story of multnomah county: migrating from vignette and building a drupal ecosystem

Drupal at Multnomah County Building a Drupal Ecosystem for

Public and Internal Websites!!!!

Presented by Joshua Mitchell

IT Enterprise/Web Application Services Manager

The story so far• Key launches:

1. Public website (multco.us) 2. Intranet (commons.multco.us)3. Apps platform (*.apps.multco.us)4. Library (multcolib.org5. Animal Services (multcopets.org)

!

Now it’s time for upgrades

http://multco.us

http://commons.multco.us

http://apps.multco.us

http://multcolib.org

http://multcopets.org


1. Public website (multco.us)2. Intranet (commons.multco.us) 3. Apps platform (*.apps.multco.us)4. Library (multcolib.org)5. Animal Services (multcopets.org)


http://multco.us






1. Public website (multco.us)2. Intranet (commons.multco.us)3. Apps platform (*.apps.multco.us) 4. Library (multcolib.org)5. Animal Services (multcopets.org)


http://multco.us





Apps Platform• Aegir Multisite installation• Distributed development• Low cost of entry for an internal application• Includes a couple external applications


1. Public website (multco.us)2. Intranet (commons.multco.us)3. Apps platform (*.apps.multco.us)4. Library (multcolib.org) 5. Animal Services (multcopets.org)


http://multco.us






1. Public website (multco.us)2. Intranet (commons.multco.us)3. Apps platform (*.apps.multco.us)4. Library (multcolib.org)5. Animal Services (multcopets.org)


http://multco.us





What does it take?

What does it take, in an environment with no open source software or expertise, to launch and support 15 Drupal production Drupal sites in 3.5 years?• Executive buy in• Rapid innovation through piloting• Hiring and/or building internal talent• Code deployment and change management

Executive Buy-in• It’s easier now… the White House

project made this conversation easier to have with your CIO.!

• Show the lower cost of licensing• Highlight the big wins by other

organizations• Talk up the rapid innovation that is

triggered by contributed modules

Innovate through pilot projects


1. Ask for a pilot


1. Ask for a pilot

2. Pick something that is winnable


1. Ask for a pilot


3. Knock it out of the park


4. Repeat

1. Ask for a pilot


3. Knock it out of the park

Hiring and/or building internal talent


Should you hire or to train up your existing staff?



Do both!



Do both!• Find Drupal partners to help with training• Send your staff to DrupalCon (or BAD Camp, PNWDS, etc)• If you cannot hire for Drupal, hire for open source passion and willingness to learn Drupal.• Highlight the benefits of working for your organization (pay is not the only draw)

Code deployment• Get as much of your build as possible into code. • Get your code in source control—preferably Git.• Figure out your deployment process. (Database down, code up)

• Development (local or Dev server)• Integration or QAT (and test heavily)• UAT (and test heavily)• Production

• Automate your code pushes.• Assign build masters to facilitate communication.

Git workflowPull from master to multiple dev branches. When code is pushed (committed) to master, it goes to our QAT/integration server. We then deploy code to UAT and then Production.

Master

Dev

Feature 1

Feature 2

Change management

Change management

γνῶθι σεαυτόν (Greek for “know thyself”)

Change management

γνῶθι σεαυτόν (Greek for “know thyself”)

• Your customers need to know what you plan to do—even if you don’t think it will result in an outage.

• Take pride in high availability.• Plan your patch cycles.• When is a security update necessary versus a nice to have?

• Review security updates for core within 72 hours.• Decide update philosophy.

• Build to the cutting edge and update to the oldest viable system.

Drupal at Multnomah County // Questions

Questions?

story of multnomah county: migrating from vignette and building a drupal ecosystem

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