaned insights from both sides of the coin.    “Whether it’s a public or private sector organization, the reason they want data is either to do research, provide a service or help identify people,” Alashe said.   “However, I don’t think it’s right to say that the private sector is only concerned with marketing because identity management also comes into play [in the private sector], as private companies also want to manage the identities of those we provide services to, and to protect them. So there is some blurring [of the lines] there, despite the fact that there are some distinctions. But the level of respect for data applies to both sides,” he concluded. GDPR And The IoT Problem During the discussion, Nicky Stewart highlighted another pain point that GDPR is going to push down on — the problem of data in relation to IoT devices.   “Artificial Intelligence [is] improving government service experiences — [two examples being] the DVLA and HMRC running pilots of Amazon Alexa. So as a citizen, what are your reasonable expectations, because you think you’re interacting with the government and that your data will be used in one way, but instead, your data will be [in the hands of] Amazon. ” Stewart said.    She probed into the issue further, asking about how GDPR applies to these new technologies, not to mention to technologies yet to emerge. The problem is, with every new gadget that gains popularity, a swathe of user data accompanies it. Yet, Stewart continued, the minds behind those yet-to-be-invented technologies “aren't necessarily going to be thinking about data protection regulations [when they think up these brilliant new ideas and devices]. It’s a really hard problem.”   Stewart raises an important point, as Gartner is already forecasting that 90 percent of brands will have a Chief Data Officer (CDO) by 2019 just to handle the enormous IoT-fuelled data boom. As for how GDPR will apply to all these new technologies, there is, for now, no truly comprehensive answer.   The Good News: How GDPR Can Boost Your Brand Towards the end of the discussion, the panel finally drilled down into the good news: GDPR is an opportunity to enrich your brand’s reputation and build trust.   “GDPR is an opportunity [for brands] to stand out [from their competitors] who are not [totally] GDPR compliant,” said Oscar Alonso.   Alashe told the audience that being GDPR compliant will “demonstrably show [that your brand] takes customers seriously and that you take care of their data.” he also said that it was an opportunity for brands to present themselves and their services in the most effective way.    This is indeed one of the more obvious benefits of GDPR, because as previously mentioned, all fines and cautions in relation to data protection will be declared — so if you’re excelling in caring for your customer data while your competitors are being publicly cautioned or penalised, the public’s trust will quickly flood in your direction.    Alonso went on to describe how he sees GDPR playing a role in data monetization, explaining that “[companies may begin offering] two product versions, one with fees if the consumer withholds consent to their data being used, and one without fees, where the brand gets full access and consent to the customer’s data. This [practice] will become typical.”   So, with brand-boosting opportunities in the midst, along with the chance for brands to begin monetizing data privacy, maybe GDPR isn’t all doom and gloom after all? GDPR Compliance: Just Do Something Already Let’s be frank, GDPR preparation is nothing to take lightly. As Nicky Stewart said in one of her addresses to the audience:   “There is a lot to do, and I wouldn't underestimate it. I spend a lot of time dodging software houses [offering me their services] as a silver bullet for GDP compliance, but you can't get it out of a box, there are all sorts of things that you need to take into account.”   And yet, following each panel member’s opening statement on getting started with GDPR preparation, Mike remarked that there seemed to be an element of, “the best place to start is to just get started,” in the air  — a quip that was met with a unanimous “yes” from all three panel members.   And as the discussion wrapped up, Stewart advised organizations to “get going now,” while Alonso also urged us to “keep calm and prepare — but do it right now.”   It all echoed the famous Mark Zuckerberg quote, “done is better than perfect”.   After all, when it comes to falling short from a legal perspective, your intentions play a pivotal role. With that in mind, it’s better to do something with the intention to be compliant, rather than scramble for perfection and never truly getting started at all — which is unfortunately a trap we see many brands falling into.   In summary, the key takeaway for both the private and public sector is: GDPR compliance is as much about getting started as it is getting it perfect. So start!   How are your GDPR preparations coming along?    Prepare for GDPR with Liferay

Learn how Liferay projects can comply with personal data protection requirements to work within GDPR regulations while still providing needed services.

Read “Data Protection for Liferay Services and Software”   Ben Kelly 2018-03-20T15:35:42Z

After the recent release of its 1.7.3 version, PrestaShop launches PrestaTrust, a traceability system based on blockchain innovation.

