Creating a profiles page on your WMS site is a great way to present the members of your staff and community in a directory format. With the tools in the WMS, you can create one easily by following the steps in this article.
The following information can also be found on the McGill IT knowledge base site.
As a visual supplement, we have created a video guide that goes over the steps mentioned in this article to create a profile page for your site:
Video guide on creating profiles
In this article:
Basic steps for creating profiles
Video guide on creating profiles
What is profiles?
McGill Profiles is a feature of the WMS that allows you to display information about people in a consistent way throughout your website both as individual profile pages and in a directory format. You can choose the level of detail you want to provide; for example, you can display basic contact information, or include details such as title, education, area of expertise and interests.
The profiles list is a page that displays the profiles on your site in a directory format. It is a standard way of presenting a contact directory to your audience. Your site visitors can filter the Profiles content they see based on the fields you have set up (e.g., by Department or Research Area).
Visitors to your site can access the profiles list, which contains all the profiles available on your site. The list is at www.mcgill.ca/sitename/people, where sitename is the name of your site.
Note: If you have just had McGill Profiles activated, the profiles list will not be visible until the first profile has been created.
Basic steps for creating profiles
- Enable profile fields - From the available profile data fields, choose which ones you want to enable, and select the order in which the fields will display on the Profile page.
- Create profiles - You can either create profiles from scratch, or import basic personal information updated from Banner.
Note: profiles may take up to 18 hours to update on your site after creation.
Enable profile fields
Fields that can be enabled are grouped into 3 categories: Banner Updatable fields, Filterable fields and Basic fields.
To enable fields:
- Log in to your site as a site administrator or manager and go to Structure > McGill Profile Field settings
- Click on the FIELDS tab at the top and by default you will be on the Field management tab
- Banner Updatable fields
- Under Banner Updatable fields, you can choose which fields should be enabled in profiles. Select the field according to the LABEL column and put a check mark for it under the ENABLED column
- You can have these fields update automatically from Banner by putting a check mark for the field under the UPDATE FROM BANNER column
- If UPDATE FROM BANNER is checked, it means that the data can only be updated by changes made in Banner. These fields cannot be edited by Site Managers
- Click Save at the bottom of the page to save any changes you have made
Filterable fields
Filters appear as blocks in the right sidebar of the profiles pist page. Filterable fields (such as Department, Research Areas, Languages Spoken, etc.) can be used as filters to narrow down the list of profiles displayed in the Profiles List.
Each filter is a McGill Profile field that contains allowable values. These values are used to display only a subset of relevant profiles in the profiles list.
For example, if the Department field is set as a filter, visitors will be able to filter the Profile List to display only those profiles associated with a specific department such as Geography.
Basic fields
Under Basic fields, you can choose which fields should be enabled in profiles. Select the field according to the LABEL column and put a check mark for it under the ENABLED column.
Creating profiles from Banner
There are two ways to create profiles pages:
- Import profiles from Banner
- Create profiles manually
Import profiles from Banner
Use this option to automatically populate basic profile fields based on McGill personnel data found in Banner (INB). A person must be classified in Banner by HR as a member of staff in order for their Profile to be published; simply having a record in Banner is not enough.
From the Administrative shortcuts toolbar, click Create content > McGill Profile. Click on the Import from Banner tab.
Here you can search for existing McGill personnel in two ways: Create a profile by McGill ID, or Create a profile by name.
Create a Profile by McGill ID:
- Enter a McGill ID and click Create A Profile By McGill ID
- Since there can only be one McGill person with that ID, the profile is created immediately
- Enter the Profile information for the fields you have configured
- Fields that are grayed out in the Edit McGill Profile page are updated directly from Banner
- If you have enabled the Profile Image, you can upload any image file using the image upload field
Create profiles manually
Creating profiles manually should be primarily used for people who do not have active McGill staff credentials in Banner, e.g., casuals, alumni, VIPs, students who are not also listed as staff, MUHC personnel.
Note: There are inherent limitations to manually-created profiles. Besides an inability to have certain fields updated from Banner, profilees will not be able to edit their own profile even if self-authorship is enabled.
To create profiles manually:
- From the Administrative shortcuts toolbar, click Add content > McGill Profile. Click on the Create Profile tab.
- On the Create McGill Profile page you will have data entry fields for those profile fields you have enabled in the Profile fields
- Enter the person's Display Name and any other profile data fields you want to display.
Note: any fields which are set to Update from Banner will not be editable when you create a profile manually.
Enable Self-Authorship
You can allow profilees to update their own profile.
Note: Only profiles that have been created by importing them from Banner can be edited by the profilee.
To enable self-authorship:
- Go to Structure > McGill Profile Field settings,
- Click on the Settings tab,
- Check Profile self-authorship
