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Starting today, 13 March 2014, all Statement of Interest (SOI) templates created prior to v4 are being systematically upgraded to eliminate a previously used macro that has been recently identified as causing data loss whenever a prior Page History version is viewed (from the Tools menu). Fortunately, there has been only one documented case where someone actually lost original content, most probably, because the Page History function is seldom needed or exercised for the particular application. Given this potential vulnerability, Staff is in the process of updating over 100+ SOI pages initially created in 2011-2012. One of the necessary elements of this upgrade is the removal of all prior versions of the SOI containing the defective macro. As a result, for those affected, there will only be the current version remaining until subsequent edits are made. Thereafter, we do not anticipate any further problems associated with having employed the template capability.

Each page that is updated will receive a short email note explaining that an upgrade was performed and referring to this blog entry.

Ken Bour
ICANN Consultant 

Today, the Statement of Interest (SOI) template was enhanced to simplify the steps in adding text. Confluence offers two types of text-based entries, "richtext" and "text" (plain ASCII). Richtext entries support a wide variety of styles and formats (e.g., bold, italics, bullets, tables, images); however, to enable those capabilities requires opening a separate editor window. In the case of the SOI form, most of the fields only require plain text (alphanumeric), so we simplified them to accept only plain text (ASCII characters). This change will speed up data entry without sacrificing content. 

A couple of fields were left as richtext including the person's picture (image) and those where bullets or a table might be preferred (e.g., Q12-Working Groups).

Ken Bour
ICANN Consultant 


The template used to create a New GNSO Statement of Interest has just been improved by eliminating the cumbersome and confusing multi-step process to add a picture/image.

With recent revisions in the Confluence software, it is now possible to add an image while in the <Edit Contents> mode. Assuming there is an image (e.g., JPG, PNG) on one's hard drive to be uploaded, the process is simple and is described in the step instructions contained within the form itself. 

Ken Bour
ICANN Consultant 

 

A major Confluence upgrade was performed last night (3 Oct 2013) by ICANN Information Technology Staff. As a result, a few minor changes were needed: 

  1. We were able to add a feature to the underlying template that now eliminates confusion between the <Edit Contents> vs. <Edit> command. 
  2. There were a few cosmetic issues concerning certain fields not being bolded during the conversion. 

From now on, when you go to change your SOI page, simply click the <Edit Contents> button in the menu bar which should be the only one appearing. 

If you need to change the image/picture, please see the amended instructions on the New SOIs page. 

Ken Bour
ICANN Consultant 

As a result of a new Confluence feature, I was able to simplify the instructions so that the steps are easier to follow and, hopefully, less prone to error. 

In particular, the user can now enter his/her name on the Instructions page, which will then automatically invoke the proper template and create a blank SOI in the proper location. From there, the page form can be completed using the <Edit Contents> menu option. 

This new approach has eliminated three steps in the previous instructions. 

Ken Bour
ICANN Consultant