09-Aug-2019
In August, Instruct-ERIC launched new features for ARIA that we want to really shout about. As some of these affect all users of ARIA we wanted to reach out and pick out some of the headline features.
Mail and Messaging
Messaging straight to your inbox
Long-awaited, messages sent to you via ARIA will now be sent directly to your email inbox. Well that by itself is not very exciting but you can also reply straight from your email client. If you want to add someone into the conversation, simply CC them to your email and ARIA will merge them into your message thread.
We didn't leave out the messages panel from this update either. Next time you logon to look at your messages panel you'll see we've added a new drafts feature which will autosave your messages. If you happen to get disconnected or click-away from the messages panel your message will be saved in the new "drafts" panel.
We've also spent some time improving our email templates for all of the customers of ARIA to make things a bit more clear for users. Furthermore access routes will be able to tailor the layout and content of their emails even more than before, with complete control of every last pixel.
API Integration with Diamond Light Source
A new pilot project
Integration with large facilities is critical for us here in the ARIA development team, and we have partnered with Diamond Light Source, part of Instruct-UK, to pilot an integration strategy to link our submission systems. This will allow for submissions that originate in either Diamond or ARIA to be synchronised between the two systems automatically ensuring that users and facilities are tightly integrated throughout the access process.
Thanks to work done by Diamond, they now present an API endpoint for their data which can be used by ARIA to pull proposal data. The UAS team at Diamond worked closely with the ARIA development team to build this process and we are grateful for their support.
With this pilot we hope to expand our API offerings and develop a standard that any large facility will be able to integrate. These new APIs will extend and further improve what is already offered by ARIA, currently in use by EMBL-Hamburg and SOLEIL synchrotrons. The new work with Diamond would not have been possible without the previous hard work to integrate ARIA with these sites, so thanks to Clemente and Idrissou.
