Programs & Events Dashboard/Using the Dashboard

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Manage and track Wikimedia programs from one place with ease.

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The Dashboard

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Programs & Events Dashboard

2019 Coolest Tool Award Winner

in the category
Outreach

Programs & Events Dashboard

This documentation page is for the Programs and Events Dashboard at outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org. The basic purpose of the dashboard is to provide an easy way to organize groups of editors who are working on a common project, and to make it easy to keep track of what they are doing and what they've contributed.

It is a spinoff of the Wiki Education Foundation’s WikiEdu Dashboard, which is only for education courses run by North American universities on English Wikipedia. Instead, the Programs and Events Dashboard works for a variety of programs in any language of just about any Wikimedia project.

Why use the Programs and Events Dashboard?

The Programs and Events dashboard is designed to manage and track groups of editors in programs that are:

Time-bound — they have a start and end time
Focused — they don’t overlap with other editing activities, or where editors are working on individual and distinct articles that are assigned to them
Cohort-based — there is a distinct group of contributors whose usernames are retrievable and documentable

For more information about the dashboard, see the main documentation page and Frequently Asked Questions.

Basics

Logging in

Welcome & Purpose of the Dashboard (1 of 5)

The platform uses OAuth to login into the platform with your global Wikimedia account.

If you click on the “Sign up” icon without an activated Wikipedia account, you will be taken to a page Wikipedia to sign up for a Wikipedia account. In this case, once you create the account and approve the use of OAuth, you will be taken back to the Dashboard.

If you have a Wikipedia account and click on the “Log in” button, you are taken to Wikipedia to log in, then OAuth will ask for permission for the Dashboard to interact with pages using your account. Once you’ve logged in you are taken back to the Dashboard.

‘’Note’’: the OAuth permissions ask for permission to “Interact with pages -Edit existing pages; Create, edit, and move pages” -- This feature is rarely used, and is not very substantive in the current iteration of the tool.

Navigating the dashboard

Note the Explore and My Dashboard tabs in the top left of the interface

Most of the activities that you will need can be found under the “My Dashboard” tab. The tab name is displayed in the top left of the page. This tab provides a portal for all pages that you have joined, as well giving you the opportunity to create new programs.

The first tab at the top, “Explore”, gives the opportunity for exploring existing events and active campaigns. Visiting a campaign page will show all the events that are part of that campaign.

The second tab at the top, “My Dashboard”, allows for the exploration of programs that you are involved in in some way. The tab also allows you to create programs, and find programs to participate in.

Changing interface language

The default interface language for the dashboard is in English or the language in which your browser communicates as a preference.

In the top right of the interface, next to the Log-out and User-name buttons, you can find the language switcher.

To change the language interface, go to the upper right hand corner of the page, and click on the drop down button. The tool uses the same sort of universal language selector that Wikipedia uses.

So far, almost every language script that has been tested on the platform has worked correctly. To translate the interface into more languages, see The Project on Translatewiki. If your script is not displaying correctly, please report it by emailing dashboard wikimedia org or submitting a bug on Phabricator.

Participating in a Program

Dashboard Step by Step For Participants (2 of 5)

You are participating in a program or event (such as an editathon, a class at a university, or another collaborative situation that involves editing Wikimedia projects or uploading media to Commons). The program facilitator should have already added the program to the Dashboard, there are a couple different ways to join it. If you aren’t yet logged in to the Dashboard, see How to log in to the Dashboard.

If the organizer shared a link with you

Program organizers who create programs on the dashboard can share a participant enrollment url, for easily joining the event via email or direct linking on wiki. The link is for the program event in the dashboard, appended with an ?enroll=TOKEN# in the url where TOKEN# is a random hash or chosen password. The link should look like:

https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/WMF/test?enroll=jbnkodpt

If you have not logged in to the Dashboard, it will ask you to log in or create an account now. See How to log in to the Dashboard. Once you are logged in, you will see a box that looks like this:

The options for joining a program

Once the options are available, click the “Join 'PROGRAM NAME'” button.

Congratulations, you have joined the course!

