Many Wiley text books have a companion web site containing supplementary information, usually
called a Book Companion site (BCS). Higher Ed have a web server called BCS that hosts and manages
its companion sites.
These notes explain some of the structure. There are quite a few problems that you can sort out
yourself if you understand what’s going on, such as problems logging in. If you need to escalate the
problem, then understanding the structure should help you figure out who to talk to.
The first potential confusion is that Wiley have more than one BCS system. When people talk about
book companion sites, they may not be talking about ones I’m talking about here!
These notes are about Higher Ed’s BCS server. This is JEE Java application running under IBM’s
WebSphere on Vulcan.wiley.com. It’s a content management system that manufactures pages to
order and imposes viewing permissions on the content. It’s a complex system involving several
servers and some networking infrastructure. The core software is currently at version 2.0. Version
2.1 is mentioned at various points below. Release is planned for December 2010.
Actually, a book can have two companion sites, one aimed at students doing a course and another
aimed at instructors running the course. The instructor sites contain support material to help run
the course. If a book runs into many editions, it can have one set of companion sites for each.
BCS is important because the sites on it support some of Wiley’s biggest-selling textbooks, and
people will only buy the books if they can access the companion sites. Possibly more important, the
instructor site persuades college lecturers to recommend the textbook, and if they don’t
recommend it, students don’t buy it.
All of the pages on the companion sites are public, but some of the assets they link to are password
protected, so you get limited access to those assets without registering or logging in. You only need
to log in to see [access protected assets]. If you try to access an assetthat you are not licensed to
see, you are redirected to a page where you can log in or register.
It’s worth stressing at this point that students and instructors both have to log in to use BCS, but
different systems are used to authenticate them and either of them might be broken. You
sometimes get trouble reports on the lines of “users are reporting that they can’t log in to BCS”. The
first question you have to ask is, are these students, instructors or Wiley staff trying to use the BCS
Builder?
When running system checks, beware of the “superuser IP list”. This is a list of IP addresses within
the Wiley network that have special access to various protected content including all companion
sites. By default, all addresses are in the list, so unless you know otherwise, you are a superuser. (If
you use a proxy web server or a come in via a VPN connection, the address of that matters, not the
address of your PC.)
If your IP address is in this list, you can see all protected BCs content without logging in. For a proper
system health check you need to view companion sites with the same access rights as the customers,
so you need to use a network connection that’s not in the super user list. (In the Chichester office,
we have some test connection that come in from outside the core network and are not in the list. I
also sometimes use a laptop with a mobile broadband connection.)
Companion Sites
This is the home page of a typical student companion site: http://bcs.wiley.com/hebcs/Books?action=index&itemId=0470084715&bcsId=4185
Notice the navigation on the left and the “toolbox” on the right that gives a login facility.
The Biology Newsfinder link takes you to a public page with links to a freely available asset. If you
click on “Biology Newsfinder” in the navigation, you can get to this page:
The page is a bit more complex than it looks. The top banner is provided by the BCS server but the
rest of the page is provided by a proxy server http://higheredbcs.wiley.com. When a student
requests a content page, they get an HTML frameset containing two requests, one to the BCS server
and one to the proxy server.
This matters because when things are broken it gives clues as to what’s wrong. If the BCS server is
running and the proxy server is broken, you get a banner but no body, or maybe a body that is just
an error message. Something like:
If you see that, the BCS server is running and the problem is with the proxy server, so you need to be
talking to the Online Library team, who manage it.
Most of the links in the navigation bar take you to an index page. This is the one for Illustration
Podcasts:
In this case, the site has a collection of podcasts, one for each chapter in the book. Clicking on the
“Chapter 1” link will download the podcast for that chapter. However, these are protected content
and you can only download them if you are registered and logged in. (Index pages for protected
content say “Need to Register?” at the top.) If you click on any of the links when you are not logged
in, you get the login/register page.
These index pages are manufactured by the BCS server, so once again, seeing one only proves that
the BCS server is working. To check that the student proxy server is working, you need to click
through to a content page, such as the Biology Newsfinder shown above. You don’t need to log in to
see it, but it’s fed by the proxy server, so if you can see that page, the proxy is up.
To check that the whole student part of the system is working, you need to log in as a user that is
registered to see content on a student site and look at a protected page from an address that is not
in the superuser list.
Finding a Companion Site
You can look up all Wiley titles by first author. http://www.wiley.com/college/tortora shows you all
titles whose first author is Tortora:
Note the “Visit Companion Site” link. That edition of that book has a companions site on the BCS
server.
Student login
As mentioned earlier, students and instructors are authenticated using different systems.
A new Higher Ed textbook that has a supporting companion site with any password protected assets
has a voucher at the back with a registration code. A student can use this to register to use the site
for free. The voucher can only be used once so if they buy the book second-hand, they have to pay a
fee to register using a credit or debit card (typically about $10-$30). These extra sales represent a
steady income stream.
