2024: That's a Wrap!

This week we have been taking a moment to reflect on the COmanage Project journey this year. And what a journey it has been! We thank the community for their continued inspiration, collaboration, and support throughout the year. We couldn’t have accomplished so many great things without you!

SO...much...news!!

We have so much exciting news to share this month. First on our list is our first soft release of Registry v5.0.0. Although this version contains only a select set of features, our planned v5.1.0 is not far behind. Not to be neglected, Registry 4 recently got several new features as well in v4.4.0. Finally, to support all of these exciting developments, we are launching two new support programs to ensure that both the COmanage community and YOU have the support needed to make any implementation a success.

For those who will be attending Technology Exchange in Boston next week, we hope that you will come and find us so we can tell you all about them in person. For now, read on to get the deets!

Preparing for TechEx

The COmanage Project has been busy preparing for TechEx! TODAY’S(!) Open Office hours will be our last online one for the year. Next month we will hold a live version of our office hours during a lunch session of Technology Exchange in Boston. Today’s newsletter includes all of the workshops during the conference that highlight content related to COmanage Match or Registry. Many from the project team will be in Boston; we hope to see you there!

RESOURCES: Case Studies, Training, & Presentations

Today, we share the first of a new series of case studies that describe how organizations are using COmanage Project tools to address their challenges and needs. This case study is about Wake Forest University, which has been working on a migration from Banner to Workday and is using COmanage Match and Registry as a seamless way to address needs that couldn’t easily be handled by their new tools. If you like what you read, you will have an opportunity to hear their story in person during the upcoming Technology Exchange conference in Boston this December. ALSO, training is back! Express your interest today to be included as the workshops are scheduled.

New Releases

Today we are highlighting two releases that the COmanage Project has had since our last newsletter: Registry v4.3.5, and Registry v5.0.0 Milestone Release 13. We hope to see you on Friday at our next Open Office Hours to hear more about these releases and what we have in the works for the rest of the year.

Registry Accessibility Audit

Did you hear COmanage Registry v4.3.4  has been reviewed against WCAG 2.2 AA?

Did you know...?

This month we are dedicating the newsletter to several announcements and other items that you might have missed in recent communications. The stories this month highlight COmanage Registry’s accessibility conformance statement, the release of Registry v5 Milestone Release 12, and information about a Registry v4.3.3 update to how HTML markup is handled.

New Resource: Recipes!

We have been thinking about ways to make our documentation even more helpful than it already is. Today we introduce “Recipes” - instructions for configuring and using the connection of several features within COmanage tools to accomplish a specific goal.

About Milestone Releases

The COmanage Project has been undergoing a significant effort to fully update Registry into Version 5.0.  In this month’s newsletter, we are dedicating some time to explaining COmanage Registry’s Milestone Release strategy, a process that we are using to track progress toward v5.0, and enable those using the software to contribute feedback and input along the process.

Training and Feedback

Yes, it has been a long time since we sent our newsletter. As you know, the COmanage project is supported by individual contributors. While we have been able to continue our development and software support activities, some personal obligations have made it temporarily difficult for us to keep up with these communications. Fortunately, things are now back on track, and we expect to continue as we had. Today, we’re sharing two other activities that will resume in March: Open Office Hours and COmanage Training.

Attending TechEx this week?

We hope to see you for the COmanage Project sessions this week.

We're back!

Our sincere apologies for the hiatus in sending our newsletter and hosting open office hours. Circumstances out of our control had our team members attending to other critical tasks, and our monthly communication suffered as a result. But the good news is that we now have so much more to share with you!!

Linking Info

This month we’re trying out an Australia-friendly time for our Open Office Hours. We hope you will join us for an interesting Topic Aperitif about how COmanage and CILogon are being leveraged in several projects in Australia. These projects enable streamlined information sharing and decision making by Data Access Committees, and bring deeper connections between people and the research results and artifacts that they work with.

Start with something new!

We started 2023 with new releases to COmanage Registry AND Match! This month we’ll highlight some of the things you can expect to find in these updates and where to go for more information.

Goodbye 2022

What a year it has been. We have been taking a moment to reflect on the COmanage Project journey this year. And what a journey it has been! We thank the community for their continued inspiration, collaboration, and support throughout the year. We couldn’t have accomplished so many great things without you!

We’ll take an Open Office Hours break in early January, but we will be back at our monthly sessions in February. Happy New Year!

New Things

If you have been curious about the work that the team has been doing on COmanage Registry version 5.0.0, this is your month. Here we highlight some of this work, including what components we have been prioritizing, how we are thinking about the user interface of this new version, and rough ideas about timing. Our Open Office Hours will be LIVE! at Technology Exchange in Denver with a broadcast through zoom for those who won’t be there in person.