If you need to find the program in the Dashboard:

If the organizer has not shared the link, you can find the program in the Dashboard and join there. Open the dashboard, click on the “Explore” tab in the top left corner or the “Find a program” button:

This will take you to a list of programs in the Dashboard, sorted from most to least active programs:

Scroll down or use CTRL+F (⌘+F on Mac computers) to find the title of your program. Click on the title, and it will take you to the program page. On the program page, there is a gray “Join this program” button:

It will open a dialogue box that asks for a password:

If you do not have the password, contact the program facilitator, who can share it with you. When you click “OK”, you will be added to the program.

Starting new programs

How to Use the Dashboard (3 of 5)

If you are the host of a program or event, you need to be able to create events. There are two different ways to create a program: through creating a new one, or cloning an existing event.

To create a new program, you start by finding the "Create a new program" button on the right hand side of the screen

Creating a new Program

Click the “Create an Independent Program” button in your “My Dashboard” menu. This will take you to the next page.
Click on a program from the list of programs displayed, to proceed to the next page.
Fill out a form with the following fields:
1. Program title -- a title which describes the program or event concisely – Once recorded this information cannot be edited
2. Institution -- a field used to describe the host for the program – Once recorded this information cannot be edited
3. Program Description -- free text field that can include long strings of text.
Click "Next" to proceed to the next page
Fill out the Dates
1. Start of activity tracking -- use the calendar selector or type in a date in the YYYY-MM-DD format. Especially if the event is during a window of time with other similar events, make sure to specify HH:MM.
2. End of activity tracking -- use the calendar selector or type in a date in the YYYY-MM-DD format. Especially if the event is during a window of time with other similar events, make sure to specify HH:MM.
Click "Create my Program"

Note: you can update all of this information except for the title and institution after you create the event. If you make a mistake in either the title or the institution, you can delete the program until a participant is added to the program, then you have to ask a Dashboard admin to delete it for you by emailing dashboard wikimedia org.

Once you fill out the form, and click “Create my Program!” you will create the page, and as a program leader, will be able to keep updating the program page as needed (see the section below for “Updating Program Information”).

Cloning a program

Once you have been involved in a program, the "Clone Previous Program" button will appear in the dialogue following when you click on "Create a New Program" in the Dashboard

If you want to recreate a program or event that you previously facilitated or participated in, you can “clone” the program to keep the description, title and institution. To do this:

Go to “My Dashboard”
Click “Create an Independent Program”
Click “Clone Previous Program”
In the dropdown box, choose from among your programs the one you want to clone
Click “Clone This Program”
Fill out this form as you would normally when creating a new program
Click “save”

Updating Program Information

The administrative interface for a program page. Notice how the top right of the Program description and detail boxes both have "Edit" buttons for program organizers

The description and start and end time can be updated after the initial creation of an event. To modify the description, click the “Edit Description” button. To modify the start or end times or other details, click the “Edit Details” button.

Additionally, once an event is created, you can update additional information in the event, such as:

Facilitators — by default the program page creator is entered as a “Facilitator on the Event”. Additional facilitators can be added from among registered Wikipedians from among contributors who have signed into the dashboard before. Facilitators have the right to edit the program page.
Passcode — which can be used to restrict the participants in an event
Scheduling a data update — this requests that the servers recalculate the contributions of editors in an event (this allows for you to query historical data for past events, to see updates of data).

Deleting a Program

The administrative interface for a program page. On the right, notice the "Delete Course" button, which is only available when a program includes no participants

Only programs with no participants in them can be deleted by their facilitators. Once a participant is added to a program, email dashboard wikimedia org to get the program deleted.

To delete a program without participants, follow these steps:

Go to the program page
In the bottom right “Actions” section, choose the “Delete Course” button.
Type the title of the event in the box, to confirm you want to delete the event
Click the “Delete" button.
The event will be deleted.

Adding contributors

You can add contributors to the Program as a program leader options through the "Participation" button the Editors tab

Program leaders can add contributors directly to the event:

To add contributors, go to the “Editors” tab in an event.
Click the “Participation” button in the right hand side
Here you can find forms to add individual users by their username or add multiple users at once.
- To add multiple editors at once to an event, you need to add the usernames in a text list, with returns but no other punctuation in between usernames and without the “User:” prefix.

Allowing contributors to request accounts

Program organizers can allow participants to request accounts through the tool. To allow account requests within event:

Go to the "Actions" box on the right hand side within an event.
Click on the "Enable account requests"
Confirm that you want to enable accounts in the dialogue.
Users can make account requests.

