*Action Items*
[AI] {Steve Carmody} report back to the WG about the Sympa/Shibboleth discussions to date.

[AI] {Steve Olshansky} will investigate which working groups within Internet2 (if any) are working in the area of defining approval workflow and connect them with this group.

[AI] {The group} will design (via discussion on the list) a preliminary survey seeking input from members and their campus mailing list administrators to ascertain most desirable features and most absent features of existing mailing list software. This will be done prior to developing use cases.

*Attendees*
Jill Gemmill, University of Alabama at Birmingham
John-Paul Robinson, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Landy Manderson, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Steve Carmody, Brown University
Jeffrey Eaton, Carnagie Mellon University
Jim Phelps, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Renee Frost, Internet2
Terrie Clark, Internet2

*Administrative*
This is the group’s first call. Future calls will occur at this same time – Noon ET – every other Wednesday beginning May 26, 2004. Action items will be sent to the list ASAP after each call. Draft minutes will be sent to the group via the list within a week of the call. Desired changes to the minutes will be discussed on the next call. Minutes will then be considered approved and posted to the working group’s web site. An agenda with phone bridge info will be sent to the list prior to each call.

All communications and work of Internet2 WGs is subject to the Internet2 Intellectual Property Framework http://members.internet2.edu/intellectualproperty.html, please review this page.

The working group’s charter and deliverables, along with call minutes and related links can be found on the WG page at http://middleware.internet2.edu/mlist.

*Discussion*
Related efforts may exist and should be tracked by the group. Three related efforts discussed were: 1) Sympa using Shibboleth; 2) UAB software functioning as a side application to LDAP and the core directory enabling one-way dynamic lists. The UAB software enables the sending of e-mails to a class list without any list set up, per se. It uses dynamic lists that are not tied to any mailing list software; and, 3) Brown University’s locally developed Grouper, predating LDAP, supporting group definition in terms of other groups within the system. At Brown, Majordomo can define membership of lists as being driven from groups within the Grouper system. Brown also has ‘morning mail’ http://morningmail.brown.edu/files/mmail/
allowing people to create postings and aggregating the postings into one e-mail containing on average between 2 – 8 announcements.

The group discussed defining approval workflow. Is it internally controlled by the mailing list application? Or, is approval workflow an externally driven process? If workflow approval is external to the mailing list application, then what exists to facilitate workflow approval? What are options to automate approval workflow? Are approval chains appropriate for inclusion in the discussion? The definition of list moderators is a part of the mailing list management. Perhaps addressing middleware-enabled list moderation is appropriate for this WG.

Are there any applications currently facilitating workflow in a manner relevant to the focus of this WG? Are any working groups in Internet2 discussing workflow? Indiana University has developed a workflow engine that runs inside their portal, they will integrate this into Sakai http://www.sakaiproject.org/ .

The WG will design a preliminary survey seeking input from members and their campus mailing list administrators to ascertain most desirable features, and most absent features of existing mailing list software. Sympa will be included in the survey process. This will be done prior to developing use cases. Possible initial questions are:

· Which list management software is used on the campus?
· What are the list management’s most desirable features?
· What are the list management’s least desirable features and attributes?
· Describe an occasion when a feature would be used (or not used).
· How does the mailing-list software process and send a large distribution of e-mails?
· How does the mailing-list software handle multiple lists?
· Is the campus evaluating other list management software? If yes, why?
· How is the university facilitating workflow-approval?

The next call is Noon EDT Wednesday May 26, 2004.