Philip Durbin π (Aug 07 2024 at 20:17): Philip Durbin π (Aug 07 2024 at 20:17):Currently, the list of Dataverse features can be found at https://dataverse.org/software-features
We aren't great about keeping it up-to-date.
What if we move this list into the guides? :thinking:
Good idea? Bad idea? What do you think?
Dimitri Szabo (Aug 08 2024 at 14:37):Good idea for me, it would be easier to update it in the PR if in the guides
Philip Durbin π (Aug 08 2024 at 14:46):Ok, great, but where in the guides?
Dieuwertje Bloemen (Aug 12 2024 at 14:49):Maybe we need to start listing items that are missing? Then when we have an overview, we can figure out where to put each seperately or if there's perhaps a need to bundle for an "intro/general/software info/about" section or something of the sort.
Philip Durbin π (Aug 12 2024 at 14:53):Sure, sound good. I just created a tab called "add missing features" to the spreadsheet we've been using: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EIFGAfDfZAboFa3_ShRfgoT6xSDpKohDH2_iCyO5MtA/edit?usp=sharing
Philip Durbin π (Aug 12 2024 at 14:53):Please request access and add away!
Sonia Barbosa (Aug 12 2024 at 16:34):@Philip Durbin did you let Dwayne and Emily know you are working on this here? Given they have to get this list together for the CHAT AI Steno requested? Maybe they should help here?
Philip Durbin π (Aug 12 2024 at 17:39):@Sonia Barbosa I did talk to @Dwayne Liburd the other day about the current list of features and he introduced me to Carla who I think is working on this.
Philip Durbin π (Aug 12 2024 at 17:41):This "list of features" thread in #docs is just something I've wondered about for a long time.
We moved https://dataverse.org/integrations into the guides and it has worked quite well for keeping it up to date.
Philip Durbin π (Nov 21 2025 at 14:42):At our monthly meeting on Wednesday I asked about this again and go the go ahead. So I'll create an issue about moving the list of features into the guides.
Philip Durbin π (Nov 22 2025 at 15:35):I created the issue about moving the list of features to the guides: #11998
Philip Durbin π (Nov 22 2025 at 15:37):I just made a pull request at #12000 to do the very minimum, which is to copy the list over, as is.
You can preview it here: https://dataverse-guide--12000.org.readthedocs.build/en/12000/admin/features.html
Philip Durbin π (Nov 22 2025 at 15:37):@Dieuwertje Bloemen @Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ I put it under the Admin Guide, like we talked about.
Philip Durbin π (Nov 24 2025 at 18:44):Great comment by @Julian Gautier about work he and @Dwayne Liburd did a while back to categorize the features, which lives on in our brochure for Harvard Dataverse: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/11998#issuecomment-3571555917
Julian Gautier (Nov 24 2025 at 19:15):Thanks. I'd say this is work folks at IQSS did, which informed how features were described and organized on that brochure
Philip Durbin π (Nov 24 2025 at 19:16):Gotcha. Credit where credit is due!
Philip Durbin π (Nov 24 2025 at 19:17):We're targeting an admin audience, the Admin Guide. What's the audience for the brochure?
Julian Gautier (Nov 24 2025 at 19:37):I'd say the audience is for people wanting to use Harvard Dataverse for publishing and finding data. @Sonia Barbosa takes the brochure to conferences and meetings where those types of folks might be interested
Philip Durbin π (Nov 24 2025 at 19:37):Ok, sounds like authors and downloaders, mostly. Thanks.
Julian Gautier (Nov 24 2025 at 19:38):Yeah and ppl managing collections, so like curators, and other data support folks
Philip Durbin π (Nov 24 2025 at 19:39):Got it. Thanks.
Philip Durbin π (Nov 24 2025 at 19:40):In the Admin Guide we also want to cover people who care about lower level stuff like OIDC for auth.
