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The grocery store was open for a brief time, but it was never a cooperative. I know, because I joined as a member the day it first opened in 2017, on August 11. (I first e-mailed to ask about becoming a member ten months earlier, but that required meeting in person and this was the first time it was feasible.)

On 2018, June 12, after Wirth Cooperative Grocery had been closed for two months, I received my only formal communication as a member owner: an e-mail acknowledging that the store was closed, noting that the current grocery market is extremely competitive, and saying they had plans to re-open by the end of the month.

The e-mail did not ask for decisions. It did not ask for volunteers or help of any kind. While addressed to us as member owners, it did not afford us any opportunity to affect the future of the store. It did not provide any information on which we might try to act. Instead it told us to wait to be notified when an opening date was set. An opening date was never set.

Although I'm certain some staff and volunteers worked hard behind the scenes, from my perspective as a member owner the grocery store went down without a fight.

That's why it's so important for cooperatives to be true cooperatives. The seven cooperative principles aren't a "pick any three" sort of deal.

The first principle specifies that membership in a cooperative be open to all people willing to accept the responsibilities, but a person cannot accept responsibilities which aren't offered.

The second principle is democratic member control, but people cannot exercise direct control or hold representatives accountable without information and without a means to communicate with one another.

Likewise for the next three cooperative principles: the third, that members democratically control capital; the fourth, that external agreements preserve democratic control; and the fifth, that a cooperative educate, train, and inform members so they can contribute to it effectively. An organization with no mechanisms for discussion nor for democracy violates these principles, too.

Principles six and seven, cooperation among cooperatives and concern for community, are likely to be hollow without functioning internal democracy— and certainly cannot be realized if the business fails.

A cooperative can't exist only on good intentions.

When I hear this sentiment expressed by experienced cooperators—founders and developers of cooperatives—it usually means that there needs to be a solid business model for a cooperative, because a cooperative that isn't economically viable can't fulfill any of its goals.

A more fundamental meaning is that a business can't be a cooperative if it merely intends to be; it must act like a cooperative. Otherwise, it's just another business with some co-op lip service gloss— and given the greater success of cooperatives compared to other businesses it's less likely to be around as a business at all, if it does not live up to its cooperative principles.

I'm not trying to use technicalities to dodge counting the failed Wirth grocery store as a failure for "team cooperative". On the contrary, this is a wakeup call for everybody who supports cooperatives, one that must rouse us, because fully-functioning cooperatives are bigger than the cooperative movement. Cooperatives can prefigure true democracy. We need to show that economic democracy works in our voluntary organizations; we need to give people in a world which is already ruled unjustly, and threatening to spiral out of control, a promise and a practice for how whole communities can take collective control.

In my experience as a member owner, Wirth Cooperative Grocery was not a co-op beyond its name and some vague intentions. Now I know that my experience matched everyone else's, thanks to Cirien Saadeh's reporting, both last year and in the most recent issue of North News (an invaluable local non-profit enterprise).

What worries me, then, is that no one quoted in these articles called out this failure to meet the basic requirements of being a cooperative. Minneapolis and Minnesota have perhaps the highest rate of cooperative membership in the United States, with about half of all residents estimated to belong to at least one cooperative of one kind or another. If we, here, don't have the awareness and interest to note when a cooperative doesn't act like a cooperative, who will?

More important than calling out failures is providing pathways to success. There are many programs and organizations supporting cooperatives in Minnesota and beyond, but none put ensuring member control first.

The bias of my profession and my passion is to lead with an online tool: ensure member owners can communicate with one another. Although a technological fix can't solve political problems, people who are affected need a way to talk among themselves to come up with a solution.

Efforts like a local cooperative grocery are small enough that a Loomio group or any mailing list would mostly work for member owner discussion. A better software application would work for collaborative groups of any size: members would filter messages for quality without ceding control to any outside group. This self-moderation for groups of equals, including cooperatives, is a goal of Visions Unite.

Are you in a position to provide resources to cooperatives and other groups seeking to grow and be democratic? Are you starting or do you want to start a cooperative or group? Do you have other ideas on how to help new and established cooperatives live by the foundational cooperative principles? I would like to hear from you!

Conclusion

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Wow, that was fun. The very first event for the Boston/Cambridge Worker Ownership Meetup group on October 10th, 2014, was a great success. We met at The Industry Lab, Agaric's new co-working headquarters and event location. We had a great discussion that was led by our friend Gonzalo Chomon of EvoVelo, a cooperative located in Spain.