KNIME Spring Summit 2018, Berlin: Summary hs Tue, 03/20/2018 - 09:18

From March 5 - 9, 2018 we held our 11th Annual KNIME Spring Summit in Berlin, Germany where KNIME users and enthusiasts got together for a week of courses, presentations, and workshops, as well as the chance to network.

We welcomed over 300 people through the doors this year. Alongside the regular Summit attendees, it was wonderful to see so many new faces. A big thank you to everyone for being there!

 

The Summit was opened by Michael Berthold who reflected on what has been a significant year of growth for KNIME. He introduced the 21 new KNIMErs who have been hired in the last year, as well as Tom Erickson - newest member of the KNIME Board. Michael also took the opportunity to thank the KNIME community for their contributions which helped us earn our position as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine-Learning Platforms for the fifth year in a row. Lastly, he discussed new and growing trends in Automated ML/AI and put them into context with KNIME’s Guided Analytics vision. You can watch his opening here.

Wednesday and Thursday were full of diverse and engaging presentations from data scientists, business analysts, and independent users across different industries - debt recovery, deterministic analytics, industrial automation, drug discovery, CRM, and more - all highlighting how they are using KNIME software. We also looked into what is new and what is cooking in the KNIME development lab. Thank you once again to our speakers for all these great presentations! You can check out their slides here. The Summit dinner on Wednesday evening was held at Spindler & Klatt, which provided a relaxed atmosphere and the chance to network with other Summit attendees. On Thursday evening, we held a more casual beer tasting event in the hotel foyer.

On the last day of the Summit, we hosted a range of workshops on topics such as Guided Analytics, Big Data, Deep Learning, KNIME Server, Image Processing, and others. We also had some external workshops such as Random Forest and Gradient Boosted Trees, de.NBI/CIBI, and 3D-e-Chem. There was something for everyone!

Just like last year, we extended the Summit by offering courses on the Monday and Tuesday. There were courses in KNIME Analytics Platform (for beginner and advanced users), Text Mining, and Big Data, as well IoT Analytics, and Advanced Analytics.

We had a great time hosting everyone in Berlin and are already looking forward to the KNIME Fall Summit from November 6 - 9 in Austin, TX. Register now for early bird tickets!

News date Wed, 03/21/2018 - 16:00

  An episode on the "Per" things: Performance and Permissions. I spoke to Preston Crary, who amazingly was not mad at me for losing an earlier recording.

We're talking about these (and more) topics

• We open with the attention to detail that's required for working on performance tuning and some short conversation about this topic.
• Sadly, there's not often a single silver bullet, but many areas of dust.
• Sometimes the fastest code is not the most optimal
• Continuing with Preston's work on Permissions:
• ResourceBlock is deprecated, and there's an easy migration path
  • an example upgrade path for bookmarks
• The usecase for Resources, ResourcePermission, and ResourceBlocks (as they're not at all visible on the UI)
• Preston's way through Liferay from Support to working on the topics that he's now working on
• The new API for Permissions - and the documentation is also done already (as of me writing this article, not yet published, but available on github - should be a matter of days or hours)
  • And an example: The implementation of this API in Journal
  • more documentation on registering and checking permissions
• Should you implement your own permission system? (and how the answer to this question might change in 7.1)
• Upgrades are being performance tuned. I smell a future episode coming up. Paging the team that is working on this area
• The remarkable memory savings that refactoring the UserBag introduced
• What happend during login
• Passwords are PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1/160/128000 hashed, a deliberately expensive password hashing algorithm.
• LPS-75747 and an update to my hardball question: Document Library's default.xml is still in core, can't be updated through a module, just through an ext.

Follow @RadioLiferay, Preston and me (@olafk) on twitter.

You'll find this episode - and make sure that you don't miss any of the future episodes - by subscribing to  http://feeds.feedburner.com/RadioLiferay. You can also subscribe on itunes.: Just search for "Radio Liferay" or just "Liferay" in the podcast directory. Make sure to write a review for the podcast directory of your choice - or find everything about Radio Liferay on radioliferay.com.

