Whats new in OS?

As OS moves away from its successful deploy of the new version of TAW.net, we have begun looking down the line at new opportunities and projects. One of the most important things for the team to be working on is our 1-2 year plan for IT in TAW. We have to look ahead at what direction technology is moving and understand TAW's short and long term needs. One of our biggest challenges will be migrating away from Community Server as a CMS or Content Management System. You can think of this as the "faceplate" for the website. It handles the page display, blogs, wikis, forums, etc. This is of course separate from TAW's member management tools. That technology is entirely our own. Unfortunately we won't be able to continue to use Community Server due to some limitations, but more importantly we want to move to software that is more open source and mainstream for our user base. We will look to migrate our member management technology to a new CMS architecture within the next two years. This will help us adapt better to the needs of the divisions and hopefully lead to more customization and configuration options for the "look and feel" of the site.

Just because the team has been looking at long term improvements, we are also taking steps to improve the site on the short term. Many have already seen the improvements to the calendar, but a lot of what we have improved has been behind the scenes for officers. We have added new reports, a quiz creation engine, an on leave system, reinstatement improvements, and much much more. In addition, we have changed the way VG and SN are managed on the site. These units are treated more similarly to divisions to make their growth and management far easier. In the last few weeks we have begun working on greater integration to TS. Now officers can move members to channels automatically, randomize teams, and do a lot more. In the next few weeks we hope to integrate Procon directly with our TS to make server channels automatically switch players between channels that they are playing in. If you switch teams in the server, the TS will move you automatically! Also, we hope to be able to automatically pull down guests and potential RECs into the game channels when they join TS.

This is an exciting time for OS as we use our new website platform to develop exciting and innovate tools to help you and your officers get more out of TAW. If you see members of OS, take the time to tell them how much you appreciate the hard work. As leadership we try to, we know we don't recognize OS members nearly as much as they should be! Getting support from the membership really helps to drive us all to continue the hard work!

GEN Icarus [CC SC]
OS Support Commander