Gonzalo Chomon shared a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of cooperatives that engaged everyone from the start. About a dozen attendees talked about the different ways cooperative companies are structured, laws governing different types of companies in Spain and the US and about the different internal processes used to add or remove members from the group.

Attendees were very engaged in the discussion from the start. One member asked about the company structure, how does it work, are there contracts, bylaws? A cooperative company can be structured in any way the partners agree upon. Usually the company is formed as an LLC between the partners with equal shares, but that is not an absolute. An organization the size of Mondragon has an entirely different structure, it is a federation of cooperatives.

The pizza from The Just Crust rocked and was totally consumed by the end of the evening. Many thanks, to our friend Kay Van Valkenburg who brought some lush fruits and scrumptious chocolate chip and dark chocolate dipped cookies—oooooh. Thanks to everyone that came to the first Boston/Cambridge Worker Ownership Meetup at the Industry Lab in Cambridge, despite the brilliant New England weather.

We have already planned our next meetup for November 17th at the Industry Lab.

We will talk with Carolyn Edsell-Vetter, from A Yard & A Half Landscaping Cooperative, based right in Waltham, MA, about transitioning to a coop from another ownership/governance structure. Meet some local people that are currently working in successful worker cooperatives in any industry, doing what they love to do. Let's discuss how they started and how they continue to thrive in this economy. What are the benefits and what are the hurdles to overcome when forming a cooperative relationship with your partners?

Join us! Visit the Boston/Cambridge Worker Ownership Meetup, we have started to list some great coop resources and links, and if you are in the Boston area, let us know.

 

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Sign up to be notified when Agaric gives an online or in-person migration training:

Join us for an interactive day devoted to Drupal in healthcare— a relaxed and friendly close to DrupalCon with learning, networking, and discussing. Whether you are in a pharmaceutical company, a state department of health, a non-profit hospital, a public health organization, or anyplace else in the broad healthcare space, there are unique needs in ensuring security, accessibility, compliance, and availability of important information and tools.

Healthcare is a crucial, dynamic space for web development today. Online communication and emerging technologies promise improved access and capabilities for patients and professionals. Crafting inspiring and useful digital experiences, however, must be built on a solid foundation of accessibility, security, and compliance. Come listen to industry leaders share their experience solving these challenges in healthcare.

Get tickets to go to DrupalCon and the Healthcare Summit!

What You Will Get by Attending

• Andy Waldrop will talk about scalable healthcare content in Drupal— with lessons from building WebMD!
• Georgiana Masgras and Jesse Meece will talk about using Drupal to makes it easy to maintain our sites.
• Jon Stewart will talk about how to leverage Drupal for web application development— the Open Web in healthcare!
• Two table talk sessions will give everybody a chance to dive deeply into key topics, including the application of large language models in healthcare and biggest takeways from DrupalCon and the summit. Bring your needs and we will embark on facilitated peer-to-peer problem solving with others who are affected and tech and healthcare industry experts.
• Our sponsors, Evolving Web and Acquia (by way of their partner Phase2), will have special presentations
• We will be closing the day with lightning talks. Invited topics include: Future of Drupal at your company (and how to improve it), multisite platforms, knowledge bases, provider directories, and the healthcare take on layout builder becoming experience builder versus paragraphs.

We will be all wrapped up by 4pm.

Attend DrupalCon and the Healthcare Summit!

Who Should Attend

Everybody interested in hearing and discussing how companies and the community are creating rich digital experiences in the healthcare space. All levels of colleagues in the pharma, medical, clinical, hospital, payers, caregivers, advocates, and healthcare professional space should go to DrupalCon and the Healthcare Summit!

COVID-19 Safer Space

The Oregon Convention Center controls all rooms per ASHREA 62.1 standards, using sensors to monitor occupancy based on CO₂ levels and bring outside air into the space accordingly. They report at the most levels at 800–1000 ppm during normal occupancy, and use MERV-13 filters for any filtration, which is appropriate for COVID-19.

Agaric will have high-quality N95 masks available to anyone who wants them and will have our own CO₂ monitors.

More about the Healthcare Industry Summit

The Healthcare Summit at the 2024 Portland, Oregon DrupalCon is organized by Jeanne Cost, George Matthes, and Pooja Jeeva. I am glad to be playing a part in coordinating this summit as well, especially given Agaric's involvement in and commitment to health and science communities.

