Dossier archives

Check out Dossier’s new look!

Moments ago I pushed out the latest update to Dossier. Its most prominent feature is an all-new interface, borrowing from the same look-and-feel we use on this blog, the Stratepedia Guidebooks, and other sites. Dossier is the first of our big three (the others are Coaching Calendar and Depot) to get the new interface.

Even though things look a little different, don’t worry–all of the functionality you’re used to is there. I worked over the last few months to address some of the issues people had with the original interface. For example, some people had trouble understanding the difference between active assessments and inactive assessments, and why a just-created assessment wouldn’t show up in a list of a school’s currently active assessments (it was because the assessment’s starting date was set in the future, so it technically wouldn’t be active until we reached that date on the calendar). To get around this, all assessments are listed in one list, latest starting date on top, with a lock icon next to any survey that is currently inactive.

One other shift of note–to help keep you from accidentally deleting important data, we added a trash can feature a few months ago. In this release I also moved the assessment delete button off away from other important files, and changed its look to hopefully steer you away from it.

The Dossier Guidebook has not been updated with new screen shots yet, but the basic workflows are the same. Let us know if you have questions or comments in the meantime.

By Aaron Sumner | June 30th, 2010 | View Comments

Want a sneak peek at what’s coming in Dossier?

I’m excited to share something I’ve been working on for the last few months. As you may recall, we’re working to unify the look-and-feel of all of the Stratepedia apps (Depot, Dossier, Coaching Calendar, and blog, for the record) to make them all easier to get around and get things done. Even though Dossier (in its current iteration) is the newest member of our toolkit, it’s the first to get a facelift primarily because it needed the least work. Want to see what’s going to be new?

To start, here’s the splash page. It looks pretty similar to the current version, but the big green Sign in button is there in preparation of our forthcoming single sign-on system (meaning you’ll finally be able to use one username and password to access Depot, Dossier, and Coaching Calendar!). We’ll also be highlighting our mobile version of Dossier on the front page.

The dashboard is still a work in progress, but we’re working to make it easier to see current activity at all of your schools quickly. To be honest, I’m not happy with it yet. If you’ve got ideas about how to make this page more useful, please share them. (Note, we do not have data for these schools for real; they’re just placeholders on my development computer while I experiment with different layouts.)

Here’s a school view. Two big things to note: First, we’ve moved all of a school’s assessments to this page for quick access. Second, we’ve moved away from a single toolbar in favor of placing buttons contextually on the page. You’re less likely that way to accidentally, say, click a delete button and wipe out an entire assessment’s worth of data.

Your final sneak peek is of an individual assessment. Two things to look at here–first, if your assessment is not currently active (either because its start date hasn’t happened yet or the end date has come and gone) you’ll get a nice, clear message letting you know. Second, we’re trying to clarify how sharing direct links to assessments works. If you’re an administrator for your school’s site on Dossier, you’ll be given a link to copy and paste in a message to your school listserv or other internal communication system. We’re even thinking about a URL shortener to make this even easier.

Other pages throughout the site are getting fresh coats of paint as well, but these four shots are pretty representative of the overall effort.

Some other features you might be interested in–we’re adding the ability to aggregate and view data across assessments. For example, say you’ve collected walkthrough data over three separate months and want to view that information as a set. You’ll be able to do that, as well as download the entire dataset into your favorite spreadsheet application. Also of note, we’re working on an undo feature to recover those accidentally deleted assessments.

Hope you like the changes! Unfortunately Dossier will still only be available to our CLC sites in Virginia, but inevitably we’ll make it available to other CLC schools across the country. If you want to be among the first to have access to it, I suggest registering for our pre-conference session at this summer’s SIM Conference.

By Aaron Sumner | March 23rd, 2010 | View Comments

Collect CLC data from your handheld device with Dossier

If you have a web-enabled device such as an iPhone, iPod touch, Android phone, Palm Pre, or Blackberry, and your school uses Dossier to collect data about CLC implementation, you can now use your handheld device to enter observation data. Just load Dossier on your handheld to automatically load the mobile version, optimized for a small screen.

Dossier Mobile is our first attempt at a mobile-aware Stratepedia application (not counting mobile versions of our blog and Stratedirectory). It’s a work in progress–watch for us to take advantage of features available in more advanced mobile web browsers, while keeping as much backward compatibility for older devices.

Dossier is currently only available to select schools in the state of Virginia. Watch our blog for updates on when we’ll be expanding it to other regions.

By Aaron Sumner | January 13th, 2010 | View Comments

Stratepedia services back online

I think my server updates are complete. There was a little more to be done than I expected, so please let me know if you see anything odd (particularly with Depot, Dossier, or Coaching Calendar).

By Aaron Sumner | October 26th, 2009 | View Comments

Dossier to be discontinued Saturday, May 23

Dossier, Stratepedia’s service for flexible, social data collection, is being discontinued due to insufficient use. I’ll be shutting Dossier down on Saturday when I move Depot to its new server. Everyone who may be affected by this has been notified, but if you have questions feel free to leave a comment below or e-mail me at help@stratepedia.org.

I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, and personally disappointed that Dossier just didn’t work out. As you may know, this has been a personal pet project of mine for nearly ten years now, but in the time it took us to finally put something together and have people try it out, better alternatives became available. I still think there are some things the market leaders could learn from what we were trying to do with Dossier (reusable forms, social data sharing), but that’s something for another time.

Thank you to everyone who sat through me talking about or demonstrating Dossier, and for the string of programmers who helped me build my grand idea. I learned a lot along the way and hope you did, too.

