How to Add a Logbook Entry

To add a journal entry to the field logbook, click on the Add Blog Post link at the upper right.  This creates a blog-type page, like a traditional logbook entry.

Notice the Labels: Edit link at the bottom of the page.  Click on EDIT to add one or more labels to your entry. Labels provide a simple tag that can be used when searching for entries. Suggested labels have been predefined. You can choose one or more suggested labels, or dream up one. A label should be one word, with no spaces. Use dashes to join words. Underscores are not easy to see, since links are usually underscored. One must have administrator access to add suggested labels. See Gordon if you want to add more.

After you add a blog entry it takes a minute or so for it to appear as "news".

How to Add a Wiki Page

There are two ways to add a non-blog, normal wiki page.

The quickest way is to edit the page which will have a link to the new page. Clicking on the Edit tab, then click on the Wiki Markup tab. Add a sentence or section to the page, refering to the new page with a page title, in brackets, like so:

See [Title of New Page] for more information on blah-de-blah.

Save your edits, by clicking on the Save button. Then click on the new link you just added, and an Add Page will appear, providing an editor to create the new page. If you click on the Select a page template link, you can choose a template for the new page.

Or you can click on  Add Page link at the top right to create the new page. After the new page is created go back and edit the main page. Click on the Insert/Edit Link button in the wiki editor. The Insert/Edit Link  button is one of the icons at the top of the editor page. The Insert/Edit Link window allows you to search for the page you want to link to. The alias field of the link will appear as the hyper-link, like this.

Custom stuff can be added to a page using macros.

How to Export to a PDF

To export a single page to a PDF file, click on the Tools menu, and select Export to PDF.

To export the entire project wiki space, click on the Browse menu at the top of the page, select Advanced, then Export Space, select the format, options and the wiki pages to be exported.

Advantages over Tklog

  • Concurrently writable by multiple people at multiple sites.
  • New updates are readable everywhere in a short amount of time - no need to wait for periodic transfer to Boulder and onto www.eol.ucar.edu. Less admin needed on our part.
  • It is easy to make tables and lists, add images, make headings, task lists, add links.
  • History is maintained, one can view the past edits of a page.
  • With a blogger client like MarsEdit (MacOS), Ecto (Mac, Windows), w.blogger (unknown), BlogTK (linux) or others, one could compose entries offline on a field PC and post them to the wiki at a later time.   I tried using the ScribeFire plugin for FireFox, but it didn't work. Perhaps the blogger plugin is not installed at wiki.ucar.edu.  I've submitted a help request on this (GM).
  • We can setup email notifications when pages are changed.
  • Confluence software supports many plugins, such as blogger clients, todo lists, Google maps, LaTex math equations, thumbnail photo galleries. See plugin documentation at Atlassianand LaTex Plugin under Technical Note in HIRDLS wiki. Note, the Google map plugin is not yet available. CISL will look into it.
  • We could setup a project email account at EOL, and all emails that are sent to the email account are accessible in the wiki.

 Disadvantages

  • Must have internet link to ucar.edu to view the wiki.  However, one can export one or more pages to a PDF, html or XML  to take offline. See above.
  • Confluence supports page templates. When a user creates a page they can choose from a list of templates. A template can provide a form to fill out.  However templates are not available when creating blog entries. Supporting blog templates has been requested of the vendor by many users for more than a year - maybe it will eventually happen.

Other Questions

  • Is there a way to use templates with news entries?
  • Should we be using EOL Plone?

TODO

  • Get google maps to work
  • Get blogger client to work
  •  Explore templates

Task Lists

Use the

{dynamictasklist: Example Task List}

macro to create a task list, as follows:

Unknown macro: {dynamictasklist}