Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: ]project-open[ Package-Installer for OpenACS 5.3

2: Re: ]project-open[ Package-Installer for OpenACS 5.3 (response to 1)

Posted by Eduardo Santos on 07/24/08 02:47 PM

Hi Frank,

Thank you for this fantastic work. I have to confess I'm very impressed about ]PO[ possibilities now.

I'm still beggining to use it, but I have some doubts about the project's goals. What are your plans about it right now? I can see that it's more tight to the Core, but it still works much better as a standalone application. There's no user integration for example, or at least I couldn't find it yet. Do you have any intention to work on this area or to integrate with any other OpenACS package? Maybe dotLRN?

3: Re: ]project-open[ Package-Installer for OpenACS 5.3 (response to 2)

Posted by Frank Bergmann on 07/24/08 03:00 PM

Hi Eduardo,

What are your plans about it right now?

Our main next step is to setup a preconfigured version of ]project-open[ for ITSM (IT Services Management, basially managing an IT department). Here is the announcement:
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=1444625

There's no user integration for example

I don't understand this one... We use the OpenACS parties, persons and users tables, a well as OpenACS groups for permissions etc. How do you mean "no user integration"?

Maybe dotLRN?

It's no problem to install both dotLrn and ]po[ at the same instance. ILO/ISSA (International Labour Organizations / International Social Security Association) are running such as configuration with OpenACS/dotLrn for their "community" and ]po[ for their internal project management.

However, there are currently no "]po[ plugins" that would show dotLrn objects, or the other way around. The integration between the two is handled based on "links".

But: What else do you think of?

Cheers!
Frank

4: Re: ]project-open[ Package-Installer for OpenACS 5.3 (response to 3)

Posted by Eduardo Santos on 07/24/08 04:17 PM

Hi Frank,

I've seen your other post about the IT Services Management, and that's what made me be very impressed. I've also read your discussion with Malte about Project Management in this thread:

http://www.openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=621211

I'm facing the following situation right now: I have a dotLRN community based system wich is going to need a project management tool. I was almost convinced about using project-manager until I saw your ITSM for ]PO[ that made me very impressed. My main issue is to find out the best tool with the easier integration and management.

I guess the biggest difference here is that the projects will be controlled by communities. Maybe it would be necessary to have a "central space" to see every projects, but all the tasks and projects will be inside the community. Maybe the best solution here is to import pm_projects to ]PO[, wich will act as a projects central.

The "no user integration" was an user error misunderstanding. I couldn't see the employees group was selected. However, unless the user is in a ]PO[ group it doesn't appear. Maybe we should define a standard role for everyone or some kind of script to add them. I don't know.

The other thing I thought about was to create some dotLRN projects package that would make it possible to create the some projects and tasks (using the Petris Net interface) inside the communities and ]PO[ would act like some kind of central, as I told you above. My thoughts are a little bit confused right now, but what do you think about all of this?

Thank you in advance for the amazing work.

5: Re: ]project-open[ Package-Installer for OpenACS 5.3 (response to 4)

Posted by Frank Bergmann on 07/24/08 05:33 PM

Hi,

projects will be controlled by communities

Ok, I see what you mean: You need to show ]po[ projects as part of dotLrn communities, and the other way around.

And probably you also need to modify the GUI so that both look more or less the same, right?

So yes, that's a bit of customization work, but it should be easy. The ]po[ data model is straightforwards and uses the OpenACS infrastructure (groups, acs_rels, ...).

But you'll probably have to work on these issues yourself, because I don't see many users (compared to the ~200.000 regular ]po[ users) who would use this dotLrn - ]po[ combination.

However, we might one day do the opposite - integrate dotLrn into the ]po[ GUI. That's because some of our bigger customers run e-learning processes as part of their HR processes. However, such an integration would look differently from what you need AFAIU.

So maybe it's really the easiest option for you to go with "Project Manager", because it already integrates into the OpenACS community structure? I don't think (anymore?) that everything should be done using ]po[. 😊

Cheers!
Frank

6: Re: ]project-open[ Package-Installer for OpenACS 5.3 (response to 4)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 07/31/08 12:15 PM

Funny as it might sound, I have a customer which runs ]po[ and now needs communities for it's users. So we might be installing .LRN on top of ]po[ and write a dotlrn-portlet for the list of projects and tasks of a user.

In your case you could probably just make projects subsite aware in the sense that they know which subsite they belong to (even if the intranet-core package is only mounted once). Maybe just use the parent_id ?

Then you have the control of the projects in the communities.

But, as Frank mentioned, going with project-manger and the dotlrn*project-manager* stuff is probably easier to achieve for your goals.