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Talis Engage Newsletter January 2010

Welcome to the monthly newsletter for Talis Engage. If you would like to recieve this newsletter each month, email danisha.bathia@talis.com.

At the end 2009 Gordon Brown announced that the public will have more access to Ordnance Survey maps from 2010 as part of a Government drive to open up data to improve transparency. The argument is simple: government-funded and approved agencies such as the Ordnance Survey and UK Hydrographic Office and Highways Agency are government-owned agencies; they collect data on our behalf. So why can't we get access to this data as easily as we can Google maps?

Making that data available for use for free would vastly expand the range of services available. The Engage team at Talis are keenly following these events and would very much like to hear from you and your thoughts in this area.

To find out more about the open data movement the following links will help:

Going Live This Month

The December 2009 release of Talis Engage enhances the Reporting area introduced in last month's release. A new monthly report has been added, to find and disable deadlinks in records. All hyperlinks, images and file links in records are tested and replaced with "link not working" message if found to be not working correctly. A report is generated and made available to the SysAdmin (or other authorised users). We will continue to enhance this area in forthcoming releases. To preview this functionality please visit http://trial1.talis.com/engage and login as SysAdmin with the password engage. A full release notice of what is contained in the December 2009 release can be found on the Talis Engage Blog site.

What else is new?

Camden Council will be re-launching their community information database, Cindex, on Talis Engage, in January. The site is already available to preview (http://camden.talis.com/engage). Cindex is a long-established database of organisations and services in Camden including voluntary sector, NHS, and Council services. It is used by local residents, community workers and Council staff to find out about services and make referrals. Information is exported from Cindex by Council staff to create mailing lists, and is used to create contact information on the Council website. Talis Engage will:

  • Allow Camden to create a modern and user-friendly interface
  • Enable Camden to create a new, browsable hierarchy from existing subject headings
  • Enable users to submit updates and amendments
  • Provide more sophisticated export of data, for re-use on the Council website, and potentially by other organisations such as NHS Camden
  • And, most importantly, allow Camden to adapt to changing needs, by creating new fields and changing the look and feel whenever required

For more information, contact Magda Robertson, Cindex Project Implementation Manager, magda.robertson@camden.gov.uk, 020 7974 1623

Talis Engage Hints & Tips

Did you know that you can surface your images so that they display on the results page of your instance in Engage? To do this you simply have to mark the image viewable in brief display in Record Type management. You can preview this on http://trial1.talis.com/engage by carrying out a search for "Cadbury"; the second record in the list of results will display a picture.

Food for Thought

Substance.coop has now started the second year of a DCSF funded initiative called the Information and Signposting Project. Also known as Plings, the project looks at effective ways and means to collect, manage and share information on positive activities for teenagers. Local authorities have a statutory duty to make a "youth offer" with regards to "places to go and things to do" and so Substance work with several councils to establish data feeds, APIs and developer workshops in order to ensure that this information can reach the most appropriate audiences.

To read about the most recent event held in Birmingham at the Plings blog

We welcome your thoughts and views on all topics covered in this newsletter and encourage you to contact us with your comments. You can email team.engage@talis.com directly or contribute to the Talis Engage Blog.

Regards,

Danisha Bathia, Product Owner

danisha.bathia@talis.com