Forum OpenACS Q&A: Who wants to built .WRK?

Posted by Lars Pind on 09/20/02 02:17 PM

We're really keen on putting together an intranet-in-a-box thingie
called .WRK.

I'm picturing a system that pulls together the best from OpenACS
and .LRN, configured for intranet and extranet out of the box, with
all the relevant applications added and portletized, with some
groups setup for employees, partners, customers, with default portal
layouts, with a setup wizard that guides you through creating users,
uploading your company logo, etc. And administrator and end-user
documentation.

We don't need all of the above right away, but I'll definitely be
moving towards making this happen in a very short timeframe.

Are there other people out there who would be interested in sharing
the burden on this work? Then I think we should team up and flesh
out the work that needs to be done, so we don't waste effort by
duplicating work.

I feel like we've got to move fast if we want to make this a strong
intranet platform. The market for closed source intranet
collaboration software already seems settled, the open source market
may not be just yet.

/Lars

2: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by defunct defunct on 09/20/02 03:02 PM

Well... as I coined the term I guess I'd better say yes.. I'd be interested

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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 09/20/02 04:02 PM

Count us in.

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Posted by Ben Adida on 09/20/02 05:45 PM

Definitely interested.

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Posted by Roberto Mello on 09/20/02 05:50 PM

Same here.

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/20/02 06:20 PM

Great! A couple of more people also expressed interest by private email.

I'll put together a plan for what I think needs to be done. And I'm going to put up a server where I play with putting it together.

Ben, it would be really useful if you could give us a short description of what you think would be necessary. After all, you're the main architect behind .LRN, on which we'll be building.

We should also set up a forum somewhere. Either a bboard on openacs.org, or something more involved on the new openacs.org. Of course, this is the kind of thing that .WRK would be ideally suited for :)

Expect more from me next week.

/Lars

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Posted by Walter McGinnis on 09/20/02 06:20 PM

I've been thinking about this for awhile. I think the key to its success is being able to pick a flavor of intranet. We should identify vertical markets, do some research, and have packaged customizations to choose from. Generalization will help development, but specialization will help marketing.

From a technical standpoint most of us know that this means that we need to add another step to the installation process that loads parameters into the database and/or writes to .info files, etc.

I would be interested in being involved.

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/20/02 06:27 PM

Walter,

I agree, and I don't.

My model is the Danish company Groupcare (www.groupcare.biz). They're not specialized in any vertical, yet they seem to have a pretty good business. Of course, they went after this market much ealier and have really strong marketing here. They also happen to be business school people, not engineers.

I think if we can have what they have, plus a bunch of things they don't, like Wimpy, we'll be in good shape.

I also think that we basically have all the components that we need, we just need to package and configure it, clean up the user experience, polish a couple of the important packages that are still lacking, and write user documentation.

Then we can build verticals and add functionality on that basis.

/Lars

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Posted by Walter McGinnis on 09/20/02 07:13 PM

I would suggest parallel efforts that feed each other. Researching verticals can help the overall design of .WRK.

Having clients/verticals in mind can help focus technical development by finding out what people really want before building it. Designing for specific contrasting verticals can help flesh out true generalized functionality. It can also lead to partnerships with actual clients/users that can help .WRK adoption down the road.

We agree on what needs to be done. I'm just suggesting an additional technical step (adding pre-packaged configuration functionality) and essentially a formalized process of tracking user scenarios (usually a design step) that allows us to reuse the information to build the pre-packaged configurations.

I want a generalized .WRK. One that can easily be used by several verticals without having to be refactored. We already have a lot going for us with .LRN and the other things you mentioned.

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Posted by Torben Brosten on 09/20/02 07:13 PM

Count me in. I want to build some templated (generic subsite friendly) project management packages --something where a project manager (overseeing workgroups) can start-up and grow a project on the fly... from requirements discussion, planning (WBS, estimating, etc.), accounting, tracking through to termination. The dotWRK needs to be applicable to everything from building construction trades, rapid-development custom manufacturing, community-based gatherings becoming semi-formal-projects, legal-case building/tracking (such as for business liability or missing children) etc. The basics are here as Lars states.

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Posted by Dave Bauer on 09/20/02 07:26 PM

I am interested in content management and knowledge management features that might be used in an intranet setting.

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Posted by Stan Kaufman on 09/20/02 08:09 PM

I have a variety of healthcare-related ideas and applications. I'm definitely interested in working on this!

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Posted by Dave Bauer on 09/20/02 08:21 PM

Lars,

I think we probably should setup a project subsite for .WRK over at dev.openacs.org. There was some concern about splitting development discussions into seperate forums instances, so I am not sure exactly how we want to set it up.

Chances are this type of project will improve packages outside of the immediate .WRK project including the core.