Registration codes can also be used to create test users for support. Each gives access to one site,
but as long as you know which site it is, and you know its home page, that should be
enough. Registrations last typically 180-540 (depending on the title) days, so you will need to renew
them regularly. {Need to keep test reg codes under control – probably best to get Jay Neill to
coordinate the issuing of them.}
BCS student users are actually just Online Library users. If a student follows the Login/Register link
in the toolbox and registers to see a BCS site, a new Online Library user is created if they don’t
already have one, and then some licence information is set up. When they try to access protected
content, the proxy server checks that they are logged in to Online Library and that they have the
right licence. Based on that, it either feeds the content to them or directs them to the login/register
page.
On a typical day, between 20% and 30% of student authentication attempts fail due to user error,
which is a surprisingly high rate. It causes all sorts of support headaches, so Version 2.1 of BCS will
attempt to reduce the failures.
Typical reasons for login failure include:
. failing to authorise a new account before logging in
. forgetting that the username is an email address
. registering with an upper case or mixed case user name and then getting the case wrong later
. using the forgotten password facility and misunderstanding the resulting email
When a student registers to use a BCS site, they create an online library account with their email
address as their user name. Online library sends them an email containing an authorisation
link. They have to click on the link to enable the account. Most of the failures are caused by them
trying to log in before they do this. Version 2.1 of BCS will make a specific check for this situation
and give a more explicit error message.
Users often get their user name wrong, probably because they are registered with a dozen other
online services, all with different rules for user names. Version 2.1 of BCS will address this by
checking the format of the username and rejecting it with a sensible message if it isn’t an email
address.
Email addresses are not case-sensitive, so you can register as fred.smith@yahoo.com,
FRED.SMITH@YAHOO.COM or any combination, and the authorisation email will get to you. Online
Library allows mixed case user names but it expects the same spelling every time – if you registered
using Fred.Smith@yahoo.com and try to login using fred.smith@yahoo.com later, it doesn’t
work. Version 2.1 of BCS will address this for new users by setting the name specified during
registration into lower case (so if they try to register FRED.SMITH@YAHOO.COM they will get
fred.smith@yahoo.com). When they login, if they supply Fred.Smith@yahoo.com, BCS will try the
lower case version and if that fails it will try the name as given. This means that users who have
already created their Online Library account and know how it’s spelt can still use the system, but the
confusion goes away for most users.
BCS can’t address the final problem. If you use the Online Library forgotten password facility it
generates a random password such D0JlBZ and email it to the user. Is the second letter a zero or an
oh? Is the fourth one an ell or a one? It’s clearer in some fonts than others, but the user’s email
client controls the font. I’ve suggested that the system should use a restricted range of characters
that can’t be easily confused, but that’s not my decision.
So if a student complains that they can’t log in, there are some obvious checks to try. Firstly check
that the server is up by logging in yourself. In that case, it’s probably a problem with this user - have
they authorised their account? Are they giving the right user name? are they spelling it
correctly? have they recently asked for a new password? And so on. The Online Library Interim
Admin Tool (IAT) shows you when the account has not been authorised yet, and you have to get the
case right in a user name when you look it up in IAT.
I guess you will occasionally get a user complaining that he can’t get access to protected content
because his license has run out, and he’s not realised that he only got limited access.
Another obvious type of problem is that he has registered to use the companion site for Tortora’s
Principles of Anatomy and Physiology 10th edition and he’s looking at the companion site for the 12th
edition.
IAT
The admin tool IAT can be used to look at the setup of a user. Problems with a user’s set up should
be reported to the person responsible for the site – see the section on the BCS Builder.
Online Library supports objects called users and customers. Users can log in. Customers represent
financial transactions, and own licences.
If a student uses a registration code to register, there is no financial transaction, so no customer is
created. Instead, each site has a special institutional customer associated with it which has a license
to view protected content on that site. The name of the customer starts with “CL_” and ends with
“_S”, eg “CL_EWSTU04642_S”. If a user registers to use a BCS site using a registration code, their
Online Library user is affiliated to this customer:
Using the view licence(s) link on the right you can see the associated licence. The institutional
customer serves many users and so has an unlimited license:
Here’s a typical user, affiliated to an institutional customer:
User status is “authenticated” meaning that they have clicked on the email link and their user is fully
operational.
The user is affiliated to customer “CL_EWSTU07145_S” so they have access to that product’s
companion site.
Users only get access for a limited time. The institutional licence is unlimited, but in this case the
user gets access for 540 days. The IAT display doesn’t show it, but the affiliation between the user
and the customer is for that time only. This duration is determined by the editor for each title and
entered into the BCS Builder tool.
If a user registers using a credit card, the structure is different. This time a Personal Customer is
created and this has a license for a limited period. The personal customer name starts with “POID”:
Clicking POIDC00000075814 in the affiliation list shows you the personal customer:
And from there you can see the license, which has a limited life:
Instructor Login
Instructors log in to BCS using a completely different system from the students.
Access to instructor sites is controlled using the PROFVAL system. (Stands for Professor
Validation.) I haven’t worked on PROFVAL and I know very little about it.
