USAG meeting 2009-05-28

Summary and conclusions

• The draft strategy note
• The new TPM model draft as concluded from the 2009/06/09 SA1 f2f meeting at CERN.
• The draft OLA.

Attendance
----------
GGUS - Torsten Antoni, Guenter Grein
CERN - Diana Bosio, Maria Dimou (chairperson)
UK/I - John Kewley, Claire Devereux
IT - Riccardo Brunetti, Tiziana Ferrari
CE - Jan Kmunicek, Ales Krenek
NE - Jan Justinus Keijser, Dennis van Dok (NIKHEF), Vera Hansper, Gert Svensson (ROC_NE)
SWE -
SEE - Alex Stanciu
FR - David Bouvet
Alice-
CMS -
LHCb - Joel Closier
Atlas - Alessadro de Salvo

Notes by Maria

Agenda:

1. Agenda approval
2. Comments on minutes from the April 30th USAG meeting [here].
3. User Support strategy issues, news since last USAG:
   1. Clarifications by Jan and Ales on the paper on new software process. [ Also linked below under More Information].
   2. All-Hands' meeting presentation on User Support in Cyprus early May.
   3. Possible TPM models for evaluation.
   This is the 3rd of a series of USAG meetings where we are called to shape the User Support strategy in the last year of EGEE and in view of EGI.
   The first draft of a Strategy note v0.4-2 is appended to this meeting's agenda as Document.

   EGI Blueprint v.3 (Dec 2008) for quick reference during these meetings.

4. Continuous user support assessment as required by MSA-1.6 via the weekly escalation reports This time: emphasis on EMT reports.
5. Review Action List [go to point 6 of these notes.]
6. A.O.B.
   1. Draw conclusions from the 18 messages' email thread that followed the publishing of the April 2nd USAG minutes Distilled summary . It was attached as 'Text' to the last meeting agenda but was decided to be left for today.
   2. Interfaces between GGUS and Regional helpdesks in EGI [Relevant documentation index]
   3. For the Italian ROC: Your web services plans are needed in savannah #101443.
   4. For All: Renaming 'less urgent' tickets is not simple. What do people think? Details in savannah #107886.
   5. For All: Maintaining parent/child and master/slave relationship on ticket re-opening is not simple. Polling people's experience to refine the requirement. Details in savannah #107339.
   6. For France, SEE, dCache, APROC interface developers: Required feedback to avoid misrouted tickets. Details in savannah #107976.
   7. Reminder: For VO Admins of the LHC Experiment VOs VOMS instructions on how to register your TEAMers and ALARMers. To be done before the next USAG. (Pending answer from ALICE preferably in savannah #104835 please).
7. Next meeting date: Thu 2nd July 2009 @ 9:30 CET ! (NB! Algorithm violation due to the EGEE review on the Last Thursday of June).

Discussion:

1. Agenda: Approved.
2. Minutes: Approved.
3. Strategy discussion on middleware (mw) support: Tiziana provided input from section 4.1 of the EGI Blueprint (document permanently linked from all 2009 USAG agendas) completing Action 20090430-2:

   The middleware support in the EGI blueprint is detailed activity in:
   
   - Section 4.1. EGI FUNDING MODEL
   "The EGI activities can be split into:
   a) NGI national tasks with full responsibility of each NGI/country.
   b) NGI international tasks, related to international cooperation.
   c) EGI.org coordination tasks.
   These are complemented by:
   d) the middleware support and maintenance,
   performed independently by third parties (in particular by the 
   middleware consortia), on request and coordinated by EGI, and by
   e) the support to new user communities"
   
   - The funding of mw support is detailed later on in section 4.1: "TThe 
   middleware support and maintenance mentioned under d) is also part of 
   the direct EGI costs as it is essential to guarantee production level 
   quality middleware with bug fixes, minor adaptations etc.. It is to be 
   covered by EC, Middleware Consortia,NGI and EIRO/ESFRI funding."
   

   The meeting expressed worries about the possible confusion between product maintenance and user support when it comes to middleware. The VOs present, Atlas and LHCb stressed the need to maintain, at least the same service level after the end of EGEE. Ales took the action 20090528-1 to clarify with the UMD team how they plan to interface with GGUS. More actions were distributed to experts of other mw stacks to gather information required for the strategy note. By the time these notes are published Jan offered contribution to the strategy note and the relevant SA1 management presentation on June 9th about the SSCs'promised contribution to user support.

4. Continuous GGUS assessment via the escalation reports:
   Analysis from the latest EMT escalation reports Following this discussion Maria started at the June 3rd EMT and a monthly review of overdue GGUS tickets every first Wednesday of each month. The first group of tickets analysed with the EMT were the ones assigned to ETICS experts.
5. ACTION LIST:
   20090402-1
   Review the 18 points of 'RESPONSIBILITIES' in section 4 of the current version 0.6 of the TPM OLA.
   All.

   
   All other actions from last meeting 20090430-1 to 20090430-8 are Done.
   URIs, where applicable are linked from the agenda of this meeting.
   E.g. here is completed action 20090430-5: JRA1-SA3 Cyprus report by Maria Alandes
   and here is completed action 20090430-4: JRA1-SA3 Cyprus presentation by Diana.
   Tiziana's action on the EGI Blueprint is also done and linked in the 'Discussion' part of these notes.

   
   20090528-1
   Clarify with the UMD team how they plan to interface with GGUS.
   Ales

   
   20090528-2
   Experts of other mw stacks to gather information required for the strategy note.
   Those in contact with ARC, UNICORE and DEISA communities.

   
   20090528-3
   Use M.Alandes' input and all other comments for the next version of the strategy note before next USAG in July 2nd.
   Diana

   
   20090528-4
   Put in the next USAG agenda Escalation reports for VO Support next time. Invite Cal Loomis, Vangelis Floros and Fred. Schaer.
   Maria

   
   20090528-5
   In the Recommended Helpdesk document 9993 remove all mention of the undesirable mail interface.
   Document the move to web services and, later, messaging.
   Make clearly separate sections for the 'Requirements' and the suggested 'implementation' parts.
   Guenter

   
   20090528-6
   Send comments to Guenter on the GGUS interfaces' document index, in particular on doc. 9993.
   Interface developers

   
   20090528-7
   Send comments to Guenter on the Master/Slave tickets. Do we want to maintain the relationship even if 'slaves' are solved?
   Currently this is not the case. Definition info in document 1100.
   Comments in savannah or to ggus-info@cern.ch.
   All

6. A.O.B.
   All AOB agenda items were either updated in the relevant savannah tickets (also linked from the agenda) or entered in the above Action List.
   The summary of USAG 20090402 comments were put twice on the agenda but the relevant people didn't join the meeting and the discussion addressed all these issues by emphasising the need for solid mw support, so the subject was considered already sufficiently covered.

7. Decide on next meeting date: Algorithm is: last Thursday of the month. Next meeting is Thursday Thu 2nd July 2009 @ 9:30 CET ! (NB! Algorithm violation due to the EGEE review on the Last Thursday of the month)