ACIS Test site

ACIS is in active development. Here we demonstrate and test the software. You are welcome to try and check it here. You may enter any information you like, it won't go far.

• Register
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What to expect while trying the system

Me and Thomas documented the way ACIS is supposed to work in the Screen model. But:

1. system is supposed to be intuitive, so you don't have to read the documentation;
2. the implementation differs from the documentation in some minor points;
3. there are known issues and some parts are not yet implemented (below on this page).

Still I'll give a brief overview here. ACIS stands for "Academic Contributor Information System". Given an ACIS system, anybody can come and register in it. Registration will create a profile and an account in the system. Registration process requires a valid email address and takes several screens to go through. After the last screen, system sends confirmation email with a confirmation URL inside. When user confirms, the profile is created and the account is activated.

When a profile is created and each time it is updated, it is written to a static HTML page with a short permanent address (Example).

When you login into the system, you may change various parts of the profile, including some that not available during the initial registration.

Both at the initial registration and during a usual login, you may submit new institutions to the institutions database (through your affiliations profile). If you want, it will be added to your affiliations profile. Anyway, it will be sent by email to the "institutions data maintainer".

The changes you do to your profile won't take effect until you log off. If you do not log off yourself, the system will close your session and log you off after a short while of inactivity. In either case it will send you an email notifying you of the profile update and give you a link.

Known issues and missing areas

• There is no academic contributions profile (a.k.a. research profile) yet
• Some error messages are yet "undescribed", you'll see only the error codes (e.g. 'session-failure'), not the messages themselves
• Instructions and explanations are sometimes too terse or absent (critique and advice is welcome on this, as it is on anything else)
• If during the initial registration you are asked for your "name in latin characters", you won't be able to change or even see it anywhere later (although it will be saved in your profile).
• Once registered you can't change your password

Development status

Apart from the contributions profile that is missing (which really is the most important functional part), the system now should work well and stable. I fixed almost all bugs I knew and at least all important bugs I knew. I claim that the overall way the system-to-user dialogue is organized now is good and can do its way to the production ACIS system. Please convince me that it is not.

(I maintain a separate document about development status and plan.)

Areas that need testing

Well, just about everything needs more testing, but I'll name few things.

• The usability of the service; the way system communicates with the user. Look out for inobvious and unexpected system behavior, and/or misleading instructions. Please report your findings and suggest improvements. This includes English wording.
• Security. The users' profiles are protected by the passwords and email notifications. If someone got your login and password and tries to use it, you should be able to find out soon -- by getting an email that your profile has changed. If the bad guy changes the login name (email address) to his own, you should get an email notification of the change.
• Wider security. The behaviour of the system when user misbehaves. You could try doing nasty things. Try using your browser's Back button, try logging in several times from different browser windows, try entering bogus data, do anything that springs in your mind. System should cope with everything.
• Work with multi-language data, with international users.

Some other facts about ACIS.

Reporting problems

Before reporting, check the filed bugs in Bugzilla.

Report new bugs, problems, inconveniences. (Will require a simple registration through email.)

Use ACIS-tech mailing list to discuss it.