I believe it’s a bit more like the Wiley Single Signon System, in that you log in to one server and doing
so gives you access to others. In this case, instructors log in to PROFVAL with a browser and then
move onto a BCS instructor site. PROFVAL controls whether they can see the site or not. {{{This is
actually a bit more like the Student BCS in that a Professor can navigate around any Instructor BCS
for free and even access unprotected Instructor assets [there are some] but will be challenged only
upon clicking on a link for a protected asset or by clicking on the “Register/Login” button in the
Toolbox}}} You don’t have to login to ProfVal and then move to the BCS.
Access to an instructor site is through a proxy server in the same way as for a student site, but it’s a
different proxy. Access works in the same way as for a student site - if you request a page from an
instructor site, the BCS server sends back a frameset containing links to the banner and to the body,
and the BCS server fulfils the request for the banner. The body of the page is provided by the proxy
http://professor.wiley.com, with PROFVAL providing access control.
So, if a user complains they can’t log in, you need to find out if they are a student or an instructor. If
they are an instructor, their problem is with their PROFVAL account, not with Online Library.
Since the infrastructure is different, instructor sites can go wrong in different ways – PROFVAL may
break, or the proxy server. It would be useful to have test accounts to check that they are
working. However, real instructor sites contain material like sample answers to class assignments,
so access to them is restricted.
It would probably be possible to set up a dummy instructor site and create test accounts that access
it.
We grant access to any Wiley employee for all Instructor sites. We simply must ensure those
accounts are not shared outside Wiley.
The BCS Builder
As shown in the example above, a BCS site is a collection of resources such as PDFs, MP3s and so
on. In the example there is one Illustration Podcast for each chapter and an index page that lists
them.
A BCS has two main means of browsing for resources: by Resource Name or By Chapter (of the
textbook). When browsing by Resource name, a user will arrive on a “Resource Landing Page” which
usually lists one asset link for that particular Resource per each chapter in the book. When browsing
by Chapter, a user will arrive on a “Chapter Landing Page” which lists all the different Resources
corresponding with that chapter of the textbook.
The resource files are stored on one of two servers (EDCV2 for all free assets and for all the Student
protected asset; and on Mercury for all instructor protected assets) and accessed by the BCS server
through the student or instructor proxy servers as appropriate. (For example, public and protected
student resources are stored on www.wiley.com/college/. That’s company confidential, by the
way. Users must only know the official route to access the content.)
The index pages are built on the fly by the BCS server using data in its database. The main purpose
of the BCS Builder is to create this data. It’s used by Higher Ed staff.
The URL is https://bcscma.wiley.com:8100/he-bcsbuilder.
Access is through yet another authentication system. The builder maintains a list in its database and
your network account name must be in that list. To access the builder, you must be logged in to the
Wiley Single Signon network (best to use Internet Explorer). When you navigate to the builder, it
gets hold of your network account name and checks for it in its list. If you are in the list, it lets you
in. Apart from that, there are some special users that anybody can use. Chris Gliddon has the
details. {I’m guessing that you log into the network as one of these users and then get onto the
builder. Needs investigation.}
The front page of the BCS Builder looks like this:
The authentication system fails occasionally. When it does, the problem often seems to be very
difficult to diagnose, mainly because the solution depends on clever networking stuff and simple
tests such as traceroute don’t tell you anything useful. A few weeks back, nobody could get in
because an SSL proxy server had fallen over. As I write this, staff in the US can get into the builder, I
can’t. Clearly not a server issue. (This was fixed the next day, but I don’t know how, possibly
because I rebooted my machine.)
You can connect to the BCS Builder to check that it’s running, but don’t do anything. Pretty much
anything you might do with it will change production data.
You may receive requests from instructors about problems with individual sites. You need to pass
these on to the right person. Ed Winkleman writes:
“It always comes back to the group that created the BCS for error code 4 and 6 and 7 type issues.
If all else fails, you can email such problems to webprod@wiley.com, but if you know that it’s not a
US Higher Ed title, that just slows down the fix, as we still have to forward it back to the person who
created it.
In a nutshell,
In the UK, Holly Kirby or Clair Jardin are the best first contacts.
Pamela Lynch for Canadian titles.
In the US, {Ed Winkleman is} the best contact for HE titles, and Richard Graves is the best contact for
P/T titles.”
Infrastructure Notes
The Hoboken UNIX team are responsible for vulcan.wiley.com and the WebSphere server running on
it. This provides the main BCS website and the BCS Builder site. The Online Library team is
responsible for the student proxy server higherdbcs.wiley.com. {I don’t know who looks after the
instructor proxy server professor.wiley.com}
www.wiley.com contains links to the BCS sites and is the starting point for finding one. Those links
need to be maintained and can go wrong, but I don’t know who looks after them.
BCS uses Online Library web services for student login. The web services are occasionally out of
action for system maintenance. During this period, attempts by students to log in to BCS will fail.
The main BCS server and the BCS Builder use the HEBCS database on mercury.wiley.com. Henry
Yang is the DBA.
The BCS servers run on vulcan.wiley.com under WebSphere. The log files are /log/WebApp/hebcs/he-bcs.log and he-bcsbuilder.log. These roll over every day.
Jay Neill is responsible for development of BCS. Simon Ritchie is currently the developer and
provides third line support. Once his contract is over, development and third-line support will be
taken over by Jay’s group in Singapore.