The Oskari community got together in Helsinki
Oskari Community Day had about 20 participants this year. While there were a few familiar faces from the Joint Development Forum and NLS, we also had the joy of welcoming new people to the event and the broader Oskari community. And what would be a better place to get to know Oskari better than to meet the people who are already using it or are also planning to use Oskari in the near future?
What’s new in Oskari?
Sami Mäkinen from National Land Survey presented the new features and fixes implemented during the past year, namely Oskari 2.12 and 2.13. at the beginning of the event. The latest release focuses on improving the user experience on mobile devices. Small details make a big difference! E.g. on smaller screens Oskari now hides certain functionalities by default and gives more space for the map view. Sami also answered and commented on participants’ more technical questions and took us on a quick tour around Oskari’s GitHub. In case you didn’t make it to the event or missed it the first time around: if you want to find Oskari’s release notes for front-end, look here, release notes for serverside here - or if you’re looking for the guide on how to update Oskari, see here.
Oskari use case
From Helsinki Region Environmental Services (HSY) we had Henna-Kaisa Stjernberg present us the SeutuMassa tool and other Oskari map services of HSY. SeutuMassa is a soil management tool that started because there was a need to present and organise the objects of Ämmässuo via a map. Now the data that was earlier collected to an Excel file can be used in a web-based map application. Thus it is easier to see e.g. the mass and the location of the materials - which is important also because of the monitoring of the environmental permit!
The data is updated the same way as in normal Oskari web service but also with the built-in content editor. The workers of Ämmässuo also create their own layers by drawing the features on a map based on the aerial photos of the area. The map service allows the accounting of the materials and can be used for finding the places where there is surplus of the material.
We have published an article about SeutuMassa earlier in our blog.
Instructions for procuring Oskari
During the spring there had been discussion in the Joint Development Forum about procuring Oskari and how the members wished that there would be some guidelines on procuring. Oskari communications coordinator Juho Rekilä gave a small introduction on the topic and went through some examples of what to take into consideration before procuring Oskari. Three different scenarios were procuring a new Oskari instance (in a situation where the organisation doesn’t have an existing Oskari map service), procuring an update to an existing Oskari instance (from version x to the latest version) and procuring configurations to an existing Oskari instance (new functionalities or tailoring).
The material was discussed with all the participants and collected for future use. The Instructions for procuring Oskari document will be on the new Oskari website in autumn 2024. The instructions will hopefully make the procuring process a bit easier and help the procurers to think about their needs and what is required from the consultants.
Accessibility
After the workshop and coffee break we had an accessibility specialist Juha Sylberg from the Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired to talk about how visually impaired use map services. Accessibility has been a hot topic this spring in Oskari’s Joint Development Forum and we were very pleased to have Juha share his insights. He talked about how visually impaired and blind people navigate to different places and what kinds of services (such as mobile applications) they use instead of the usual map services.
New website coming
Sini Pöytäniemi closed the event presenting the upcoming Oskari website. The new website has a completely new design and all the relevant information easily in display. The work for the website has been ongoing for some time, and the new site will be launched in early autumn. An extra effort has been made to make documentation more approachable, better organised and more comprehensive. Also the overall user experience of the website has been improved to make it intuitive to use.
We’d like to thank all of the participants once again & hope to see you again in another live Oskari meeting!
Discussing the Instructions for procuring Oskari.