July 2026 Community Conversation
This meeting was held on Tuesday, July 14, 2026 at 11:30am ET / 10:30am CT / 8:30am PT / 3:30pm GMT. Monthly community meetings are convened over Zoom to discuss topics of interest. Community members are encouraged to bring questions and ideas to share.
Meeting summary
Quick recap
This was the July ColdFront Community Conversation meeting where Dori Sajdak, the community manager, facilitated discussions about the platform and upcoming events. Sarah Marquis from Harvard University presented a new email notification system feature they developed as a plugin, which allows their research computing group to send tailored emails to approximately 800 lab groups based on various attributes like storage usage, roles, and active status. The system includes templates with variables, preview functionality, and the ability to reply to their ticketing system, with Harvard planning to make it available to the public community. Misha Mandian from Texas State University inquired about customization options and the upcoming ColdFront 2.0 release, with Andrew confirming that version 2 will include basic notifications but Harvard's feature would likely remain as a plugin until potentially being integrated into the core platform in future versions. The meeting also covered upcoming PEARC conference events, including a half-day tutorial on ColdFront installation and configuration, a Birds of a Feather community session, and presentations by other institutions.
Check out this post on all the ways to engage with the ColdFront project at PEARC.
Summary
ColdFront Community Conversation Updates
Dori welcomed participants to the July ColdFront Community Conversation and provided updates about upcoming PEARC conference events in Minneapolis. She announced a half-day tutorial on Monday covering ColdFront installation, configuration, and roles, followed by a Birds of a Feather session on Tuesday featuring interactive discussions and door prizes. Dori also mentioned additional ColdFront-related presentations, including Jacob's paper presentation and Robert Grandin and Trevor's poster about authentication integration, before introducing the main agenda item of Harvard discussing their latest ColdFront implementation.
Email Notification System Implementation
Sarah presented a new email notification system feature implemented in ColdFront that allows the Research Computing Group to manage communications with approximately 800 lab groups at Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The system enables tailored email delivery based on various attributes like storage usage, role, and lab membership, with features including email templates, previews, and integration with their ticketing system. The feature was recently deployed on Friday and is already being used for notifications, including an upcoming storage migration announcement.
ColdFront Notifications Plugin Update
Sarah presented a new notifications plugin for ColdFront that allows custom email templates with filtering capabilities for different allocation statuses and user roles. The team developed it as a plugin to be sustainable and compatible with upcoming ColdFront 2.0, though some recent changes haven't been fully documented yet. Misha from Texas State University inquired about implementation timing and backward compatibility, with Andrew confirming that while ColdFront 2.0 will not be backwards compatible, there will be a migration path and the current 1.x version will continue to be maintained.
Data Platform Strategy Pivot
The team discussed their decision to pivot away from using Salesforce for communication and marketing due to data integration challenges, instead choosing to make ColdFront the primary source of truth for their data. Sarah explained that their previous one-year POC with Salesforce was very limiting and required significant effort to integrate data from existing tools like their ticketing system and ColdFront. Dori addressed a question about CVEs and patching, explaining that potential security issues should be reported via their dedicated email address rather than public GitHub, and patches are typically released immediately when security issues are identified.
Harvard Email Plugin Integration Discussion
The team discussed an email plugin developed by Harvard, with David questioning whether it should be integrated into the core system rather than remaining a community plugin. Andrew and Raminder agreed that while the current version would remain a plugin, it could potentially be integrated into the core system in a future version, with notifications already planned for the next release. Raminder explained that Harvard's team would work closely with Claire to ensure the plugin's features could be incorporated into the main codebase, particularly as they prepare for a significant data migration in August.
PEARC Events and Schedule Updates
Dori announced upcoming PEARC events, including a half-day tutorial on the first morning using version 1.1.8 and community meetings featuring presentations from the University of British Columbia. She reminded attendees to double-check the updated schedule before attending, as some changes occurred. The group discussed plans for the next community meeting in August or September, which will include a demo of version two's development progress.