This document describes collaborative tools available to WormBase team members.

Accounts

It's strongly encouraged that all team members of WormBase request a wormbase.org account.

Why wormbase.org accounts?

Perhaps you already have a caltech, oicr, google, or account on some other service. But a wormbase.org account is fundamentally different. It's not just an email account but access to a shared suite of tools.

Unifying resources like documents and calendars under wormbase.org facilitates collaboration. It increases project transparency. And it decreases administration overhead.

With a wormbase.org account, you will automatically be granted access to project calendars, documents, a contact list of team members, subscriptions to mailing lists. You can manage your own account information. Moreover, a *.wormbase.org account instantly grants additional privileges on the new WormBase website. As people matriculate onto the project they can quickly integrate with other team members and be brought up to speed with a shared corpus of documentation. They'll have immediate access to remote members via Google Chat or Voice, too.

This seamless integration is provided by Google Apps and includes the following services:

Gmail
Google Docs
Calendars
Discussion Groups
Google Chat
Shared Contacts

Cool. Integration is good and I want a wormbase.org account, but want to read email elsewhere.

No problem. Log on to your account once and set your email to forward to your secondary account. Done. Note that you will still need to send email to the discussion groups (see below) using the account to which you are subscribed.

What if you don't want a wormbase.org account?

Fine. You can still subscribe to things like the discussion groups using your old email. But you won't benefit from the seamless integration of these collaborative tools and you'll be less accessible to other members of the team.

Discussion Groups (Mailing Lists)

WormBase uses a number of mailing lists for discussion provided by Google Groups. You can manage subscriptions yourself, add posts, view threads, and search the archive all from the web.

Creating your own discussion group

With your wormbase.org account you can also create your own groups. This is a perfect way to support new side projects. Advantages of this approach over using ad-hoc distribution lists in your email client include the ability to let others easily use the discussion group, as well as the ability to create searchable archives of discussions available to the entire web or only subscribed members.

See the groups main page and the Mailing List Wiki page for details.

Calendar

*@wormbase.org account holders can add and edit events on the official WormBase calendars.

http://calendar.wormbase.org/

There are three calendars:

WormBase (private events) -- a calendar of project events, including conference calls, etc

WormBase Build Schedule -- a calendar or scheduling build related dates (handovers/deadlines)

WormBase Public Events -- a calendar listing public events like meetings

Documents

WormBase documents are available at:

http://docs.wormbase.org/

Any new documents created under your wormbase.org account can be easily shared with all other wormbase.org account holders. You'll need to add users outside of the wormbase.org domain specifically.

Email

*@wormbase.org account holders can access email at:

http://mail.wormbase.org/

If desired, email can be forwarded to a secondary account.

Contacts

To be written...

Issue Tracker

WormBase has a single unified issue tracker. Be sure to join the project on github so that you can get updates on issues you report!

https://github.com/WormBase/website/issues

Reporting Guidelines

Don't worry if something warrants reporting or not. If in doubt, report it!
Be sure you are LOGGED IN. We may need additional information from you.
Provide an informative title -- eg: Phenotypes on the Gene Page are lacking evidence display
Label issues related to web development with "Webteam"
Include as much detail as necessary to explain the issue. More is always better. Example URLs are great, too.

What information to include in the issue

Including the following information will help the web team resolve your issues as soon as possible.

For all issues:

Descriptive title
- Bad: Genes are broken. Good: Expression widget on gene page returning 500 error
URL to the affected page
- if this issue affects several objects, it's helpful to include a variety of URLs for testing
Summary of the request
- Affected pages/widget
- What happens now VS What should happen
- Screenshots are helpful

For an error:

Describe: What happened
- Step-by-step information if you can
Describe: Expected results - what should happen here?
Describe: Actual results - what is wrong?
- Error message received (if any)
Is it reproducible?
- Always? Sometimes? Unable to reproduce?
Environment: What Operating System / Browser were you using? (ie Windows XP and Internet Explorer 8)
Environment: Are you on staging or production?
Add the label bug

For a feature request:

For new data
- Describe where this data is - acedb tag? other data source?
- Describe where you want it displayed - what page/widget?
- Describe how you want it displayed - as a link? an image? a table?
Add the label feature request

Following through on issues

Keep on top of issues you report.
Add comments to issues to maintain a history directly in the system. Followers receive emails automatically.
if there isn't progress, "bump" the issue or leave a comment!