Closing out 2017 with V3 on both test and production - custom templates and writing funding

[Jason Gush]

Hello all and sincere thanks for those who've stuck with us throughout the year,

If you've recently been by either the test or production Hubs you'll have seen that two new features are live: customising the Hub's email messages; and the ability to upload funding tasks.

Although these features are available now, proper documentation and guidance will be following in the new year.

However, if you'd like to try them out on test, to customise the mail you'll find a small set of changes in the menu bar.  

Customising your email messages

"Your organisation" has been replaced with "Settings", and underneath the new "Settings" dropdown you can now find:

• "Your organisation"
• "Logo", and
• "Email template"

Any jpg or png can be uploaded by selecting "Logo" and using the options on the resulting page.  If you're prepared to put some effort into altering your email template then the options are very open, but for the simplest substitution please start with a picture that's 127 pixels high as it'll will drop right into the space occupied by the default Society logo.

Next from the "Email template" page you are given the option of toggling the "Email template enabled" option.

Once enabled, a blank document is opened where you can enter the html for the mail that the Hub sends on your behalf.

As that might be a little daunting, to start with (and perhaps doing all that you require) press the "Pre-fill" button to copy the default html for the Hub's messages and edit from there.

There are three merged fields that may be of use:

• {EMAIL} : Recipient email address
  
• {LOGO} : Organisation logo
  
• {MESSAGE} : Core message that will be sent to the recipient
  

The {MESSAGE} field is customised for each type of mail that the Hub sends, e.g., invitation, affiliation invite, funding invite, reminders and revoked permission repeat request.

If you don't include this in the template the Hub will send the same message in all instances.

When you think you've got something that works, pressing "Send" will email you a test message with the current template.  If that's what you want, press save and any subsequent messages will be style with your new template.

If you ever want to go back to the default Society-style, just toggle off "Email template enabled".

Writing funding items

Writing funding works very similarly to affiliations, i.e., a funding file containing the email or ORCID iD of researcher/contributors and funding data is uploaded to the Hub and the Hub either sends the researcher/contributor invitations or uses the access token it already has to write the information to their ORCID records.

The main difference is that while affiliation files can be either csv or tsv, for funding the file must be in either json or YAML formats.  The Hub accepts these files structured in the same way as the ORCID 2.0/2.1 schema, and the contributors block is where each individual to be invited/written is specified.

If that's confusing, don't worry we'll be going into this in detail early next year.

That's us for 2017, we hope you've found the Hub either useful or with the solid promise of being of use to you.

We know that we've got to do some work on the user interface for naiive Tuakiri-member visitors, and have work on the Hub's API and writing works sketched out.

Best wishes,

Jason, Jilll and the UOA dev team.