Population Changes

How does your organization manage the IAM changes that come with the changes in roles, status, and affiliation that happen within your registered population? We invite you to take a look at the new wiki page in our COmanage Registry User Guide about offboarding and expiration policies. As you’re pondering this question, consider joining us for Open Office Hours a little earlier than usual (tomorrow!!) We will be welcoming the latest cohort of Registry training workshop participants as we pick topics to discuss in more detail. Finally, mark your calendar to join us at TechEx in December in Denver for Open Office Hours Live! Meet the development team in person and get a peak at the upcoming version of Registry. You won’t want to miss this one!!

Taking a Closer Look

This month we invite you to take a closer look. Our Open Office Hours Topic Aperitif features an exploration of the container packaging documentation, an essential resource to ensuring that your Registry and Match installations are just as you want them. We also zoom in on a new feature for Registry 4.1, Person Vetting, which is useful for background checks and compliance. In our News section, note the different dates and times for the last two Open Office Hours for the year, in particular our LIVE! one in December at TechEx.

Summer Fun

This month we will take a small break in our programming during Open Office Hours to accommodate those who may be taking a long US Labor Day holiday. Hopefully, you still will join us for some ice cream trivia fun as an ice (cream) breaker to our COmanage questions and discussion. COmanage-specific Topic Aperitifs will return next month. In this newsletter, we share how we plan for containerized versions of COmanage. Also, check out the News section that outlines our plans for connecting with the community through the end of the calendar year.

It's All About the Match

It’s here! The long-awaited COmanage Match v1.0.0 has been released! There has been so much interest in Match that we decided to dedicate this month’s newsletter to it. Come by next week to see Match in action during our Open Office Hours. Take a look at our documentation. And, follow some useful links that we have included. We can’t wait to hear what you think!

Welcome!

Today we’re welcoming the latest cohort of COmanage Registry workshop participants. We hope that you’ll join us for the open office hours (at a new time this month), to help welcome them to the community. We have been busy this month with plenty of meetings and travel. We’re looking forward to sharing more about what we’ve learned next month!

This and That

In this month’s newsletter, we have a little of this and a little of that to share. We will be welcoming LIGO to our Open Office Hours to share their experience with building and using a custom Registry plugin. We also share an excerpt from our Help & Support page, How to File a Bug Report. Finally, in June we will have a bonus training session for COmanage Registry and will be changing the date of next month’s Open Office Hours to include this new training cohort.

The COmanage Community

One of our favorite parts about working on COmanage is the rich discussions and collaborations that we have with the community members. This group makes COmanage possible and inspires and drives the impact of the software, both in the offered features and how COmanage is used. This month features an Open Office Hours discussion from CILogon, which maintains one of the largest COmanage installations, and an updated wiki landing page for our community resources.

Making COmanage Yours

COmanage is SO configurable. This both gives it its powerful flexibility AND sometimes confusing complexity. On the POWERFUL side, there are many ways that you can customize COmanage for your needs from special behaviors, to the attributes collected, to the way that the COmanage applications look and behave. In this month’s newsletter, we highlight some ways that you can make COmanage uniquely your own.

Reset

Well, we may not be resetting the whole world as this image from Lisbon suggests, but occasionally it is helpful to take a step back and re-orient yourself with the basics. This month we are thinking about the fundamentals in the form of learning how to use Registry and how COmanage versions are handled.

New Connections

This month we have been thinking about connections. Connections between the Registry and both inbound and outbound systems are well supported through a rich set of plugins. (new wiki page!) The connection to PeopleSoft will be our mini topic for Open Office Hours led by COmanage users at SMU. And as you are contemplating all of those connections, the timing is perfect for the COmanage Match v1.0.0 which will be released any day now.

Happy New Year

It’s time to say goodbye to 2021, but before it’s over we wanted to give you a preview of things to expect early in the new year. Our open office hours will happen on the first Friday of the new year; we will share information about the new COmanage Core API. Our newsletter feature story is about the anticipated COmanage maintenance and feature releases on version 4, among the last before the larger 5.0.0 release (read our November newsletter for more details.) We’ll see you in 2022!

Planning Time!

The end of the year is a good time for planning. So, we’ve loaded up this month’s newsletter with things to help you plan. Learn about what to expect with the upcoming framework migration for Registry, and get familiar with some of the planned changes in the COmanage Registry UI. As a bonus, check out our recent blog post with 4 Tips on How to Up Your IAM Game Using COmanage and the InCommon Trusted Access Platform.

Introducing the COmanage Newsletter

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the COmanage Newsletter. The COmanage Project learned lots of things during 2020/21. One of the bigger things is just how difficult it is to communicate all that has been going on with the project, particularly when we’re not meeting regularly in person. We aim to remedy that gap with this brief monthly newsletter where we share a few highlights. We look forward to hearing what you think!