Philip Durbin π (Dec 11 2025 at 16:41):I just presented the categorized list of features (#12011) to @Ceilyn Boyd @Sonia Barbosa and @Dwayne Liburd and they all like where we're going.
Dwayne already has a mockup of a future dataverse.org homepage that includes a few cards showing top features. The plan is to link from there to the list of features in the guides we're working on.
And from the list of features in the guides, we will link back to https://dataverse.org/software-features which will have a nicer looking summary of features instead of the current brain dump.
This new issue is about related design work: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-pm/issues/498
Philip Durbin π (Dec 22 2025 at 17:09):I went ahead and merged the categorized list of features (#12011) into the main pull request (#12000). I showed it at tech hours last week and there were no objections.
Philip Durbin π (Jan 07 2026 at 18:59):I just created a doc where we can jot down our ideas of features that should be added to the new features list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10RIvsUntk9vbCofpic-ld-yrfko3sUvH8uH4eqqfYco/edit?usp=sharing
Please feel free to edit!
Philip Durbin π (Feb 03 2026 at 15:12):Hmm, we should probably add more geospatial features to the list.
Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ (Feb 05 2026 at 12:43):@Philip Durbin π are you referring to the Borealis Geospatial work? not to hog the thread, but i was curious how that aligns with the DataCite geolocation schema, and whether this'll become the agreed upon implementation for a geospatial field :smile:
Philip Durbin π (Feb 05 2026 at 14:26):Yes! In @Amber Leahey's talk (#geospatial > Expanded geospatial metadata block - Feb 3 Community Call) she mentioned that upcoming work as well as existing features such as the geospatial metadata block itself and special handling of some geospatial files (GeoJSON, GeoTIFF, Shapefile, NetCDF): https://guides.dataverse.org/en/6.9/user/dataset-management.html#geojson (and below).
Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ (Feb 05 2026 at 16:48):ooh, thank you for those links! :smile:
Philip Durbin π (Feb 13 2026 at 16:07):@Dieuwertje Bloemen and I just made a lot of progress! Here's the commit and the preview: https://dataverse-guide--12000.org.readthedocs.build/en/12000/admin/features.html
Still very much a work in progress, but we're getting there. Again, this is the spreadsheet we're editing, the "Next/2026" tab: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EIFGAfDfZAboFa3_ShRfgoT6xSDpKohDH2_iCyO5MtA/edit?gid=729532473#gid=729532473
Then we run this to update the page:
curl -L "https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EIFGAfDfZAboFa3_ShRfgoT6xSDpKohDH2_iCyO5MtA/export?gid=729532473&format=tsv" | python3 ../../scripts/issues/11998/tsv2md.py > source/admin/features.md
Oliver Bertuch (Feb 13 2026 at 16:26):Don't look now, but may be a nice layout option: https://sphinx-design.readthedocs.io/en/furo-theme/grids.html
Philip Durbin π (Feb 13 2026 at 16:28):Huh, looks nice, but we'd have to switch the theme for the whole site, right?
Oliver Bertuch (Feb 13 2026 at 16:44):I'd say let's try without changing the theme. It's an extension.
Philip Durbin π (Feb 13 2026 at 16:48):Could you maybe make a new branch off of https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/tree/11998-features-in-guides and show us what you have in mind?
Philip Durbin π (Feb 13 2026 at 19:37):I just added a few more features and descriptions in https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/pull/12000/changes/6632334b3278b88495f889140a9461f750b45457
Here's the preview: https://dataverse-guide--12000.org.readthedocs.build/en/12000/admin/features.html
Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ (Feb 16 2026 at 14:34):looks great!
Philip Durbin π (Mar 27 2026 at 16:16):@Dieuwertje Bloemen @AmΓ©lie Fiocca great progress today! I just pushed our changes: https://dataverse-guide--12000.org.readthedocs.build/en/12000/admin/features.html
Philip Durbin π (Mar 27 2026 at 16:16):As a reminder for next time, we were working on the "integrations" category.