Healthcare is a complex, regulation-filled industry that poses great challenges to building vibrant and compliant digital experiences for patients. Whether you are a pharma working towards the next product, a hospital treating someone with cancer, or an insurance company making sure a patient has access to information and proper care, there is much for you to gain from this summit. 

Hear from experts on areas of accessibility, compliant patient experiences, new regulations and standards that can affect your teams and customers, success stories, and much more.

Sponsored by: Acquia and Evolving Web

Sign up to go to the Healthcare Industry Summit at DrupalCon Portland, OR 2024 this coming May 6th through May 9th for the summit

Here are some quick answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Agaric trainings.

Can I get a discount when purchasing more than one training?

Yes, a 15% discount is available for additional trainings. Contact Agaric after purchasing your first training to get the information needed to purchase second or third at a discount.

Are scholarships available?

Yes, partial and full scholarships are available! We are prioritizing people facing disadvantages, in particular survivors of historical and ongoing discrimination and people under-represented in technology. Contact Agaric with your circumstances and for more information. Agaric will review your submission internally only— we do not share the information you provide in determining your eligibility for a discount/scholarship with anyone outside Agaric.

What if my corporate employer cannot submit payment for my attendance before the training date? If your company sees the benefit of you getting training from Agaric but the accounts payable department will not be able to accommodate fulfilling payment prior to the training date, please contact us for an invoice due up to 90 days after the training.
I'm not sure I meet the prerequsites or will be able to set up a development environment.

Every training includes sessions ahead of time to help everybody get their local development environment set up before the training (if needed). We'll also direct you to other resources helpful for getting up to speed before the training. Contact Agaric to check in with where you are to get our help ensuring you get the full benefit of the training.

Can I cancel and get a refund?

No, we do not offer refunds but tickets are transferable and we'll help you re-sell the ticket, so please contact Agaric if you can't make the training.

Will I receive a recording or other materials?

Yes, all attendees will be sent recordings from the training as well as the curriculum and materials used in the training and additional books or other references and resources.

Will Agaric provide a certificate of completion?

Yes, all students who participate in the full training will receive a Certificate of Completion.

Have more questions? Ask Agaric!

The Global Training Days is an initiative coordinated by the Drupal Association to introduce new people to the wonderful world of Drupal. The initiative is about providing free or low-cost training to facilitate people gaining familiarity with Drupal in just a day. Depending on the format, attendees can leave the workshop with a website already built. In this blog post, I will explain how to organize one and share experiences and lessons learned after organizing them in Nicaragua since 2014. It is my hope to inspire you to be part of the initiative and organize a workshop in your local community.

The basics

To get started, find out the next dates when the workshops would be given worldwide. They happen two days in a row (on Friday and Saturday) approximately every 3 months. Dates are set in the last quarter of the previous year and can be checked at https://www.drupal.org/global-training-days.

For the workshop itself there are two options to choose from in terms of time and curriculum. The first is a What is Drupal? half-day workshop where attendees learn the basics of Drupal. If you go this route it is recommended to spend most of the time explaining the different Drupal concepts, and how they relate to each other in order to build a site. Hands-on instructions where each attendee builds a site can be left out due to time constraints, but it is fine to have a demo where you show how to assemble a website using Drupal.

The second option is an Intro to Drupal full-day workshop where attendees learn the basic concepts and have the opportunity to build a simple yet functional Drupal site. For this type of workshop, you can spend the first half explaining concepts and the second half building the site. Remember the introductory nature of the workshop. Do not try to cover advanced site building concepts. Stick to Drupal core and build your site using using nodes, blocks, views, and core modules like Contact. In either version of the workshop, do not go over how to build themes or modules. If you try to cover too many topics, you might not develop them all appropriately. If you really want to cover these topics, it is better to organize a follow up workshop where they could be explained with more time.

Once you decide the date and type of workshop you want to present, sign up at this page. After doing so you will get an email from the Drupal Association. You will also be added to the list of organizers.

