Converis Roadmap 2022 - H1/2023
Release Schedule
- Major releases are twice a year, with bug fix releases every second week.
- Planned major releases:
- v6.18 September 2022
- v6.19 March 2023
Roadmap Focus 2022 and Plans for H2/2022 and H1/2023
Overview
The Converis roadmap provides a view of what we did in H1 2022, as well as a preview of what is planned for H2 2022 and H1 2023. We particularly focus on areas such as ease of use (usability), stability and quality, enhancements/features based on AHA and community feedback, and further integrations.
Quality Assurance (v6.17)
Introduction of new and enhanced measures for ensuring quality release and release upgrades:
- Increased testing on customized environments
Due to the flexibility and configurability of Converis we need to take many different scenarios into account, in order to make sure that the system continues to function as expected with any new development. We therefore increased the testing we conduct on customized environments that replicate configurations and data structures of live customer systems significantly.
- Earlier testing processes
We are now running automated and manual tests already during the early development phases, even before a new development is passed on to the QA engineers. This helps to detect and fix problems early in the process.
- Increased number of automated test scenarios
Automated tests are essential to be able to replicate a large number of customer use-cases, in order to detect possible regressions. We added about 50 more cases in order to cover more local scenarios.
- Daily performance tests
The tests are run on environments with three different database sizes to replicate our different customer scenarios. They are closely monitored by our performance engineers.
- Quicker releases for important bug fixes
We changed our release schedule to be able to publish important fixes quicker. Instead of waiting for a major release we are now able to release every two weeks if necessary.
Security (v6.18 - Intermediate release)
Update for CRA (Converis Research Analytics) server with new Pentaho version (9.2) (6.18.0-IR220620) – supported from Converis version 6.17.
Integrations
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) (v6.18)
Automatic integration with the Journal API to always get the most recent data from JCR, link to the JCR platform from the journal browse page.
HR (Human Resources) Integration (v6.18)
Improvements to parsing of unescaped characters and invalid values.
Incites API V2 (v6.19)
Enhance InCites Metrics Updater and use the new InCites API version 2 to import additional data from InCites API to Converis:
- SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)
- Citation Topics
- Open Access Status
Web of Science (v6.19)
Addition of more collections.
Longer Term Integration Plans (Beyond Release 6.19)
- Pivot RP – Importing funding information and linked project applications for Pivot RP subscribers. This is currently available for Research Professional subscribers but not yet for Pivot RP.
- Unpaywall – Adding Open Access indications from Unpaywall, including direct links to freely accessible PDFs where available.
Enhancements
Status Comment Field (v6.18)
Enhancements to enable administrators to make the field either mandatory or optional, or switch it off entirely on entity level.
Archiving Feature (v6.18)
Currently (in Converis v6.17) snapshotting / archiving in the edit page is limited to attributes present in the edit page. With Converis v6.18 this limitation will be removed and any attribute can be used (same as BROWSE page). With this change the order of link entities in the PDF will match the order in the edit page, for example for authors.
Delegation Management (v6.19)
Delegation management allows a user to temporarily assign their role to a different Converis user, for example for performing due tasks during leave of absence. Enhancements include:
- Add start date and end date for the delegation setting (similar to an out-of-office notification).
- Add option for a config admin user to check for delegations.
- Add option to export a list of delegated user roles: Delegator & delegated role, delegate for the purpose of data maintenance purposes by a system/support administrator.
- Add option to trigger a confirmation email upon user delegation to the person delegating, and the person a role is delegated to.
Flexinumber (v6.19)
Improvements to move the validation of the numbers to the client side in order to show correct error messages and block incorrect numbers from being accepted and stored.