What is a PCCG Team?
Within the PCCG, we have a number of internal jobs, some that require specialized information and/or training.
For example, we have several people that are authorized to enter the repeater huts located on Glassy Mountain or on 6-mile Mountain in Pickens County (Did you forget that there are several “Glassy Mountain”s in the local area of GA, SC, NC?), and on Caesars Head Mountain in Greenville County. These individuals might also have access to other facilities as part of a series of Gentlemen Agreements. Not only are they authorized to enter the huts, they are authorized and trained to work on the actual repeater systems and the associated controllers. The types of information that the Repeater Support Teams might want to keep private, but available to their team members is “How do you get authorization?” or maybe “Here is how you gain access…” or even “What are the repeater control codes to setup and break down Repeater links?”
Another example, is the support, updating and general maintenance of our website. This is not a simple as it may sound, as this requires an understanding of how a website interacts with a user's browser. A general knowledge of computer programming techniques helps, as does some basic knowledge of the few computer languages used to create the actual webpages. In addition, there are several database systems involved, some of which are used by the 3rd party open source applications that we use. Maintenance activities are also required, and… but by now, you should get the picture.
A third example, is How do you maintain our Membership database? What software applications are used? What, exactly, is the proper process to add new members, and what approvals are necessary and how do you go about getting those approvals? Who should have access to the information stored? Should that access be for anything/everything or limited to partial access? Personal Identification Information (PII) - what is it? How do you protect it? etc.
In order to document these and many other items, and to provide “continuity of function” it was decided that each of these separate groups of people should be called “Groups” or “Teams”. Another way of thinking about “teams” would be to consider the team name to be an “Authorization Status” necessary to gain access to controlled information or to online applications. Modern Information Security techniques suggest that Security Authorizations should be restricted by “job” function or responsibilities.
In implementing the new “MembersOnly” facilities on our website, it was determined that “Teams” was a better term to use and that some functions needed to be handled by more than one person, and also that many functions overlapped with others.
As a result of some research, a technique was devised where a single individual could be part of two or more teams, and that information and procedures could (and should) be compartmentalized by “job” function or responsibilities.
The end result? The following “Team” Functionality was found to be needed or useful:
| Team name | Team function |
|---|---|
| Leader | Organizational Leader(s) |
| EMER-COORD | Responsible for Planing Training Events or Emergencies. |
| WebMaster | Overall responsibilty for the Website, Contents, and Database and 3rd Party application Availability. |
| EOCStaff | Identifies members of the Pickens County Emergency Management team. For simplicity, EOCStaff members are also considered “PCCG members”, and have full access to information available to all members. |
| EOCradio | PCCG members who have been trained to operate equipment and software systems located in the EOC/PCCG radio room. (This is a separate Radio room and is NOT the Auxiliary Emergency Dispatch Center located adjacent to the EOC.) |
| Member | All individual PCCG members have this “status” to allow access to controlled areas of the website. |
| Individual Teams | |
| WebSupport | Team members are able to update individual website pages, and assist in getting registered in, and/or the use of, the various online database systems and applications used throughout the PCCG organization. |
| Admin | Team Members trained in the online administration of the SignInOrUp system used to control access to online Team information. |
| DBadmin | Team members are authorized to maintain and update information stored on the online PCCG membership database. |
| Membership | The membership committee has access to the online Membership database to track the progress of new member applications and to post overall general membership participation in official events. |
| Announcements | Team members can post new announcements and or Banner page messages that are readable by the general public. |
| NetControllers | Team members are trained to be the Net Control station for all PCCG radio nets. Net Control stations are selected on a rotating basis from a pool of trained operators. |
| Newsletter | Team members can upload public readable newsletters to the website. |
| RepeaterPanel | Team Members make recommendations on Repeater Locations, Equipment, and maintenance schedules. |
| RepeaterTech | Team Members maintain our Repeaters |
| RepeaterTrustee | Team Members act as the trustees for our Repeater Licenses |
| Note that access to some facilities requires that you be associated with the responsible team. If you are not associated with the appropriate team, you will not see an accessible option or you may receive a “Not Authorized” warning error message. |
Anyway, our webmaster, Bill Turner (WB4ALM), decided that each PCCG “team” should be able to have its own independent Wiki area for team documentation and procedures, so the Dokuwiki system was selected for use, partially because of a feature that DokuWiki calls “Farms”. Using DocuWiki terms, this wiki (the one you are reading) is the “FARM”, and it provides the software mechanism for maintaining multiple independent wikis, each of which, DokuWiki refers to as “ANIMALS” . DokuWiki implementation is such that all of the software required is installed in the Farm, and software upgrades, when necessary, only occurs in the Farm. Each of the “Animal” wiki's, therefore, never have to be upgraded from a software point of view. PCCG's implementation of the DokuWiki software, is to make the “Farm” a public viewable site, with controlled editing, and to make the Animal or Team Wiki's private with group editing allowed. An additional feature was added in July of 2024 that provides for the inclusion of Individual Wikki's that are totally private and only available or accessible by the requesting individual. (This provides an area where more detailed documentation can be created in a private area, prior to being released (copied) to a more public area, such as a Team Wiki, or the Member Bulletin Board, or even to the General Bulletin Board.)
Further details on how the individual wiki's are initially created can be found in the The WebSupport team Wiki.
Hopefully, the entire series of team Wiki's will provide a good mechanism for maintaining support continuity for the Pickens County Emergency Communications Group in the future.
The actual PCCG website uses standard HTML, CSS, and PHP coding techniques to create its pages. A website design decision was made early on to create a working website using these three standard languages as native code, rather than using a prepackaged Content Management System, like WordPress. This was done in order to keep the page transmission times short - and to make it possible to deliver some page content over amateur radio links using facilities like the “44” network, or broadband facilities, or even an area wide mesh network on a permanent or temporary basis.
There are difficulties, however, in operating over Amateur Radio networks that will need to be resolved - For instance, FCC Rules and Regulations do not currently allow transmission of any encrypted information, so password validation may not be possible when accessing content via a radiolink.
It was also recognized that detailed programming knowledge of the sort necessary in certain sections of this website is not commonly found amongst Amateur Radio Operators, so fancy coding techniques are avoided wherever possible. This also influenced the decision to provide the Wiki mechanism, so that detailed documentation would be available to future support personnel.
Hopefully PCCG teams other than the WebSupport team will feel the same way.
/s/ Bill Turner, wb4alm – 10 July 2023