Philip Durbin π (Mar 27 2026 at 16:18):For anyone else looking at the list, yes we know we added an empty "highlights" section at the top and some "misc" stuff at the bottom. We'll continue to iterate next time. All are welcome! See #docs > doc group meeting
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 15:36):Ahhh... AI is great for stuff like this:
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 15:36):@Dieuwertje Bloemen @Alyssa Conlon @Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ @Parth karalkar great, productive meeting today! Thanks!
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 15:49):The pull request is ready for review! Move the list of features into the guides #12000
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 18:57):I hate to say this. But that page is terrible.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 18:58):It's a huge wall of text, really hard to parse and really hard to comprehend
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 18:58):May I suggest something?
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 18:58):(I couldn't make to todays meeting, had to take care of kids)
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 19:00):@Oliver Bertuch please!
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:00):https://sphinx-design.readthedocs.io/en/furo-theme/cards.html
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:00):Let me cook up a quick example
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 19:03):My favorite part of the page is the table of contents, I must admit. :sweat_smile:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:33):
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:33):Here's an example of how using cards in a grid can look like
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:34):We can add more eye candy like symbols to every card's title
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:34):Have a nice picture for the first card
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 19:35):interesting
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 19:35):@Dieuwertje Bloemen @Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ @Alyssa Conlon what do you think?
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:36):Do you want me to create a PR into your PR, so we get a browseable preview of this?
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 19:37):@Oliver Bertuch yes please!
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:37):Coming right up
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 19:40):Thanks so much. We went 25 minutes over today. I'm somewhat desperate to just get anything merged. I was thinking we could get fancier in the future but if you can help us get fancier now, great!
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:41):Sorry!
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:41):It really felt like a mistake to merge this as is.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 19:41):Oh, it's fine. No one was kept against their will. :smile:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:42):https://dataverse-guide--12460.org.readthedocs.build/en/12460/admin/features.html
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 19:43):Interesting. So you're thinking we should get rid of the table of contents? My favorite part! :sweat_smile:
Alyssa Conlon (Jun 12 2026 at 19:44):Anyway to preview the sections with more content? I'm wondering if it's look too much for 10+ tiles?
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:46):I can reshape one of those, just a sec
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:46):Philip Durbin π said:
Interesting. So you're thinking we should get rid of the table of contents? My favorite part! :sweat_smile:
I'm not saying let's get rid of it, but it bothered me while hacking on it. It got in the way.
That said... Looking at https://zammad.com/en/product/features or https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/#intellij-idea-features it's not always necessary to have a TOC. I'm not yet sure how to make the TOC reappear, the h2 in the cards are not parsed as TOC.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:48):Alyssa Conlon said:
Anyway to preview the sections with more content? I'm wondering if it's look too much for 10+ tiles?
Integrations has 11 points and is the longest, I'll reshape that.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 19:59):@Alyssa Conlon @Philip Durbin π pushed just now. Converted an additional section (interop) to have something "after" the largest section to look at as well.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:02):Build is done, take a look! https://dataverse-guide--12460.org.readthedocs.build/en/12460/admin/features.html
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:19):sorry, doing a millions things! :sweat_smile:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:31):Please play around with the grid options. The cards can, for example, be made take up more space:
Alyssa Conlon (Jun 12 2026 at 20:32):I think that looks a bit better, with the title of the section not as a tile, it feels less crowded
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:32):Do you want me to commit this?
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:34):Looks a little squished on mobile:
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:34):Can the cards be responsive? Maybe only one card at a time on mobile?
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:36):Yes.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:36):Do you want me to do that?
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:37):Also, should I make all the "intro cards" appear as headers?
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:37):If you don't mind! And yeah, I think I titles at the top looks a bit better.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:37):Do y'all want me to just convert the whole thing?
