Roadmap (as of May 2023)

We aim for three releases per year. If urgent updates are needed in between releases, we may put out an additional release. In calendar year 2023, we project releases in May 2023 and September 2023. (Please note that the originally planned January and May releases were combined into one.)

Work Currently Scheduled through Winter 2024

When work is ready it goes into a release. Sometimes work will be moved to a future release if it is not ready by the time of a scheduled release. More detailed information is available closer to the time of a release.

Winter 2023

Spring-Summer 2023

Fall 2023

Winter 2024

  • staff interface upgrades

  • code refactoring to make it more efficient and maintainable

  • digital objects

  • small bug fixes and new features from sprints

    • metadata schema requests

  • staff interface upgrades

  • code refactoring to make it more efficient and maintainable

  • PDF improvements

  • public interface search improvements

  • public interface layout/functionality improvements

  • small bug fixes and new features from sprints and contractor work, though most focus will be on the public interface work listed above

  • staff interface upgrades

  • code refactoring to make it more efficient and maintainable

  • bulk edit/update

  • subjects module

  • bug fixes and new features from sprints and contractor work, including

    • continuation of public interface work

    • technical documentation improvements

  • staff interface upgrades

  • code refactoring to make it more efficient and maintainable

  • multi-language and international standards support

  • support for trigger warnings, TK labels, and mechanism to provide feedback via the public interface

  • small bug fixes and new features from sprints and contractor work, though most focus will be on the multi-language and standards work listed above

Brief explanations of scheduled projects:

bulk edit/update - increased ability to update information in records already in the system across records

code refactoring to make it more efficient and maintainable - ongoing work to improve existing code in the process of addressing bugs and feature requests

digital objects - a small number of existing feature requests that improve the display and contextualization of digital objects in the public interface; more may be added based on community discussions

multi-language and international standards support - while the application can be used in many different languages and different standards, currently there are only limited workarounds or local customizations for doing archival description of the same materials in multiple languages (a necessity in many institutional or national contexts) or using international archival descriptive standards like ISAD(G). The aim would be to build more of this support into the core code itself. (Please note that this will be a major undertaking requiring substantial developer time and effort, and will significantly impact the capacity to take on other projects while it is going on.)

PDF improvements: make staff and public interface stylesheets produce PDFs that are as similar as possible. Improve accessibility of PDFs across the application.

public interface search improvements - improved relevancy, accuracy, and display of search results

public interface layout/functionality improvements - improved accessibility and usability of the public interface, with specific focus on Collection Organization recommendations from the Usability sub-team (ANW-1118: Usability Sub-team 2020 Collection Organization View recommendationsReady for Inclusion in Release Candidate)

staff interface upgrades: many infrastructure upgrades that are needed for future staff interface improvements - Bootstrap 4, Rails 6, new date picker, revisit Selenium tests, reviewing Javascript packaging/dependencies

subjects module - expansion of the subjects module, with particular focus on making it accommodate more inclusive description - while there are individual feature requests already, it may be necessary to convene a community working group to comprehensively evaluate and develop a specification for the updated module (anti-racism and inclusion priority)

technical documentation improvements - working with the Technical Documentation sub-team, improvements to the layout and content of the technical documentation that would make it more helpful for system administrators and developers

trigger warnings, TK labels, and mechanism to provide feedback via the public interface (anti-racism and inclusion priority)


Priorities not currently scheduled for the year, but may be added if resources or community partners become available

  • users and permissions

  • customization from the staff interface

  • controlled value lists improvements

  • reports

Please note that additional anti-racism development priorities will be scheduled through a different process.