Release 1.4.0 of Open Berkeley contains new and updated features, bug fixes, accessibility improvements, and minor code updates.
New and Updated Features
Google Analytics 4
Open Berkeley now supports Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Summary
The current version of Google Analytics, known as Universal Analytics (UA), will stop collecting data on July 1, 2023. At some point after that, previously-collected UA data will no longer be available to you. We have enabled support for Google Analytics 4; your sites will collect data for both UA and GA4 in parallel for the next year, and will continue to collect GA4 data after UA is no longer available.
Each Open Berkeley site that uses Google Analytics must designate a GA account manager as the point person who will manage the site's Google Analytics account.
Privacy and security requirements
Some features that are available in Google Analytics are not supported on Open Berkeley for privacy or security reasons. Google Tag Manager, Google Signals, User ID tracking, and Ad Personalization are among the non-supported features. We have encoded almost all of the necessary privacy and security settings into each Open Berkeley site’s configuration. In order to use GA4 on your site, the designated GA account manager will need to agree to follow all guidelines set by the campus Privacy Office for the use of Google Analytics.
For site owners whose Google Analytics accounts were created by Web Platform Services:
In the past, Web Platform Services has created Google Analytics accounts as a courtesy for site owners. If your site falls into this category, we have generated a new GA4 property for you and updated your Open Berkeley site configuration to track analytics using the new GA4 Measurement ID alongside your existing UA Measurement ID. Going forward, our team will no longer manage account access or other configuration; this will be the responsibility of the site owner and/or GA account manager.
We have emailed our customer list with detailed instructions on how to proceed. In short: to get access to your GA4 data, please have your designated GA account manager fill out the GA Account Manager form. You do not need to know your Measurement IDs; just fill out the required fields.
For site owners who created their own Google Analytics accounts:
Because we do not have access to GA accounts that our team did not create, site owners who manage their own GA accounts must create their own GA4 properties. We have emailed the site owner of record for sites that manage their own GA accounts with detailed instructions on how to proceed. In short: Follow Google's instructions on how to create a new GA4 property, and then have your designated GA account manager fill out the GA Account Manager form. Your form submission must include both your UA and GA4 Measurement IDs.
More empty tags are filtered from display
The most common causes of Siteimprove accessibility errors in Open Berkeley site content are content editing and copy/paste issues that introduce empty headings, empty links, and other HTML tags that don't contain the required sub-elements (such as a list without any list items). These issues are difficult for content creators to fix because they are essentially invisible, both while editing and on the public-facing page.
In version 1.3.0, we added filtering so that heading, list, and link tags would not be output on the displayed version of the page if they were empty. In this version, we are extending the filter so that all empty tags will be treated the same way, except for tags that are allowed to be empty.
Tags are considered empty if they don't contain any content beyond whitespace, line breaks, and periods. Any empty tags will still be present in the editing field when editing the page.
Body fields can't be empty
The Body field is the primary field for most content types and for Text widgets. As such, it should not be left empty. An error message will be displayed when saving if the field does not contain any text. This applies to any WYSIWYG (editing) fields that are required; it does not apply to WYSIWYG fields that are optional.
Additional time needed for new domain names
In order to accommodate new processing requirements for Berkeley.edu domain names, we are now asking for 3 weeks notice when you are ready to launch a new Open Berkeley site. Please give us as much notice as possible so we can get your requests processed for a timely launch. See our Site Launch page for more information.
Code Updates
- Remove unneeded links from FAQ answers inline display.
- Make all expand/collapse link IDs unique.