Plan ahead

The dates for the workshops are announced way ahead of time. Be an early bird and do not leave things to the last minute. Ask yourself these questions and plan accordingly:

• Am I participating the two days (Friday and Saturday) or only one day?
• Am I presenting a half-day or a full-day workshop?
• Am I providing computers to attendees or they are required to bring a laptop?
• Am I providing lunch for attendees or they are required to bring/buy their own food?
• How many people can attend based on the facility’s capacity?
• How many people can attend based on the number of speakers?
• Does each speaker know which section of the workshop they are going to present?
• If the workshop includes building a Drupal site, which tools will I use?
• Where should I advertise the workshop?
• What is the contingency plan in case the Internet service does not work?

Before the training

It may seem obvious, but make sure you have a place with the proper conditions to give a workshop. You will need:

• a projector
• a whiteboard or chalkboard, or flipchart and markers
• a decent Internet connection
• good room lighting
• comfortable room temperature
• zero sound pollution

The last item is very important as you do not want to yell to be heard. It happened to us once that the room next to the workshop laboratory was occupied by a group of loud children. This not only distracted the attendees, but also forced me to raise my voice to be heard. After speaking loudly for a couple of hours my voice had disappeared.

Even without noise pollution, giving back-to-back trainings two days in a row poses quite a challenge to keeping your voice audible. Make sure you have multiple speakers and take turns presenting. Use a microphone if available. It helps to preserve your voice, and helps participants who might not hear very well.

Once you have the venue figured out, be realistic about how many people you can effectively manage. Organizing a workshop takes lots of effort. It is fine to try to teach as many people as possible, but quality is preferred over quantity. In our experience, teaching small groups is more effective because you can dedicate more time to answer all questions each attendee might have and provide a personalized learning experience.

Make sure you get a confirmation of the venue at least 3 weeks before the training so you have time to promote the workshop. In Nicaragua, we always make the announcement in our official Drupal group and on the community’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. But experience has shown us that only a minority of the attendees find out about the event through these channels. In our case, about 90% of attendees discovered the event after seeing an invitation posted to a non-Drupal specific Facebook group of Nicaraguan developers. The 10% remaining is a combination of word of mouth (past participants recommending the workshop to others), people I meet in various tech meetups, and the channels mentioned before.

When deciding where to advertise the workshop, find the right pond and remember to fish where the fish are. If you have some spare dollars, feel free to invest in paid social media advertisement. No matter where you decide to promote the workshop, include the following information in the announcement:

• Date and times.
• Name of venue and address.
• A photo of the building where the workshop will take place! We have experienced people being unable to find the venue. So, play it safe, be verbose with directions, and add a photo of the venue.
• Whether or not it is required to bring a laptop.
• Whether or not lunch will be provided.
• If registration is required, the url where people can register.
• A note that no previous knowledge is required and that anyone (not only tech people) can join! :-D

Prepare the tools you will use in the training. In Nicaragua, we prefer to use Patrick Drotleff‘s amazing service https://simplytest.me This allows us to focus on building the Drupal site, instead of configuring the myriad of local environments that attendees may have. In our experience, configuring local environments on each attendee’s computer takes too much time. For example, most of the participants that come to our workshops use Windows. Trying to set up a LAMP environment could be surprisingly complicated in this operating system. Even out of the box solutions like XAMPP might not be able to start the web server due to port conflicts. Skype is a recurrent culprit. Starting a MySQL server might also fail. If that happens, skip it altogether and install using SQLite. More often than not, we go the fastest route and use disposable Drupal installations. Keep in mind that you are teaching Drupal site building, not server configuration.

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Murphy’s law will manifest more often than you would like. Be prepared and have a contingency plan for as much as you can. During one of our workshops, our favorite tool https://simplytest.me was down, but we were prepared with packages for local installation. In another instance, the venue was changing Internet provider and we had no Internet at all. Again, local installations came to the rescue. In such cases, save time by asking people to work in pairs or small groups so you do not have to configure a lot of computers. Bring a copy of your slide deck in a thumb drive so you can present offline in case it is needed. In Nicaragua, not only the tech is community vibrant. Volcanoes are too! With a handful of active volcanoes that produce tremors very often, we need to make sure to have clear instructions on how to leave the facility if necessary. Do your homework and be ready in case anything goes wrong.

On the day of the training

Take with you a laptop, a VGA/DVI/HDMI cable and adapter, and a back up projector if available. Have a copy of your slide deck for offline presenting and all the tools you might need in case the Internet decides to visit Saturn. Arrive early at the venue, set up your computer and projector for the presentation, and write the wi-fi password on the board. If you are providing computers, make sure any tool you intend to use is installed and working.