Or just download the MP3 here:

Olaf Kock 2018-03-19T10:00:41Z

The OSI's 2018 elections ran from February 3, with the opening of nominations, through March 16, when the voting was closed at 12:00 midnight PDT. This year's Board of Directors election sought to fill two Affiliate Member seats, and two Individual Member seats.

Voting in OSI elections is open to all OSI Individual Members and the community representative of each OSI Affiliate Member. Only the Individual Members may vote in the election of Individual Member seats and only the Affiliate Member representatives may vote in the election of Affiliate Member seats (only one vote per Affiliate Member, as submitted by the affiliate representative). Elections for OSI Directors are held according to "approval voting", where each eligible voter votes for as many candidates as they feel are qualified to hold a Board seat. The candidates supported by the greatest number of voters are elected to the open seats.

Again, in this year's election, the OSI was fortunate with a slate of highly qualified and enthusiastic candidates. The complete list of candidates running for Individual and Affiliate seats is available on the OSI wiki.

The OSI would like to thank all of those who ran for the Board. Volunteering to serve the OSI and support the Open Source community is a tremendous commitment in time and energy--we truly appreciate their willingness to contribute to our continued success and participate in our ongoing work to promote and protect open source software, communities, and development as well as the ideals and ethos inherent to the open source movement.

The winners of the 2018 Board of Directors elections are,

1. VM Brasseur (elected by the Individual Membership)
2. Chris Lamb (elected by the Affiliate Membership)
3. Faidon Liambotis (elected by the Affiliate Membership)
4. Josh Simmons (elected by the Individual Membership)

We would like to welcome the new Board Directors and thank the OSI membership for voting. The current Board will meet on Monday, March 19, 2018 to ratify the election results. New Board Directors will take their seats on April 2nd, 2018.

During this coming April, you may notice something peculiar on the civicrm.org download page -- instead of 4.7.32, you'll see a jump up to 5.0.0. Does this mean that CiviCRM is finally implementing a personal voice-assistant to take-down Amazon Echo? Nope. Maybe it means open-season on changes, granting a general license to break backward-compatibility? Nope. 5.0 is boring. It's basically the same thing as 4.7. It's just a big number with a little change.

Everyone wants to see Liferay Portal in their native language, and version 7.1 will support up to 45 different languages. On the road to the release of Liferay 7.1 we are launching the Community Translation Team to drive the translation process. Read this post to find out why and how you can help to make Liferay Portal available in the languages you speak.

Liferay Portal is used by people and companies in many different countries, and everyone wants to see the portal in their own language. As part of the release process of Liferay Portal 7.1, one of the tasks we care about is the translation process.

As always, the translation process is something in which the community really helps a lot because no one knows how to find the best translation better than the native speakers using Liferay Portal every day.

This time we have made changes to the translation mechanism, introduced an online Localization Management Platform to manage translations, and we are also creating the Community Translation Team (CTT).

Why should I join?

In a single sentence, you should join because you, as a native speaker of place-your-language-here, are the best are the best authority on how Liferay should look in your language.

There are many other reasons why we are excited about your participation:

• Help to make Liferay Portal be more accessible by adding support to a growing number of different languages
• Make it easier for developers, users and people in general that speak your language to use Liferay Portal sites
• Receive gratitude from the Liferay community and the various Liferay engineering teams
• Engage and build connections within the Liferay community

I'm in. How do I join?

The Liferay 7.1 Community Translation Team is already set up. All the resources are uploaded to the translation tool we are ready for you to start contributing. The process and tool are described on the Instructions page.

To get started, all you have to do is:

1. Create a free account at Crowdin and configure your profile with the languages you speak
2. Search for the 'Liferay Portal' project and join to start translating one or more languages
3. Suggest the best translation for strings, labels and messages

We look forward to your involvement with our community!

Now Live

Liferay 7.1 Community Translation Team (CTT) is now live!! Join today:

https://dev.liferay.com/web/community-translation-team/instructions

David Gómez 2018-03-13T23:40:06Z

I have finished a working prototype of the form-processor and action-provider extension. See my previous blog post for where the idea came from.

Below I will explain what you can do with this extension. Lets assume we have an external website where students can signup to volunteer in a summer program. When a student has signed up we want this data to be present in CiviCRM and the student added to the group student volunteers.