The Europeana Data Publishing Services team (DPS) is the main point of contact for all data partners wishing to publish data in the Europeana Collections portal. Throughout previous years our data ingestion specialists have been accepting data requests and providing feedback to partners via personal email communication with content@europeana.eu in copy. However, since website. Since January 2019, the Europeana DPS team adopted scrum to manage the work of the team and since July 2019, we have used use Jira as a ticket tracking system to organise the work of the new DPS scrum team.
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Why Jira?
Working with Jira makes the work of the DPS team and the data publication tasks more transparent. It also helps to populate the backlog and prioritise the work on data publication.
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Colleagues and partners that regularly work with Jira among our data partners have reported to us that it has become easier to monitor the progress of data processing work compared to communicating via emails or Google docs.
Getting access to Jira
For every data partner contact person that needs to be involved in the data publication work, access to Jira is needed. For this to happen, EF needs to be informed about who requires access, and needs an email address from the person that will be added to Jira. This will trigger the person to receive an invite to join Jira and to create a Jira account.
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We aim to have one to three main contacts per data partner. It is also possible to register an aggregator specific email address, like a generic contact email account that several people have access to. This way it also improves flexibility to e.g. have other people that only temporarily need access to Jira to work on a ticket.
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The Data Partner Epic
Every data partner has a high-level ticket (called epic) that is named after the aggregator.
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The main contact person/s for the data partner alone will have access to their specific epic, so you will not be able to see and interact with the data processing work of other aggregators. This is important with regard to data protection regulations as the DPS Jira project contains some personal data which cannot be publicly exposed.
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The dataset as a ticket
Every dataset that was processed and published since we work with Jira has a ticket in Jira that is linked to the data partner epic.
Its name consists of the Europeana dataset ID plus the name of the data provider. While the epic itself refers to the data partner as a whole, the dataset ticket will collect specific information about the dataset, such as recommendations for quality improvements and links to the set in the preview environment as well as a link to the published data in the Europeana Collectionswebsite.
Data ingestion specialists will comment on the ticket with feedback on the specific ingestion round and tag the data partner when the work is complete or if advice is required. Email notifications will be sent to the data partner with every comment or status change. The ticket can also be checked at anytime regardless of status and the data partner can respond when necessary. This feedback exchange between data partner and EF is replace replacing email communication for most of the data specific communication on datasets.
It is also possible to upload attachments to Jira (e.g. a sample dataset). The default maximum file size for these attachments is 10Mb.
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Requesting an update of an existing dataset
If you would like to request that the DPS team considers your dataset for processing, then you should add a comment to the relevant ticket requesting an update.
Please add any relevant information, such as details of additional records, quality improvements etc.
The Product Owner, Henning Scholz, DPS team will be notified and we can include the request in our planning.
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Creating a ticket for a new or missing dataset
For new and missing datasets that do not yet have a Jira ticket, data partners can create one by entering all relevant details for the dataset via the DPS service desk.
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The link to the service desk is also in your epic, so it will be available to you when you need it.
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The Jira Guide Epic
In addition to the data partner epic and the dataset tickets, we have created one central epic that all data partners have access to. In this epic we provide this guide alongside general updates relevant for all of you. In this epic we will also flag periods when Metis may be down for maintenance and we cannot publish. Like with other tickets in Jira, data partners will get email notification once a new comment or update was added to the ticket.
Timeframe for accepting requests
Europeana DPS is working in sprint cycles of two weeks and our sprint starts on Tuesdays.
The preparation for every sprint starts on the Monday before the Tuesday with a session where we refine our backlog and prioritise tickets. Therefore in order for us to consider your request for data processing in the next two and a half week period then please ensure it has been received before we refine the backlog on the Monday before the next sprint.
Once your ticket is pulled into the sprint the DPS team will aim to complete the work within this two week period. In case of any unforeseen issues that might affect this progress, the data partner will be informed in the comments of the specific ticket.
Prioritisation of work
At the start of the sprint we have a planning meeting where our work for the next two weeks is defined. This is the last chance for us to discuss and accept recent dataset update requests for the upcoming sprint. Accepting new tickets after the sprint has started will change the scope of the sprint and so we can only consider introducing more tickets where these are deemed to be a high priority by the Product Owner (Henning Scholz) or in a quiet period where many other tickets are already complete.
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Europeana DPS is working on such requests on a first come first serve basis, however we will give datasets a higher priority where important deadlines are involved, if there is a high demand (e.g. from users) or if the data is of demonstrably high quality.
Notifications and the ticket status
As soon as a dataset is prioritised and planned into the upcoming sprint data partners will receive notifications.
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If you wish to reopen a closed ticket then you simply have to comment on it stating your request.
Configuring notifications in Jira
Should you wish to configure notifications in Jira then please read below
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Importing data from Jira into Google Sheets
With the Jira Cloud for Sheets add-on we now have the option to import data from Jira into a spreadsheet using JQL (Jira Query Language). This means we can generate various different reports, for example:
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