Take lots of photos (with participants' permission) and share them on social media. Be sure to record the training for posterity. This is not to show off, but to inspire others to organize workshops in their local communities. Make sure to use the official #DrupalGTD hashtag when sharing content. And please respect those who might not want to appear online! In our trainings, after finishing presenting theory and before starting to build sites we ask the attendees for a group photo which we later share on Facebook and Twitter.

We drupalers are fond of freebies. We enjoy stickers, T-shirts, trial online subscriptions, or anything that comes in an event as swag, right? Let’s share this passion with attendees. In our trainings, we use to have a table with lots of stickers for people to take from. In one occasion we also gave away T-shirts. And we have gotten in contact with online education providers to give attendees free trial access to their content. Chris Shattuck from Build a Module has been so kind in offering free access to his amazing library of content for 8 days to every attendee of our workshops. He also gave us some 1-month free memberships to raffle off. And the friendly folks from Knp University provided free access to Drupal-related material to attendees of the November 2015 edition of the workshop. When organizing a workshop make sure to have some treats for your attendees and partner with education providers so they can keep learning when the day is over. Also, show attendees how to stay connected with the broader community by helping them create a drupal.org profile and teaching them how to get involved.

A final comment for this section has to do with attendance. Do not feel bad if the number of people who show up is not the same that the number of people who registered. In fact, almost every time those numbers will not match. Sometimes you will have many attendees and in other occasions only a few. Do not let this disappoint you. Remember what motivated you in the first place to organize the event. Share your knowledge with others, no matter the number of attendees. Personally, I would present any workshop or session as long as at least one person shows up. Everyone’s time is valuable and each attendee sets aside time to listen to you. That is an honor I take with great responsibility, and you should too.

After the training

After you have enjoyed the Global Training Days experience, give thanks to everyone who made the workshop possible. This includes the attendees, co-presenters, venue providers, sponsors, and educational partners. In Nicaragua we post pictures and thank-you notes on Twitter and Facebook. And in those thank-you messages we also include the next dates of the workshop for those who missed it this time.

Of utmost importance is to perform an evaluation of the workshop. Meditate on things that went well, but also on things that went wrong and can be improved. At the end of our workshops we ask for feedback from the attendees. We also take time to improve the slide deck based on the concepts that attendees had difficulty understanding. This often translates to changing the copy, images, and examples used to explain the different concepts.

After all the hard work, give yourself a pat on the back, and share your story with others. You can write a blog post like this or simply post pictures of the workshop online. The Drupal Association is also interested in feedback from you and the attendees, so do not hesitate in providing it.

My wish list

The Drupal Association provides a lot of support and material to promote these events. Unfortunately, this content is only available in English at the moment. I would love to see this content translated to every language spoken by a member of our community. In Spanish for example, there is a great community that could help with the task of translating the content. The same can be said for communities which speak other languages. Eduardo Garcia is running for Director at Large within the Drupal Association and he has interesting ideas about making our community more inclusive for non-English speaking members.

Another wish of mine is collaboration in curriculum building. When the Nicaraguan community started to participate in the Global Trainings Days initiative back in 2014, we found little content that could be used in the workshop. The Drupal Association offers a curriculum in case you need it, but it is in English and our audience speaks Spanish. Because of this, we basically had to start creating a curriculum from scratch. The curriculum we use in Nicaragua is far from perfect, but the content has improved a lot over time. This has taken a lot of time and effort, yet there is no need to repeat the process again. Because of this, we have made our content available under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike license for anyone to use and adapt to their needs. So far we have available both a slide deck and a video recording of the theory part of one of the workshops. Unfortunately, some videos do not have audio, but we are planning on making another recording in a future edition. Also, I have started working on a written version of the workshop. This document is in a very early stage, but I will continue adding to it as time permits. It would be great if other communities would use this documentation and provide feedback to improve it. Collaborating in building a curriculum in different languages would be amazing. If you like this idea, start working on the curriculum in a new language and promote it to get feedback from others.

Measuring success

There are various parameters that you could use to measure the success of your workshops. For example, the number of attendees and the number of people who keep engaged with the local community thereafter. In Nicaragua, we have organized 10 workshops since 2014 and over 120 people have attended. Some keep engaged, while others do not. But numbers can be cold, so we measure success in non-quantitative ways. For example, seeing people smile when they understand the basic concepts of Drupal, or viewing their excitement after being able to build a website during the training.

