Cross-Platform Technology Roadmap -draft
The Samvera Community Roadmap Alignment Group has selected the following objectives as priorities for community technology work in 2025-2026. Each platform determines what work to prioritize with these objectives in mind:
Maintain the most up-to-date versions of dependent software
Make all changes required to meet accessibility requirements as outlined by the Accessibility Working Group
Identify and address issues that result in slow performance, such as slow load times or long processing times
Simplify installation processes for easy deployment of a new installation of the platform
Enable integration with other services and repository components
Add new platform features identified as priorities by other working and interest groups
Hyrax technology work for May - August, 2025
Integration of COAR Notify gem: Cottage Labs is funding development work to integrate the COAR Notify gem into Hyrax. This will enable Hyrax repositories to opt into bi-directional linking between peer review services, overlay journals and repositories.
Testing migration to Fedora 6: Tools to facilitate migrating from Fedora 4 to Fedora 6 storage have been available since the release of Hyrax 5 last year, and now that Fedora 6 is fully supported in Hyrax 5.1, we will performance test these migration tools as well as Hyrax’s handling of multi-page items and collections with thousands of members.
Internationalization audit: Although the Hyrax public and staff interfaces are available in several languages, it has been a few years since we comprehensively reviewed and updated them to ensure consistent labeling and behavior for each language. We will complete this audit and receive review from proficient speakers of each language.
Bulkrax integration into Hyrax: The Bulkrax batch import/export tool has been available to the Samvera community since 2021 and is frequently used with Hyrax applications for batch processing items and collections. Based on community input, we will work to include Bulkrax as a dependency in Hyrax with the option to turn it on or off in the administrative dashboard.
Shrine integration: Valkyrie Shrine allows an alternative way to store files directly on S3, a common use case at many community institutions.
Upgrade to Solr 9: Part of routine dependencies maintenance
Dependancies audit: Along with work to include and update dependencies, we will audit our existing dependencies.
Hyrax technology work for September - December, 2025
Accessibility Audit: Last November, a Community Sprint brought Hyrax to WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance, and we will audit any changes to the public and Dashboard views to ensure we’re still there.
Flexible Metadata: The Flexible Metadata gem has been available in the Samvera community since 2020, and we will incorporate it as a dependency in Hyrax. This lets repository administrators create and define new metadata fields, link controlled vocabularies, change metadata field labels, and set required and optional fields without requiring software developer assistance.
IIIF Viewer Updates: Currently, Hyrax is using Universal Viewer 3, and we will upgrade to Universal Viewer 4 and update Hyrax to take advantage of its new features. Additionally, we will make the IIIF viewer switchable, letting repository administrators choose between the Universal Viewer and other IIIF options.
Serverless IIIF container: Serverless IIIF is cost-effective, infinitely scalable IIIF Image API v2.1 and v3.0 compliant service packaged as an AWS Serverless Application with minimum setup and no maintenance. We will offer a container for Hyrax with Serverless IIIF to make setup and configuration easier.
API for frontends and web components: Need compelling language for this
Blacklight 8: Part of routine dependencies maintenance
Deprecate unused core components: Part of routine dependencies maintenance
The cross-platform technology roadmap spreadsheet is a planning document used by Product Owners and Technical Leads to track, prioritize, and schedule specific technical work within and across Avalon Media System, Hyku, Hyrax, and related Ruby gems.