Note: After users make account requests, organizers will see a link to the requested accounts for their program and can create them. A temporary password will be sent to the email for each requested account when it is created. An Admin for the dashboard can also see pending account requests across all events and process them all with one click.

Assigning articles to editors

For classroom assignments and some events, the program facilitators may want to assign which articles participants are working on. This feature allows facilitators to help contributors pick topics to work on, and identify the right content within the scope of the program. To assign an article, see:

Once a program has editors signed up, go to the “Editors” tab.
Click the “Assign Articles” tab
For each editor you should get the following options:
- ”Assign an article” -- allows you to assign contributors which article to work on
- ”Assign a review” -- allows you to assign contributors which article someone else is working on for peer review. This second option is an organizing tool only, it doesn’t change how metrics are tracked for individual contributor elements.
Click the “Done” button at the top to save

Adding suggested or “Available” articles

The articles tab within the programs and events dashboard that provides an interface for observing the worked on articles for a program

For many programs and events, you will want to offer suggested articles for folks to work on. To do this:

Go to the “Articles” tab in a program
Scroll to the bottom of the page
Click on the “Add an available article” button
Enter the article title and click “Assign”

Once these articles are available in the software, participants in the program will be able to assign themselves to each article, through their “My dashboard” section.

Tracking Wikidata items in an Article Scoped Program using Petscan

An Article Scoped Program can use Petscan output to track articles. This is particularly useful in Wikidata-focused programs, where you can use this function to track items that are the results of a specific SPARQL query.

Run a Petscan search on the wiki of your choice. To track Wikidata items, you can enter a SPARQL query on the Other sources tab.
After running the query in Petscan, note its PSID, above the results list.
Set your program type to be an Article Scoped Program via the Edit Details options in the Home tab.
In the Articles tab of your program's dashboard, enter the PSID in the Tracked Categories, PSID & Templates section.
Now the program will track edits to the articles/items in the result list of the Petscan query. If the query yields a large result, it can take several hours for the tracking on the dashboard to catch up.

Metrics and tracking

Across the top of each program page, is a series of numbers. These numbers are aggregate statistics compiled over the window of time described for the event in the “Program details”.

The numbers are collected once your participants start editing. The software to count these metrics sometimes takes a little while to run, but an edit should definitely be counted in the metrics within 24 hours. If metrics are not running properly, please reach out to dashboard wikimedia org.

Every program has a series of metrics across the top. Read this section to see those metrics explained.

The metrics data at the top of the page includes:

Articles Created -- this is the number of new articles created by the cohort of the users within the program. The list of articles created can also be found alongside the articles edited on the "Articles" tab ^{[Note 1]}
Articles edited -- this is the number of articles contributed by the cohort of users within the program.^{[Note 1]}
Total edits -- this is the total number of edits from the cohort during the program timeline.^{[Note 1]}
Editors -- this is the number of editors that have been added to the cohort for the program, either through self-sign up or through the program organizer enrolling them
Bytes added -- this is the number of bytes contributed to the project from recorded edits based on the number of bytes added per edit. ^{[Note 1]}
Article views-- this is an estimate of the number of pageviews to the pages contributed to as part of the program, from the first edit to that page by an enrolled editor.
Commons Uploads -- this is the number of media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons over the course of the program.

Note

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Note: The software only tracks contributions on the programs 'Tracked Wikis'.

For more metrics tracked by the dashboard go to the Glossary of the Dashboard Metrics.

Running data on historical events

Dashboard Q&A (4 of 5)

The software is capable of recovering historical data for an event which was not using the Programs and Events dashboard live for the event. To do this, simply create a program that has time and date settings in the past. Once the event is created and you have populated the event with the historical editors for the event, click the "schedule data update" button on the far right in the "Actions" section.

Note: Page view data from the point of entering contributions: the dashboard only uses pageview data from the moment in which it starts tracking the contributions of participants. It does not retrieve historical pageview data.

Campaign Feature

Campaign Feature Tutorial

The dashboard also supports “Campaigns” -- strings of events like “Art and Feminism” or a specific regional or country-level education program, where the structure and information needed for each event is similar, and there is a need to compile multiple events into one body of metrics. This feature allows you to create a campaign that can encompass many programs. You can also create a program within a campaign while having convenient access to useful program resources such as templates, program details, data tracking, etc. Overall, the feature allows you to better connect with other program organizers that are joining your campaign and visualize in one place your collective impact.

