Last Meeting’s Minutes

Discussion:

• (SPARCRequest) Improve Background Submit Process Time - move the submission in SPARC Step 5 to be a background process so as to not hold up SPARC navigation.

  • Current order (also see general list of processes):

    • user click submit in Step 5-->pop up survey and/or MOU modal-->user responses to survey and/or MOU -->request to submit pop up modal-->user choses requests to send and clicks submit-->[processing occurs] - these are what will move to ‘background’, presenting next part to user-->(edited) submission confirmation page displays-->user can go to protocol or otherwise use SPARC.

  • Discussion -

    • Most of the processes happen in a short window; emails move to delayed jobs for processing

      • Should still work with (SPARCRequest) Change When System Satisfaction Survey Appears and (SPARCRequest) Add MOU pop-up when user submits a request, do not proceed unless user agrees

      • ACTION ITEM: Confirm processing order when multiple SSRs are submitted

    • Appears major hold up may be for calendars at the ‘Arm minimum_visit_count and minimum_subject_count set’ step

    • No true issue of presenting submission confirmation page while other actions are being performed.

      • Determine the specific language & instructions, and if users are still routed to the protocol (e.g., is that helpful if the study has not finished processing) and/or dashboard (is that helpful if user is only interested in the current protocol)

    • Post submit notification email delays/unsuccessful submissions:

      • Email not sent: go into delayed jobs. system automatically restarts the jobs if the emails have not successfully been sent. Monitor would work same a currently - may need a notice to devs for significant delays or continue current practices to monitor the jobs

      • Data issues: these may be limited due to SPARC enhancements and validations over the years. however, could add a new check for these types of issues and notice to research team of problems to correct

Open

Institutional Updates:

Louisiana Clinical & Translational Science Center: 

2/26/2025

• Using upgraded Rails/Ruby in the prod environment

• Getting error ' :exception_recipients => ENV["EXCEPTION_RECIPIENTS"] || %w{admin@example.org}' for the file to customize who will receive exception emails. Used to work before Rails 7. The emails are not encoded in the configuration file. Suggest updating it in the dotenv.example file.

• Reported (SPARCDashboard, SPARCRequest) Documents table Uploaded bug - is not upgrade related since it’s already in prod. It may have been an issue since last bootstrap - needs to be a string.

3/12/2025

• No updates

MUSC:

3/12/2025

• Reminder

  • Migration to Pivotal Tracker (going away end of April 2025) to Jira is underway. Look out for Confluence account invitations if you don’t already have one.

• Upcoming Releases

  • SPARC v3.13.0 - Ruby 3.3.1 & Ruby Rails 7.0.8.1 upgrades - Winter 2025

    • Working on these upgrades issues resolution

  • SPARCFulfillment v3.6.0 Release - Winter 2025

  • RMID - Spring 2025

  • SPARC v3.14.0 Release - Summer 2025

  • SPARCFulfillment v.3.7.0 Ruby & Rails upgrade - Summer 2025

  • SPARCFulfillment v.3.7.0 - Fall 2025

Oregon Health & Science University:

2/26/2025

• Not in attendance

3/12/2025

• Reported bug in (SPARCDashboard) - Admin Edit Request Details Dates not Saving seems to have been introduced in release 3.12.x version, which they recently upgraded to. It edits if there’s already a date there but doesn’t save the date if none exists. They use these fields often and requested timeline on working on a fix.

Iowa

2/26/2025

• Not in attendance

3/12/2025

• Not in attendance

Case Western

2/26/2025

• Asked if there’s a rake task or programming in newer releases for:

  • Emailing PIs of draft requests. A: The ‘Unsubmitted Request’ feature was added in SPARC v3.12.0 as a SPARC front page alert in these instances, but there is not email notice sent out.

    • Related discussion included Ying’s observation of users' confusion of the Add/Request button in dashboard as being intended to submit more services. Suggested exploring a different label, perhaps ‘Manage Request’.

  • Emailing service providers of outstanding submitted request - for instance if in the status for over 30 days. A: There is not a feature for this, namely due to email fatigue and the status workflows vary among providers. Would require defining statuses for triggers and/or per site or catalog org to define and enable/disable.

  • Jeremy will enter in a story to begin discussions of sites' interest in any of these features.

3/12/2025

• Not in attendance

Children’s National

2/26/2025

• Not in attendance

3/12/2025

• Not in attendance

Stony Brook:

2/26/2025

• Not in attendance

3/12/2025

• Not in attendance

Morehouse:

2/26/2025

• Upgrading to latest SPARC releases but having difficulty working through the process from example installation documents since they are intended as examples and is from some time ago. Ying suggested starting with installation under doc folder (dev installation) and then think of what server you’ll use. MUSC will set up a call with Morehouse to talk through their process.

• Will reach out for SPARC review when further along with set up

3/12/2025

• Met with MUSC last week to upgrade to latest SPARC release. Working on adding services towards implementation.

• Unable to add services to the SPARC cart on the Dev environment. Works in Prod. MUSC will follow up.