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[MEETING] City Analytics Exchange - MAY 2022 #9112

Closed dianamartin closed 2 years ago

dianamartin commented 2 years ago

Objective

Participants

Agenda

Add agenda here or create agenda from this template and add link.

dianamartin commented 2 years ago

Diana's Notes

City of Boston City of Philadelphia City of Austin

Agenda:

Knack usage, problems Developed KnackPy library - insert and export data from Knack

Transitioning import script to KnackPy library Needing help with code perhaps Knack Exploration app - exploring the metadata

CityGEO - Centralized GIS team = CTM manages metadata, datasets, hardware interdepartmental projects

Public facing users: do not use log in

City of Boston: Public facing Knack

Knack use Zapier, trigger knack conditions - integrate How long have you used Zapier? a couple of years - experimental

Slack

Next Steps

dianamartin commented 2 years ago

This meeting will have a monthly cadence, closing

KaroEngstrom commented 2 years ago

Karo notes from the initial City Exchange meeting

May 10, 2022

Agenda

Brief introductions from each of the teams - name, city, role

Each city reviews how they are currently using Knack

Boston moving their transition script to use knackpy library

AUSTIN

Also shoutout to Austin's Knack Exploration app - no dev on the call to talk about it but can follow up

Amenity: https://cityofaustin.github.io/knackpy/docs/user-guide/

JC started this library when he was working as a one-person team on Knack at ATD but in a BSA role, helping with ADM

Never collaborated on Knackpy before with other cities

https://knack-explorer.austinmobility.io/

JC will join us again as a consultant

We can give you some context for building Knack apps - Diana sharing how this works

DM showing off Knack Explorer features

Helpful for research, troubleshooting, building

Boston says they're having similar organizational issues

DM showing the log of environments

AA talking about what we might be able to do with Github and Zenhub with version control

Question - how do you manage environments?

Backups of everything when Knack moved to the new builder

Permanent test environments

AA and DM talking about how we use Github/ version control; it's a manual process (pull requests; reviews; best practices)

https://github.com/atdservicebot

Question: can you show the system that maps all your apps?

DM showing the DTS Portal

amenity

1:31 PM

Scripts that open Github issues from our Knack service request form. There's no integration back and forth, but we open issues and apply labels

Question: are you using the Knackpy library to send data from one Knack app to another?

Have done that in the past; most likely in the Work Orders/Finance connection

Some workarounds, we can get the devs to show some of the items to you later

DM showing the map from Miro

PHILADELPHIA

Working on a metadata catalog - showing us that

Primary use for Knack is as a repository for metadata; made this transition primarily with the GIS users with the city

Repositories of metadata that can get out of date and out of sync, and need to be updated in various places manually

A central repository with public access and limited number of users who can update the data

Example

Pros of how it's organized: these would all be separate entries in search results and difficult to understand; here you get them all displayed together; can do different version/views

Data dictionary feature -

Javascript tool to pull in the details directly from the GEO database which makes this a lot simpler

People just plug in the descriptive info

There are links to the public info online

There's a separate editing interface

DM - who manages this? A: our city geo - central GIS group; managing the ESRI specific technologies; individual data owners are also supposed to be responsible for maintaining their own metadata

Have applied all the web standards and branding in the system

Both via custom CSS but also using an HTML wrapper

Why do you use the wrapper? A: The only way for them to be hosting it as a .phila.gov URL which they definitely wanted to do for this system

Amenity: we've just started with some public-facing Knack apps

https://metadata.phila.gov/

Editing interface:

DM - are any public users logging in? This is a major question at ATD

Phila - no logins for public facing users; just open website

Not using a single sign on, just a dedicated Knack user account at the moment; manually created for the handful of editors

AD access would allow them to do more granular permissions (why can't they do that now?)

Phaedra feels like Knack has record level security issues

BOSTON

We do a lot of public facing Knack

Boston also does not use SSO so not aware of what the issue might be with using both

Requiring the public to make accounts: a lot of account maintenance; need to build a lot of support pages to reconnect new accounts to old records, etc (SOUNDS LIKE AMANDA!)

Often need M:M relationships because multiple emails want to be connected to the same records

Can share some of the examples offline - would love to

DM telling them about TIA Access Code - too early to tell about specific issues coming up (Boston interested in this as well)

Boston occasionally using Zapier to trigger Zaps from specific incidents, linked to Google drive ; very experimental, use it only when they have to; have used it for a few years

The City Analytics Exchange was Charlotte's idea as people were leaving Boston

Jenna trying to think of a great asynchronous workspace

Would love to keep doing these meeting at a monthly cadence

Any particular issues your city is facing that we could ask about, just something to consider for next time

From the original agenda:

Discussion of best practices, lessons learned

Plans for changing usage of knack in the future, including things you wish you could do with Knack

Other non-knack related topics? What problems are you currently facing that you would like advice on (for future meetings)?