Steps for creating a campaign

To create a campaign,

Start in the "Find Programs" menu
At the bottom of the list of "Active Campaigns", click the "Create a New Campaign" button
In the initial dialogue box for campaigns, create a title and description of that campaign. If applicable, also apply start and end dates to the campaigns (say if events are run in a series of activities). Once you have filled out these forms, click "Create a Campaign"
- Once the campaign is created you can edit the details until someone begins creating programs within the campaign.
Once the campaign is created, you can click the "Edit" button within the campaign. This allows for three options:
- "Edit Description" which allows you to modify the description from the original template.
- "Edit Details" which allows you to modify the core details for the campaign
- "Edit Template" in "Program Template" section, which allows you to develop a "Program template" which can be used to share commonly needed materials or descriptions that local program leaders can use to generate pages for their local programs or events.

Creating an event within a Campaign

Once a campaign is created, program leaders can go to the main Campaign page and click "Create Program". This uses the Program template to create a pre-filled draft form, which can be used like other program creation dialogues (see above). If a program is created outside of the campaign that you would like to add to the campaign, this can be done by editing program details: Go to the page of the program, click "Edit details", and at the bottom of program details you will find the line with "Campaigns:" and "+" button. Then save your changes.

Downloading Campaign or Program Statistics from the Dashboard

To download statistics, follow these steps:

In the "My Dashboard" or "Find Programs" tab
Locate the desired Program or Campaign for which you want to download statistics
Open the desired program or campaign
If it's a campaign:
- Navigate to the "Home" tab on that Campaign's page
- Click the "Download Stats" button

If it's a program:
- Navigate to the "Home" tab on that Program's page
- Scroll down to the bottom where you'll find the "Actions" section
- Click the "Download Stats" button

In the dialog that pops up, look through the data available for download, and click on the button labeled with the title of the data you wish to download.

Customizing what to track with an "Article Scoped Program"

@ 3:59 the dashboard demo begins

In a scenario where a user contributes to multiple articles and wishes to compile contribution counts for a specific subset of articles rather than the entire collection, opting for an "Article Scoped Program" is the most suitable choice. When the program type has been changed to an “Article Scoped Program” the Dashboard will only track edits to the articles that you categorized to be tracked.

To enable this feature these are the following steps:

Select “Create an independent program” from the dashboard page.
Click on “Article Scoped Program”. Note that if the user has existing programs and the option “Create New Program” or “Clone Previous Program” pops up after selecting “Create an independent program”, select “Create New Program” and then select “Article Scoped Program”.
Fill in the inputs presented with details of your program and then set the activity tracking period (start and end dates).
Choose a scoping method.

Note that all scoping methods can be selected at once and individual scoping methods can also be added to the program from the “Articles” tab.

There are four (4) scoping methods to choose from:

Categories: this feature when selected enables the dashboard to track articles in specific wiki categories.
PagePile: this enables the Dashboard to track a collection of articles with a unique identifier that doesn't change over time. (PagePile Tool)
PetScan: is a query tool that allows the Dashboard to extract data and generate lists of related pages that match certain criteria (categories, templates, wikilinks, and much more). A PetScan query ID is generated and can be used to configure a set of articles and enable tracking on the dashboard.
Templates: this feature allows articles to be tracked based on certain templates they contain.

After the scoping method options, each method selected follows up with configuration input fields for the user to fill in with the appropriate information.

Categories:

The user enters the categories they would like the dashboard to track, and selects the subcategory depth value (0 is the default value i.e. articles directly in that category) of the category/categories selected and wiki domain.

Page Pile:

The user enters the PagePile ID/URLs they would like the dashboard to track, selects the wiki domain, and also has the option of creating a PagePile using the official PagePile tool.

PetScan:

The user enters the PetScan ID/URLs they would like the dashboard to track, selects the wiki domain, and also has the option of creating a PetScan using the official PetScan tool.

Templates:

The user enters the template(s) they would like the dashboard to track and selects the wiki domain name.

Finally, the user selects “Create my Program!” and the “Article Scoped Program” configuration is complete. Also note that if a user is a facilitator of a program and would like to track their contributions on the dashboard, they would need to assign themselves to the article(s) as an editor.

