Speaker
Description
With the deprecation of Drupal 7 in January 2025, Data Central has fully transitioned the Lens platform to Django, a robust Python-based web framework. Originally developed in PHP and Drupal in 2015, Lens has long supported Time Allocation Committees (TAC) across major facilities such as the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). Since being used for the 2024B semester on the ANU 2.3m Telescope, Lens 3.0 has now been upgraded improving the proposal preparation workflow and integrating more closely with the Data Central ecosystem. Lens' integration with the 2.3m Telescope offers a streamlined observer preparation workflow by managing observer assignments through a direct interface with the 2.3m Observing System, enabling the efficient coordination of observations and easy access to your data. Meanwhile, recent changes to the AAT submission process have improved performance whilst also aligning the system more closely with Data Central’s account system, eliminating the need to update investigator information in multiple locations. Lens has also improved Time Allocation Committee (TAC) workflows by providing streamlined reporting capabilities.
