Extra Profile Fields in KARL2

One of the pilot programs has requested a number of extra fields on profiles. This specification documents the agreement previously made, then makes planning decisions based around this work.

Background

One of the pilot programs has a specific need for 4 extra fields to be on the profile:

1. Geography
2. Issues
3. Skills
4. Associated organizations

This information comes from a specification produced by them before the process of considering KARL.

Analysis

Under this specification, those new fields would appear, possibly at the bottom, of both the view profile and edit profile screens. These fields would appear for both staff and affiliate users.

When editing the fields, the following definitions are used:

1. Geography is a multiple-select drop-down list from a controlled vocabulary.
2. Issues is a multiple-select drop-down list from a controlled vocabulary.
3. Skills is a multiple-select drop-down list from a controlled vocabulary.
4. Associated organizations is a textarea, where each line contains a URL. (Note: I’m not sure if this is what will ultimately be wanted, as you might want the name of the organization to appear in when viewing, rather than the URL.)

The information in each of these needs to become part of the searchable text. Meaning, if “Advocacy” is a value selected for Skills, then a search for Advocacy will result in a match on that profile. (Note that this doesn’t come without a cost: it might de-value other results that match on words in these standard vocabularies.)

Once these values are provided on the edit profile screen, they should appear on the view profile screen. Multiple values will appear with commas between the values.

Implementation

To ease implementation costs and excessive work on the KARL2 codebase, the specification proposes that all pilots get these four fields as described herein. That is, we are not making a facility in KARL2 that allows per-pilot customization of the profile fields.

If it is necessary for some pilots to turn off some of the fields, this can be done by editing the CSS file for each customer and setting display:none for those fields. The hosting company would do this as a customization charge and would be responsible for maintaining those changes.

The values for the controlled vocabularies will appear in the src/karlfe/shared/siteconfig.xml. Same rules apply: if the vocabulary values need to vary between pilot, they can make arrangements with the hosting company for a customization.

Out of Scope

These extra profile fields have no effect on the system beyond the points mentioned herein: they are listed on the View Profile screen, editable on the Edit Profile screen, and contribute to the search results.

As an example of an impact that is out of scope, the People tab will not have any listings containing a column named Skills.

Beyond KARL2

This specification only covers a change for KARL 2.1. It is anticipated that KARL3 will provide a native facility that anticipates this need.