Development status, January 11th, 2004

As of January 11th, 2004

ACIS is usable.  It matured a lot in the past several months.  All the basic functionality works, and it’s user interface has improved a lot.

What it needs most now is real-world testing.  More — the better.  Decipherable and constructive feedback is the main fuel we run on.

The software is installed on test.acis.openlib.org site, more about it.

Things done

During the last 5 months, main things done:

• contributions screen (now known as research profile)
• ReDIF person template import with email notification to the user
• ReDIF person template generation
• multi-record accounts (“secretary” scenario)
• a comprehensive system to log user actions to database and produce easy to browse and analyse reports for administrator
• greatly simplified login procedure for users, when login data is stored in HTTP cookies on user’s machine (only if user explicitly enables this)

Still to do

Here is the list of things we yet need to do:

First priority

… before it can become RePEc Author Service.

• more testing with real users,
• fix found problems,
• migrate the actual HoPEc service

Not as urgent

• script, which will process incoming mail, to confirm registrations by email
• listing of all registered users

ACIS, stage 1

Additionally, to make the thing comply with ACIS project’s Kathmandu document, the following needs to be done:

• AMF input and output
• automatic contribution profile support system (draft spec in Russian [Update from 2004-08-26: Automatic research profile update in Russian])

Areas for improvement

I have plans for some more work in these directions:

• usability
• administration tools
• lessen technical requirements to run the software
• documentation