Dossier alternatives

In addition to the usual for-pay online data collection services such as SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang, you might consider Google Forms, part of Google Docs. This free service lets you easily create a web-based form, embed it into e-mail or a web page, and save data, real-time, into a Google spreadsheet. You may then export that spreadsheet to your favorite analysis package. (For the record, this is what we use whenever we survey people through our blog.)

If you have your own server and would prefer to host something yourself, take a look at Lime Survey. It’s similar in some ways to Dossier, though it has a much steeper learning curve.

By Aaron Sumner | May 20th, 2009 | View Comments

Sneak preview of revamped Stratepedia Guidebooks

Many folks don’t realize it, but most of the services we provide–Depot, Dossier, Coaching Calendar, etc.–have accompanying Guidebooks. Each guidebook includes tutorials to help you get up and running with our stuff and make the most out of it in professional development and strategic instruction.

Of course, I’m never one to leave well enough alone, and when a new tool called ScreenSteps came along, making documenting procedures on a computer incredibly easy, Amber and I sat down, went through our materials, and essentially developed entirely new versions of our Guidebooks. And since Stratepedia.org just got a fresh coat of paint, we’re treating the new guidebooks in kind.

The result: It’s very pretty, and much easier to navigate. All guides are available in HTML format, for viewing in your web browser, as well as PDF format, for saving a local copy and/or printing (some of these are lengthy documents, though–I think the Coaching Calendar Guidebook is upwards of 40 or 50 pages–so think about a tree before printing, OK?).

Without further ado, here are a couple of screen shots:

First, the front page makes it simple to select the guide and format of your choice. Since these guides can can change, we include the dates each was last updated for your convenience.

Next up: Here’s a table of contents, HTML version. Select what you want to do, and click the tutorial for it.

Here’s an individual tutorial or lesson. We’ve gone back and broken steps into their simplest, most concrete forms to make it easy for newcomers to follow along.

Here’s a look at the PDF version of the same tutorial, using the Preview PDF viewer built into Mac OS X. Some nice features: Each PDF version also has a browsable table of contents (see the right-hand column here; this will show up along the left in Adobe Acrobat) and is keyword searchable.

Want to see a real, live preview?

We’ve got the new site up and running while we finish the remaining guides and final touches. You can see it for yourself, right now, but you have to visit our Twitter feed to get the address. Twitter is a great way to keep up with what’s going on at Stratepedia, so check it out and add us to the feeds you follow!

By Aaron Sumner | September 26th, 2008 | View Comments

Dossier might be down for a little while tonight

I’ve got to do some work on Dossier’s server this evening which may require me to shut down the site for a bit, starting around 6:00 CDT. I’ll have things back up and running as quickly as possible.

By Aaron Sumner | August 18th, 2008 | View Comments

Au revoir, S.O.S.: Upcoming changes to Stratepedia support options

Sometime this week, I’m going to shut down the S.O.S. (that’s “Stratepedia Online Support”) section of the Learning Labs. I thought providing a level of peer support was a good idea, but it never really caught on in this case and I think confused more than it helped. Not to worry: Our Stratepedia Guidebooks are still online, and you can always e-mail your questions to us at help@stratepedia.org.

If you have any questions about this transition, drop me an e-mail or leave a comment.

In other support-related news, Amber and I are in the process of revisiting and revising the aforementioned Guidebooks to make sure they address the kinds of questions we find ourselves answering more often than not. These new Guidebooks will be rolled out as we get them done and will be available for free in both web-based and PDF formats. The latter is suitable for printing, if that’s your liking.

We’re using a great new application I found a few weeks ago called ScreenSteps. It’s great for creating how-to guides for anything to be done on a computer, and can be exported to blogs (if you’ve been following my series on Goodreads you’ve seen ScreenSteps in action), straight HTML, or PDF. I think Depot’s Guidebook will be updated to this new format within the next few weeks; other guidebooks will follow.

But that’s not all! Keep following Hello (the blog you’re reading right now) for tutorials, case studies, and anything else that might not fit within the context of our guidebooks. If you’ve got tips or success stories to share with others, let us know and we’ll showcase your work within Hello’s virtual pages.

To recap: S.O.S. is going away, the Guidebooks are staying put but will be getting a significant facelift (and PDF versions), and we want to showcase your tips and successes on our blog. Thanks!

By Aaron Sumner | August 12th, 2008 | View Comments

Dossier will be unavailable tomorrow, May 1

Dossier is getting the updates I promised a few weeks ago, and also moving to a new server. I’m going to do this tomorrow, May 1. I’m planning on doing this during the day since nobody’s really using the system just yet, but if I’m wrong now’s the time to let me know. If this will conflict with your plans I’ll reschedule this for a night or weekend.

(By the way, all the changes I talked about before made it in, except for the last one. The question types changes will have to wait for a future release.)

By Aaron Sumner | April 30th, 2008 | View Comments

Dossier updates on tap

It’s been awhile since we’ve talked about Dossier. Things are afoot: We’ve been busy adding a few features and generally cleaning up. Here’s a quick rundown of what will be available in Dossier starting sometime next week:

The big thing first: If you use a SoC questionnaire, you can now get individual responses scored automatically, complete with the line graph. It’s very neat!
Interface cleanup: I’m doing a few small things to tidy up the interface and (hopefully) make Dossier a little easier to use.
Data import: You can now import (some) data from other sources (such as other online surveying tools) into an assessment in Dossier.
Behind the scenes I hope to complete some code that will make it much easier for us to add new question types in the future.

I’m still looking for volunteers with smallish assessment groups who’d like to give Dossier a try. If you’re interested leave a comment below or drop me an e-mail.

By Aaron Sumner | April 17th, 2008 | View Comments