Sometimes, we are able to make a more significant impact on the life of attendees. For instance, we are aware of people who could land a Drupal job after attending the workshop and continuing to learn on their own. The fact that we are making an impact on their lives is our best reward. Here are two testimonials of people who got a job after attending our workshops.

Ada Hernández - Translation and code contributor:

Hello everyone. My name is Ada Hernández Acosta and I am from León, Nicaragua. Attending a Drupal workshop presented by Lucas Hedding and Mauricio Dinarte set a milestone in my professional and personal life. At the workshop I learned the basic of Drupal: nodes, taxonomies, views, modules, themes, and more. I also learned the benefits of using Drupal including its security and no cost for usage. Moreover, a worldwide community is actively working on creating new modules, themes, and security updates. After attending the workshop I developed a strong interest in Drupal and decided let Drupal take part in my life. Today I work at MTech, LLC building websites on Drupal. Now I am also a member of this great community and I am able to make contributions to modules I use on the sites I work on. Thank you very much.

Edys Meza - Code contributor:

It was my first experience in something of this nature. I had just finished college and I wanted to learn new technologies. The Global Training Days workshop was a great opportunity for this. After attending the workshop I got an overview of Drupal that helped me a lot in the future. I learned basic concepts (nodes, taxonomies, users, blocks, etc.) each with real life examples; this was intuitive and easy to understand. That day I became part of the great Drupal community. Attending the workshop changed my life. After it I kept learning in the free classes presented by MTech, LLC where I currently work and continue learning everyday. I think these workshops are what make the Drupal community grow and help improve the lives of attendees.

Final comments

Be flexible. Nothing related to the Global Training Day is set in stone. For example, if for any reason you cannot give the training on the day suggested by the Drupal Association, pick another day. It can be in the same week or the week before or after. A good reason to do this is to let yourself rest and have enough time to recover your voice between multiple workshops in the same edition of the initiative.

Community first, companies later. Although the Drupal Association primarily has invited companies to give workshops to promote themselves, growing the Drupal community and sharing your knowledge should be the focus. In Nicaragua, we started to give the training as a local community initiative. It was Drupal Nicaragua, not a company who started giving the workshop in 2014. Later, both Agaric and MTech sponsored the events and education providers partnered with us. Of course, we are very grateful to them for their ongoing support!

Keep calm and enjoy the experience. Undoubtedly there will be mistakes, particularly the first few times you organize the workshop. In Nicaragua, we have given 10 workshops so far and none has been perfect. What is important is that you learn from the mistakes and improve for the next edition. Sometimes we face many difficulties, but we are able to work through them. At the end of the workshop, you will be rewarded by the smiles of people who have learned to build a simple yet functional website in a matter of hours. :-D

This is how the Nicaraguan Drupal community organizes Global Training Days. It is my hope that after reading through you feel inspired to give a training in your local community. When you are ready to take the challenge, pour your heart into it. Upload some photos of the workshop once it is finished, and share your experience, so that the entire Drupal community can benefit from it. If you have already participated in the Global Training Days, please share your story in the comments below. Have fun!

Special thanks to Alina Mackenzie and Lizz Trudeau for their thorough reviews and suggestions to this blog post. Also to Lucas Hedding who has helped move the Nicaraguan Drupal community forward by creating documentation and organizing events. His contributions to the local community are invaluable. And thanks to the amazing BADCamp organizers for providing me financial support to attend the camp the last two years. I have learned a lot during these events and the acquired knowledge has greatly improved the curriculum used at the Global Training Days workshop. The effort that you pour into the camp and keeping it free is inspiring and greatly appreciated. Keep up the good work! :-)

We believe in the freedom to move our data to whichever platforms best meets our needs. For that reason, we specialize in helping people migrate onto liberating software such as Drupal— and helping you learn how to do the same.

As the COVID-19 crisis continues, we will be announcing online trainings soon!

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In previous posts, we introduced the concept of defining migrations as configuration entities. These types of migrations can be executed from a user interface provided by the Migrate Tools module. In today’s article, we will present the workflow to import configuration entities and execute migrations from the user interface. Let’s get started.

Important: User interfaces tend to change. In fact, Migrate Tools recently launched a redesign of the user interface. Screenshots and referenced on-screen text might change over time. Some exposed settings might work, but give no feedback indicating a successful outcome. Some forms might only work with specific versions of modules. The goal is to demonstrate what is possible and what are the limitations of doing so. In general, executing migrations from the command line offers a better experience.

