OSU Profile

OSU Profile

• A Drupal Module to provide every site an easy way to manage a directory of their people, and provide a way to include whatever data they want.

• Uniform and Extensible.

• Data is pulled from institutional data sources.

• Minimal hand entry.

• Data can be shared between sites and aggregated for the main campus directory.

A Distributed Campus Directory

Data entry can happen at any level.Data can be viewed anywhere.

An Extensible Data Model

Data comes from authoritative source whenever possible

Things like Locations,Departments, andPositions are linkedentities.

Profiles provide data to other services like the campus or department directories.

Distributing the data using REST

Historical Use of People Profile

• Variations of “People Profiles” widely used since OSU started with Drupal 5

• Different developers often built their own versions– CWS– WebComm– Site administrators

• Different functionality was provided in different variations

Sample – Marine Mammal Institute

Show peopled grouped by which lab the people belong to.

Sample – College of BusinessTable of Contents worked in via the theme

The College of Business took their publications a step further, though. They’ve integrated a third-party bibliography service with their Drupal site.

COB also displays publications contextually

Sample – College of Public Health

College of Public Health also provides publications, but they’re filtered and displayed differently

The College of Public Health’s site provides a dynamic, filterable directory.

Filter based on various criteria, then click on the appropriate person’s name to open their profile.

Sample – School of Writing, Lit, & Film

WLF’s directory uses the same view as College of Public Health’s, with an override on the grouping.

WLF doesn’t display publications, instead they wanted to tie courses to their people profiles

Content that was originally static was re-architected to be dynamic for the WLF mobile app.

Problems with the Old Way

• No authoritative data source used• No way to swap data between sites• No version control• Constant rebuilding• Continual need for re-theming• So much manual entry and maintenance!

Benefits of the New Way

• Pulls updated data from an authoritative source (LDAP)

• Extensible!• Version control• Manual entry greatly reduced, which also

reduces data entry variations• Standardized and trainable

profile2 module

• Provides any number of profiles to each user• Entities, not nodes– Fields w/ display settings (CCK)

• API & Hooks for Profile CRUD• Allows for changes / updates

https://drupal.org/project/profile2

Module(s) structure

• Main module• Defines requirements (.info)• Provides helper functions• Communicates with LDAP

• Profile modules• Defines dependencies (To main

module, parent profiles)• Defines fields and groups specific

to itself• Installs profile type

• Locations / Departments separate

User creation

• Use a single primary profile by affiliation

• Profile inheritance

• “Query LDAP” adds all users by department

• User creation (@todo)