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:37):It's your branch! :smile:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:38):Bah I just don't want to do too much tedious work if y'all think this is a bad idea / doesn't work
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:38):maybe AI can do it :robot:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:38):After all, we want to improve readability and such
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:39):Longer term we probably want some nice images to spice things up. :chili_pepper:
So it isn't a wall of text. :wall:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:39):Absolutely!
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 20:39):See how Jetbrains does this in their Feature list?
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:47):The reason I like the table of contents is that you can quickly scan it without seeing the details.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:47):You can think "do these headings speak to me or not?"
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:48):And decide which one, if any, to click on, to learn more.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 20:49):Now, I recognize that what's below the table of contents (in the PR from this morning) is not very pretty.
I'm just wondering if we can still have some scanability. :thinking:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 21:36):I just pushed the converted, responsive document
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 21:37):For TOCs to work, any h2 must be at the root of the doctree, any nested h2 will not show up.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 21:37):I can't make "hidden" h2s. :sad:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 21:38):So we might need to create a manual TOC...
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 21:38):But maybe that's OK? Let me see if I can get something going that also helps with linking to the user guide.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 22:38):This is how it looks on my phone:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:39):Huh?????
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:39):That's very strange
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:39):Are you sure you are looking at the latest build?
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:39):Actually I see that the build must have fallen through!
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:40):Bah RTD timed out
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:41):Let me trigger the build again
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:42):That's much better! https://dataverse-guide--12460.org.readthedocs.build/en/12460/admin/features.html
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 22:47):Nice!
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 22:49):You found icons for everything?!? :mind:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:51):It wasn't that hard...
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 22:52):You know, maybe we don't need the table of contents after all. Less is more!
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:52):Gimme a sec. About to push that.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 22:55):Done. https://dataverse-guide--12460.org.readthedocs.build/en/12460/admin/features.html
Philip Durbin π (Jun 12 2026 at 23:03):Nice. And it doesn't look like too much manual effort to keep the table of contents up to date.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 23:06):Unfortunately I cannot manipulate the TOC to include the stuff automatically. Not sure how often we are going to alter the categories, so you're probably right.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 23:07):It might be nice to add more cards to have a concise block layout :see_no_evil: Optimizations for later...
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 12 2026 at 23:09):@Alyssa Conlon @Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ @Dieuwertje Bloemen what do y'all think?
Philip Durbin π (Jun 15 2026 at 10:13):Ha. I see a :star_struck: from @AmΓ©lie Fiocca
@Dieuwertje Bloemen @Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ @Alyssa Conlon what do you think?
(I'm asking because code freeze is today and I'm thinking about merging it!)
@Oliver Bertuch my only feedback is that I might remove some of the explanatory text at the top about using links and scrolling.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 15 2026 at 10:25):We're talking about this text, right?
This page highlights features for administrators and power-users of a Dataverse installation. Use the links below to jump to a category, or scroll through all the feature cards.
The rationale behind me adding this short introduction was my attempt at putting myself in the shoes of someone new to Dataverse. They might appreciate a classification of the content and how it's intended to work if they landed on the page from somewhere else. If y'all feel like this is superfluous, ditch it!
Philip Durbin π (Jun 15 2026 at 11:00):A little intro like this is good. The shorter the better. I think it's seeing the term "feature cards" that bothers me a bit. People don't care that Sphinx calls these things cards. :smile:
Anyway, it's a minor point. Something I'm happy to tweak a bit before it's merged.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 15 2026 at 11:06):I think the term "cards" is increasingly used these days. There are now model cards, score cards and I think I've seen "feature card" in other contexts as well. But sure, adapt as you see fit!
Dieuwertje Bloemen (Jun 15 2026 at 12:53):Looks good to me! I like how the categories at the top are a bit more concise than the entire ToC.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 15 2026 at 13:06):@Oliver Bertuch here's my suggestion: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/pull/12460#pullrequestreview-4497617936
Philip Durbin π (Jun 15 2026 at 13:06):Also, your PR is still in draft.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 15 2026 at 13:57):Oh yeah I did a draft because I wasn't sure y'all like it.