Adding new training modules

The Dashboard's training module system uses pages on Meta to create and translate training content. The training content is made up of three kinds: Libraries, Modules, and Slides. A Library is a set of one or more related Modules, and a Module is a series of Slides.

Libraries

The set of training libraries that the Dashboard knows about is defined at Training modules/dashboard/libraries. A new library should have two parts:

a `.json` page that defines the libary's ID number, url slug, and the wiki page which holds the rest of the libary definition. Example: User:Ragesoss/dashboard libraries/editathons.json.
a wiki page that defines the library's title, description and contents. Example: Training modules/editathons/library

To create a new library, follow the examples above and then add a link to the `.json` page to the list of libraries. The ID should be the lowest number not already taken by another library.

To add a new module to an existing library, find the wiki page that defines which modules are included and edit it. (If the modules are all listed on the `.json` page instead of on a wiki page, it will need to be converted to the wiki page format first.)

Modules

The set of training libraries that the Dashboard knows about is defined at Training modules/dashboard/modules. A new module should have two parts:

a `.json` page that defines the modules ID number, url slug, the series of url slugs for each slide in the module, and wiki page which holds the rest of the details. Example User:Ragesoss/dashboard modules/wikipedia-essentials.json
a wiki page that defines the module's title and description. Example: Training modules/wikipedia-essentials

To create a new module, follow the examples above, then add a link to the `.json` page to the list of modules. Use a 5-digit ID number that isn't already taken by another module, and include the ID on the page so that we can easily see which IDs are taken.

Slides

The set of training slides that the Dashboard knows about is defined at Training modules/dashboard/slides. A new slide can be created with only a wiki page, like this.

The slide's unique ID — followed by a dash — should be the first part of the title of the subpage. (For the example above, the ID is 10304.)
The url slug for the slide should be the rest of the subpage title. (For the example above, the url slug is `neutral-point-of-view`.)
The slide title is defined in a header at the beginning of the page. (For the example above, the title is "Pillar Two".)
The contents of the slide come after the header. You can use basic wikitext formatting. For images and quizzes, special templates are required. Follow the examples on existing slides: slide with an image, slide with a quiz.

Add new slides, grouped and ordered by the module they are in, to the list of slides. To make sure every slide has a different ID, the first three digits of the ID should correspond to the training module ID. For example, the 'wikipedia-essentials' module has ID 10003. Every slide in that module has an ID that starts with 103 (going from 10301 to 10322).

Supported wikitext

The Dashboard uses the wikitext of a slide page (and its translations), and converts it into the Dashboard's own data format. After extracting the slide title and the quiz template (if applicable), the rest of the wikitext is treated as content of the slide. This wikitext is converted from MediaWiki syntax to Markdown (via the Pandoc library), which is then rendered as HTML within a slide on the Dashboard. While most standard wikitext converts accurately to Markdown, no templates or transclusion will work. The Dashboard has special handling of the {{Training module image}} template, converting it to HTML that is roughly equivalent to what the template renders here on Meta. Hyperlinks should be formatted as external links, because wikilinks are treated as relative links and won't point to the same place when rendered from the Dashboard.

Activating a new module

Once you have created a new module (or updated the slides in an existing module), you can make the Dashboard refresh its content by visiting the training reload URL and specifying the url slug of the module you want to update: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/reload_trainings?module=MODULE_SLUG.

Known Issues

Dashboard Conclusion and What's Coming Next (5 of 5)

Because this is a beta tool, not everything is working perfectly. Here is one of the issues that we know about that may make interfaces with the tool difficult:

The metrics may not be entirely reflective of your local language or project context (for example, more bytes are needed to code languages with Cyrillic script than Latin script, and "Bytes added" for the same count of symbols in different languages will be different).

A full and current list of known bugs can be found here.

Report another bug -- If you find a bug that is not listed above, please report it by emailing a description of the bug (with screenshots if possible) to dashboard wikimedia org or submitting the bug through Phabricator.

Give us feedback!

We do have a beta users check in meeting every two weeks for users to share how they are using the Dashboard, share any bugs they found, or ask for advice from other Dashboard facilitators. Let us know if you would like to participate!

[one-1] Note: The software only tracks contributions on the programs 'Tracked Wikis'.

[Note 1]