Getting the example code

You can get the full code example for today’s example at https://github.com/dinarcon/ud_migrations The module to use is UD configuration group migration (JSON source) whose machine name is ud_migrations_config_group_json_source.  It comes with three migrations: udm_config_group_json_source_paragraph, udm_config_group_json_source_image, and  udm_config_group_json_source_node. Additionally, the demo module provides the udm_config_group_json_source group.

You could install the module as we have done with every other example in the series. Instructions can be found in this article. When the module is installed, you could execute the migrations using Drush commands as explained in this article. But, we are going to use the user interface provided by Migrate Plus instead.

Importing configuration entities from the user interface

The first step is getting the configuration entities into Drupal’s active configuration. One way to do this is by using the "Single item" import from the "Configuration synchronization" interface. It can be found at /admin/config/development/configuration/single/import. Four configuration items will be imported in the following order:

1. The udm_config_group_json_source using "Migration Group" as the configuration type.
2. The udm_config_group_json_source_image using "Migration" as the configuration type.
3. The udm_config_group_json_source_paragraph using "Migration" as the configuration type.
4. The udm_config_group_json_source_node using "Migration" as the configuration type.

When importing configuration this way, you need to select the proper "Configuration type" from the dropdown. Otherwise, the system will make its best effort to produce a valid configuration entity from the YAML code you paste in the box. This can happen without a visual indication that you imported the wrong configuration type which can lead to hard to debug errors.

Note: If you do not see the "Migration" and "Migration group" configuration types, you need to enable the Migrate Plus module.

Another thing to pay close attention is changes in formatting when pasting code from a different source. Be it GitHub, your IDE, or an online tutorial, verify that your YAML syntax is valid and whitespaces are preserved. A single extraneous whitespace can break the whole migration. For invalid syntax, the best case scenario is the system rejecting the YAML definition. Otherwise, you might encounter hard to debug errors.

In today’s example, we are going to copy the YAML definitions from GitHub. You can find the source files to copy here. When viewing a file, it is recommended to click the "Raw" button to get the content of the file in plain text. Then, copy and paste the whole file in the designated box of the "Single item" import interface. Make sure to import the four configuration entities in the order listed above using the proper type.

To verify that this worked, you can use the "Single item" export interface located at /admin/config/development/configuration/single/export. Select the "Configuration type" and the "Configuration name" for each element that was imported. You might see some extra keys in the export. As long as the ones you manually imported are properly set, you should be good to continue.

Note that we included uuid keys in all the example migrations. As explained in this article, that is not required. Drupal would automatically create a uuid when the configuration is imported. But defining one simplifies the update process. If you needed to update any of those configurations, you can directly visit the "Single item" import interface and paste the new configuration. Otherwise, you would have to export it first, copy the uuid value, and add it to the code to import.

Executing configuration entities from the user interface

With the migration related configuration entities in Drupal’s active configuration, you should be able to execute them from the user interface provided by Migrate Tools. It is available in  "Manage > Structure > Migration" at /admin/structure/migrate. You should see the UD Config Group (JSON source) that was imported in the previous step.

Note: If you do not see the "Migration" link in "Manage > Structure" interface, you need to enable the Migrate Tools module.

This user interface will list all the migration groups in the system. From there, you can get to the individual migrations. You can even inspect the migration definition from this interface. It is important to note that only migrations defined as configuration entities will appear in this interface. Migrations defined as code will not be listed.

For the udm_config_group_json_source group, click the "List migrations" button to display all the migrations in the group. Next, click the "Execute" button on the udm_config_group_json_source_image migration. Then, make sure "Import" is selected as the operation and click the "Execute" button. Drupal will perform the import operation for the image migration. A success status message will appear if things work as expected. You can also verify that images where imported by visiting the files listing page at /admin/content/files.

Repeat the same process for the udm_config_group_json_source_paragraph and udm_config_group_json_source_node migrations. The final result will be similar to the one from the JSON source example. For import operations, the system will check for migration dependencies and execute them advance if defined. That means that in this example, you could run the import operation directly on the node migration. Drupal will automatically execute the images and paragraphs migrations. Note that migration dependencies are only executed automatically for import operations. Dependent migrations will not be rolled back automatically if the main migration is rolled back individually.

