Signet Working Group conference call Friday, October 14, 2005
*Attendees*
Lynn McRae, Stanford U. (chair)
Minh Nguyen, Stanford U.
Joy Veronneau, Cornell U.
Karel Sedlacek, Cornell U.
Tom Barton, U. Chicago
RL "Bob" Morgan, U. Washington
Gary Brown, U. Bristol
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Jessica Bibbee, Internet2 (scribe)

Carry Over *Action Items*
[AI] {Bob} will send .htaccess local syntax to the group via the list.
[AI] {Tom} will send a few brief Signet case studies to the group via the list.
[AI] {Group} will develop use cases for Signet.
[AI] {Jennifer} will solicit on site feedback from UC Davis about the UI demo/mock up.
[AI] {Minh} will develop a list of requirements for how Signet will interface with LDAP and Grouper.
[AI] {Tom, Jennifer, and Gary Brown} will discuss the modularity of Signet's UI and the internationalization of code for Grouper and Signet. There will be a separate call for this item.
[AI] {Lynn} will write up a person and function summary to express the relationship of privileges to roles and to determine what gets expressed in the eduPerson entitlement space.

*Discussion*
{Lynn} gave an update on the Signet v0.6 release, which is expected to be available at the end of next week (21-Oct).
{SteveO} has created a {signet-user} mailing list, which has an open-subscription format, and is intended to provide peer support for those implementing Signet. This list will also support an archive, also open to the public. Items of interest will be harvested from here into the form of more succinct documentation, such as FAQs, etc. Subscription information is now available on the Signet page <http://middleware.internet2.edu/signet/>. The current {signet} mailing list will be renamed to {signet-dev}, though this will be a purely administrative shift, and will require no action for those already subscribed to the {signet} list. Refer to {SteveO's} email on 17-Oct. Discussion will follow on a wiki and Signet product page as v1.0 nears.

The emphasis is now on v1.0. The Subject API will not be available until after the first release.  There was a suggestion for the naming of the user population to coincide with the same pool as Grouper, for cohesiveness.

{Lynn} recommended that all design review, comments, or suggestions for v0.6 be sent to {Jennifer Vine: jvine at stanford.edu} regarding fonts, navigation, behaviors, or browser issues with the UI.

{Tom} mentioned an opportunity where a training manager at U. Chicago routinely writes user guides for feedback; {Tom} plans to make demos of both Signet and Grouper available to them for their review, and will bring any feedback to the WG.

{Jennifer and Lynn} has been in communications with the Erik Vullings of the MAMS project, working on the Sharp GUI. {Jennifer} has agreed to exercise the interface and write navigation and styles issues, items which could or should be in common with Grouper and Signet.
The Group discussed the current plan for Signet's 2 main distributions – a self-contained demo and a production package:
- A pre-built, drop-in demo download will be bundled together with Tomcat and HSQL. The demo version should allow you to download and work on any operating system – Windows, UNIX, Mac, etc, and there was feedback on the call that confirmed and desire for compatibility with different OS. However, rather than a mega-document that would detail all platforms, user-feedback and experience will make a valuable contribution here. For the demo, the user would only have to download a separate Java Display Manager.
- The full installation would allow you to configure your own database configuration and run it at a production level.

Documentation considerations are pointed at 4 main target audiences – 1) Manager, 2) System Administrator, 3) Subsystem owners and business analysts, and 4) End-user (see Lynn's email, 13-Oct). As for installation instructions, the Group discussed the usefulness of having a QuickStart instruction document, which would allow a skilled technician to quickly set up the full product. This would assume a competence level for Tomcat and HSQL, etc – and would also be beneficial to users doing a second install, etc. In addition to the QuickStart documentation, a set of more detailed instructions and/or tutorials will be available for the less experienced person. All Signet documentation will be written in HTML format, and there was agreement that a concatenated version of all the documentation be available for those interested in printing off the material with minimal effort.

Once Signet v1.0 is released, the Group agreed that an install-fest would be a very valuable way for people to get comfortable with Signet.
Should Grouper follow suit and offer 2 similar packages? {Tom} raised another good point –Signet and Grouper need to work together and follow good naming conventions so as not raise name-collision issues.

On a separate integration issue, those using both the Grouper and Signet UIs should not have any issues with running Tomcat, other than having to run in independent instances of Tomcat – they would have to open the applications on different ports if running on the same machine.
What kind of authentication should Signet have? Basic Auth? What is necessary for the demo instance? Basic Auth may be limiting in the QuickStart sense.

The next Signet conference call will be held on Friday, October 28, 2005 at 11am ET.