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 15 2026 at 13:57):Let me fix that right away
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 15 2026 at 13:58):Commited and "ready for review" :wink:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 15 2026 at 13:58):Please note: this is a PR to your PR :sweat_smile:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 15 2026 at 13:59):So could also just commit to the branch :wink:
Philip Durbin π (Jun 15 2026 at 14:17):Merged! All of it! We'll have our list of features in the guides for 6.11! :tada:
For now, you can preview it at https://preview.guides.gdcc.io/en/develop/admin/features.html (linked from the versions page).
Thanks for all the hard work everyone! Especially @Dieuwertje Bloemen @Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ @Alyssa Conlon and @Oliver Bertuch!
Philip Durbin π (Jun 15 2026 at 14:19):No cards in the PDF but it still looks fine to me:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 15 2026 at 14:19):We can still optimize that, if we really think the PDF is important to anyone...
Philip Durbin π (Jun 15 2026 at 14:21):Meh, again, the PDF looks fine to me!
Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ (Jun 18 2026 at 09:19):looks great, thanks for your work on this @Oliver Bertuch ! :muscle:
Oliver Bertuch (Jun 18 2026 at 09:56):Thank y'all for putting together the content! I only did some styling.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 18 2026 at 10:02):Yes, the styling is very nice.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 18 2026 at 10:04):How should we talk about the list of features in the 6.11 release notes?
As of this writing in https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/blob/12283-6.11-release-notes/doc/release-notes/6.11-release-notes.md (PR #12475) I have it pretty low down under "Other Changes" like this:
Philip Durbin π (Jun 18 2026 at 10:04):But maybe we could move it up some? I'm not sure it should rise to the level of a highlight though.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 18 2026 at 10:05):I could add a bit more about the "why". That we want to maintain the list in git and that the community can help, if they wish.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 18 2026 at 10:17):Oh, that reminds me, should Locally FAIR Data be included on the list of features? Here's what I put in the draft of the 6.11 release notes above:
This release includes experimental support for "Locally FAIR" data. When enabled, this feature allows publication of content that will only be visible to authorized users or groups within a Dataverse installation. User without authorization will not see the Locally FAIR collections, datasets, or files in search results and cannot visit their pages or access them via the Dataverse API.
For more information, see Locally FAIR Data in the guides and #12319.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 18 2026 at 10:18):(We haven't built the 6.11 guides yet but you can preview that content at https://preview.guides.gdcc.io/en/develop/user/dataverse-management.html#locally-fair )
Vaida PlankytΔ π¨ (Jun 18 2026 at 10:33):i agree that adding a bit about the why (easier maintaining and visibility) would be great! :blush:
Dieuwertje Bloemen (Jun 18 2026 at 11:12):I also don't think it should be a highlight in the release notes if I look at the rest. Regarding the 'why', I would definitely explain it a bit, and that we went through every feature to ensure relevance. Otherwise, it might just seem like a copy.
Dieuwertje Bloemen (Jun 18 2026 at 11:13):For locally FAIR: I would say "not right now". I think we kept any features with experimental support out of the list, if I remember correctly (could definitely be wrong). But once it's not longer considered experimental, I think we should for sure add it in there.
Philip Durbin π (Jun 18 2026 at 11:56):Make sense! Thanks!
Philip Durbin π (Jun 18 2026 at 13:42):Ok, I hope this is a little better:
Philip Durbin π (Jul 01 2026 at 19:02):Our lovely list of features is in the 6.11 guides: https://guides.dataverse.org/en/6.11/admin/features.html
Philip Durbin π (Jul 08 2026 at 20:50):I just announced how I updated https://dataverse.org/software-features to point to the updated version in the guides.
Last updated: Aug 18 2026 at 08:27 UTC