This example includes a paragraph migrations. As explained in this article, if you rollback the node migration, any paragraph associated with the nodes will be deleted. The Migrate API will not be aware of this. To fix the issue and recover the paragraphs, you need to rollback the paragraph migration as well. Then you re-import the paragraph and node migrations again. Doing this from the user interface involves more manual steps compared to running a single Drush command in the terminal.

Limitations of the user interface

Although you can import and execute migrations from the user interface, this workflow comes with many limitations.The following is a list of some of the things that you should consider:

• Updating configuration in production environments is not recommended. This can be enforced using the Configuration Read-only mode module.
• If the imported configuration entity did not contain a uuid, you need to export that configuration to get the auto generated value. This should be used in subsequent configuration import operations if updates to the YAML definition files are needed. Otherwise, you will get an error like "An entity with this machine name already exists but the import did not specify a UUID."
• The following operations to not provide any user interface feedback if they succeeded: "Rollback", "Stop", and "Reset". See this issue for more context.
• As of this writing, most operations for CSV sources fail if using the 8.x-3.x branch of the Migrate Source CSV module. See this issue for more context.
• As of this writing, the user interface for renaming columns in CSV sources produces a fatal error if using the 8.x-3.x branch of the Migrate Source CSV module. See this issue for more context.
• As of this writing, it is not possible to execute all migrations in a group from the user interface in one operation. See this issue for more context.
• The Migrate source UI module can be used to upload a file to be used as source in CSV migrations. As of this writing, a similar feature for JSON and XML files is not working. See this issue for more context.

To reiterate, it is not recommended to use the user interface to add configuration related to migrations and execute them. The extra layer of abstractions can make it harder to debug problems with migrations if they arise. If possible, execute your migrations using the commands provided by Migrate Tools. Finally, it is recommended to read this article to learn more about the difference between managing migrations as code or configuration.

What did you learn in today’s blog post? Did you know you can import migration related configuration entities from the user interface? Did you know that Migrate Tools provides a user interface for running migrations? Share your answers in the comments. Also, I would be grateful if you shared this blog post with others.

Next: Understanding the entity_lookup and entity_generate process plugins from Migrate Tools

This blog post series, cross-posted at UnderstandDrupal.com as well as here on Agaric.coop, is made possible thanks to these generous sponsors. Contact Understand Drupal if your organization would like to support this documentation project, whether it is the migration series or other topics.

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Agaric is grateful to the Drupal community for all the effort poured into the amazing collaborative project. As part of giving back to it, we go to conferences to share with others what we have learned. These are some events where Agaric will be presenting this month.

Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy

This is a convergence of worker-owned cooperatives. Representatives come from all over the country to attend workshops and sessions on all things related to owning a cooperative. It will be help in New York City on weekend of June 9th -11th at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Benjamin and Micky will be hosting a workshop/discussion with Danny Spitzberg on Drutopia. They will cover how it can help cooperatives and smaller businesses have a we presence above and beyond the costs they can afford by consolidating the hosting and feature development into a group effort.

Montreal Drupal Camp

This event will take place on June 15-18 at John Molson School of Business de l'Université Concordia. Benjamin will be speaking on how Software as a Service can lead to long-term success in a software project.

Twin Cities Drupal Camp in Minneapolis

At Twin Cities Agaric will be presenting one workshop and two sessions.

On Thursday, June 22, Benjamin and Mauricio will be presenting the Getting Started with Drupal workshop. It is aimed to people who are just starting with Drupal and want to have a birds eye view of how the system works. As part of the workshop attendees will have the chance to create a simple yet functional website to put in practice their new knowledge. The organizers have gone above and beyond to make this training FREE for everyone! You do not even need a camp ticket to participate. You just need to register.

On Saturday, June 24, Mauricio will be presenting on Drupal 8 Twig recipes. This will be an overview of the theme system in Drupal 8 and will include practical example of modifying the default markup to your needs. The same day, Benjamin will present his Software as a Service.

Design4Drupal

This is THE yearly Camp for Drupal doers in Boston and it happens June 22nd-23rd. Micky will be hosting a workshop/discussion on Drutopia, an initiative within the Drupal project based in social justice values and focused on building collectively owned online tools. Current focuses include two Drupal distributions aimed at grassroots groups also offered as software as a service, ensuring that the latest technology is accessible to low-resourced communities.
Agaric will have a busy month attending and speaking at conferences. Please come to say hi and have fun with us.