Action Tracker

by Manik Bali ( manik (dot ) bali (at)noaa(dot)gov)

Each GSICS meeting ( Web, Annual, User, GSICS EP ) generates Actions (A) , Decisions(D) and Reccomendations(R) for the participants. These A, R, D are typically narrated in the meeting minute reports. In the classical approach these A,R,D were keyed in by GCC in the GSICS Wiki page.

With the growing participation in GSICS meetings the number of actions generated has increased substantially. As a result it add substantially to the overhead in keying the actions in the wiki format onto the wiki page.

To overcome this an Action was placed on the Gsice Coordination Center ( GCC) to build a tool that could have the following three main features.

1. Reduce the overhead of keying in each action
2. Fast search to zero in on actions of interest
3. Easy update of Actions
4. Collaborative approach.

In 2016 GCC ( Manik Bali) produced the first prototype of the Action Tracker. This Action Tracker has two components to it.

The basic workflow of the Action Tracker is depicted in the figure below.

Modus Operandi of the Action Tracker

As shown in the figure above meeting minitues are typically prepared during a meeting ( say GSICS Annual Meeting). These minutes are either on a google document or a zoho document. Once the minutes are finalized the document is ported onto a google drive and converted to a google document.

GCC then uses then takes the Action Tracker that is developed on the google sheet. This Action tracker has tabs of each subgroup. Once the document ID is input into the Action tracker and the proper meeting tab buttin is selected and the subgroup tab selected the action tracker reads the google document and places the actions in the google sheet.

A Wget script then runs at the NOAA/STAR linux server that downloads the google sheet and converts it into a csv file. This is then used as a input to the NOAA webserver where Actions are placed.

How to use Action Tracker

For Admin: Typically take a working version of action tracker and make a copy of it with the new year name and date.

One end of the Action tracker resides in the umd google cloud . Create a new version of the All Actions tab on the umd google cloud.

Say one wishes to import the GIR actions from the Annual Meeting. The follow the following process

Click the Annual meeting tab and go the sbtitle says ARD GIR. Once you click there a dialog box will appear.

Key in the name of the annual meeting document and press ok.

If might ask for permssions to access the file if doing for the first time

Actions show start trickling in the GIR tab of the sheet.

For the webmeeting ARD click on webmeeting tab and provide the complete url of the wiki page

It should import the ARD from the wiki page.

Important

The ARD shall follow a format as

A.GWG.2018.1g.1: Fred Wu (NOAA) to discuss with CMA potential sharing of GOES-R field campaign data for TANSAT validation

Action ID followed by a ":" and then the complete action without a new line

Details on Action ID are as follows

A.GroupID.YYYY.sessionID.Action number (Actions )

D.GroupID.YYYY.sessionID.Decision number (Decisions )

R.GroupID.YYYY. sessionID.Reccomendation number (Recommendations )

How to Update Action Status

One needs to access the following sheets and update the status of the actions.

Action Sheet for 2017 is here

Action Sheet for 2018 is here

Action Sheer for 2019 would be added here

One can contact the Subgroup or Group Chair to update the actions as they have the default permissions to edit the action.

Contact GCC for further information.

Recent Updates

As of 1/1/2019 the Action Tracker can extract actions from

GSICS Webmeeting pages maintained on the GSICS Wiki

GSICS EP Meeting document ( standard format)

In addition hyperlinking of texts has also beein enabled by adding the activate hyperlink button