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Discussion about updating iCAP recommendations - January 25, 2024

Posted by Michael McKelvey on January 25, 2024

Miriam Keep, Sarthak Prasad, and Michael McKelvey met to discuss the process of updating iCAP recommendations.

Background Info

Miriam's original request: "I was wondering if we could talk about developing some kind of a landing page for iCAP recommendations. Right now it’s a bit tedious to add updates related to iCAP recommendations because updates have to be made in multiple places. It also seems the only way to link updates back to the original recommendation is to link to the submitted recommendation in the description for the project update."

Reference projects

Discussion

  • iCAP Recommendations can go through a winding process, cycling back and forth through many statuses until they are ultimately successful, denied, or supplanted by another recommendation. Sometimes their journey is straightforward and linear, but usually it's more complex.
  • Current process involves manual editing of the Background field for multiple projects, updating the link to the most recently added relevant Project Update and the updated status. This is tedious, time consuming, and error prone.
  • Ideal solution would minimize duplication of effort and make it easy for visitors to understand the history of an iCAP recommendation.
  • The current hierarchy for groups making recommendations is 
  • Recommendations come from iCAP Chapters, each with a single iCAP Team (2020 iCAP). The 2010 and 2015 iCAPs were organized differently. We should try to make sure our solution is as future-proof as possible in case of future reorganizations.

Ideas/Recommendations

  • Create a new content type called "iCAP Recommendation" which will function vaguely similarly to Metrics
  • An iCAP Recommendation will contain the following fields:
    • Name (text field)
    • iCAP Team (curated listing, need to allow future modifications)
    • Status (e.g. Submitted, Transmitted, Withdrawn, Successful, Returned, Denied/Declined)
    • Date
    • Related Project (allow multiple?)
    • Related Project Update (allow multiple?)
  • How will these iCAP Recommendations be associated with projects so they're shown on Project pages?
    • Need to be able to group the recommendations together, possibly by both iCAP Chapter and iCAP Team
    • How much flexibility do we need in how they're displayed? Can we decide on a rigid structure that will work for displaying recommendations on all projects, or are there several different ways they should be displayed? (e.g. different groupings, orderings, etc.)
    • Should Projects link to iCAP Recomendations, iCAP Recomendations link to Projects? Question applies even if there's a grouping mechanism in the middle, e.g. iCAP Chapter, iCAP Team, etc.
  • The attached Excel file contains examples of what iCAP Recommendations might look like in the new proposed content type. Each sheet groups together iCAP Recommendations for a team, and each row within a sheet demonstrates a single iCAP Recommendation with its fields filled out.
  • We will present our questions and ideas for discussion at the next iCAP Portal admin meeting.