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Posted by Dave Hwang on 09/21/02 12:04 AM

I'll try to contribute. I'm working on something like this already for my group in HP (as a side task from my hardware design work).

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Posted by Bart Teeuwisse on 09/21/02 12:36 AM

Count me in.

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Posted by Samir Joshi on 09/21/02 01:48 PM

This is great ! Count me in !

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Posted by defunct defunct on 09/23/02 10:50 AM

There's a product that keeps coming up with potential clients of mine, thats widely used, but largely unpopular (unweildy, to much 'image' not enough substance and expensive licensing). And I think its certainly something a dotWRK could take-on. I suspect any dotWRK would cover off more than this, but as I *know* there's a demand here, it might be worth looking at as a reference.

The products called eRooms (don;t know if anyone familiar with it) at www.eroom.net.

I've played with it a bit and too be honest its a prime candidate fro taking on. It seamingly only really implements glorifed bulletin boards and chat.. with a bit of file management.. but, as its licensing policy is on a 'per number of rooms' basis, as you can see it gets expensive as an organisation grows! An open source solution to rival it has numerous USPs...

So... thats at least partly what I'd like to see in a dotWRK..

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/23/02 11:24 AM

I've looked at Eroom before, and I though their functionality is somewhat shallow, it's very thorough. And they've been able to get some really big accounts, although the ones I've talked to also said they hated it.

There's also inclusion.net, formerly Planet Intra, also known as Intra.Net, which looks pretty good. I particularly like their home page for talking about deployment phases, verticals, what value the customer will get from using this software, and a short ROI story.

There's an old demo of an old system up at http://yourcompany.intra.net/

/Lars

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Posted by David Kuczek on 09/23/02 12:23 PM

chat...

that's another thing (besides CMS) that needs to be streamlined in the future.

-Berklee is using volano (http://www.volano.com), which is proprietary.

-Malte will improve his jabber solution (http://www.sussdorff-roy.com/jabber/jabber_inst_main_doc.html) and release it around the end of the year.

Anybody else doing anything on chat solutions?

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Posted by Roberto Mello on 09/23/02 03:15 PM

Lars, thanks for that link. Good ideas there.

Re: Chat, that's definitely something to discuss, but I'm more concerned about webmail. I haven't followed its development. What's it up to now?

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/23/02 05:44 PM

I said about eroom: "...and I though their functionality is somewhat shallow, it's very thorough"

What I meant to say is that they may lack some functionality, but what they have is very clean, easy to use, it seems finished, polished. They also have this downloadable component thing, that lets you drag and drop documents and stuff.

Just to clarify.

/Lars

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Posted by defunct defunct on 09/23/02 06:18 PM

Yes Lars,

A triumph of presentation over substance! ;0)

Isn't that like saying 'I have the great new microwave, really quiet, nice looking, dead reliable.... mind you it only cooks chicken.'?

;)

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Posted by David Walker on 09/23/02 06:22 PM

So you just market the microwave as "all we do is chicken, so we do
it better"

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Posted by defunct defunct on 09/23/02 06:31 PM

The surely its a 'Chicken Cooker'.... Trade Descriptions and all that ...

No, seriously you're right. Not disagreeing that its well presented and resonable smooth (despite crashes, but heh, windoze..) but I fidn their marketing/claims to somewhat overstate the case.

The feedback I've had is that its restrictive, too narrow and too expensive, given that this (v.large) client had been given another impression....

But then also shows a good way to postion any .WRK. As functionally general and feature rich platform and allow the 'presentation' to be a bespoke element (as often this is what a customer means by configurable).

So... is someone organising some effort on this (v.keen), firstly does anyone own dotWRK? if not should someone register it? OF perhaps, or we can if you like. Probly only covers the UK though.

I don't think its a million miles off dotLRN is some senses, so perhaps it'd be quite easy to 'dive-in' and experiment with some development on it?

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Posted by defunct defunct on 09/23/02 06:53 PM

Arf!

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Posted by Jade Rubick on 09/23/02 07:16 PM

Lars, I'm very interested in an Intranet solution for OACS.

I'm available to help, if the product we develop works for the company I'm at.

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Posted by Walter McGinnis on 09/23/02 07:47 PM

Are there any plans to integrate this effort (or at least exploit the work that as
already been done)?

https://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0005YJ&topic_id=
dotLRN%20Development&topic=15

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/23/02 10:58 PM

Yes, we don't want to let any work go to waste. I'm talking with Michael about his experiences. Not that there's a whole lot of work done here, is there, Michael?

I'd like to set up a project workspace on dev.openacs.org, so if one of the dev.openacs.org hackers is reading this and would create a space for us, that'd be hunky-dory. Thanks! :)

Here's a partial to-do list of things that I've thought of. When we get the project space up, it'll be easier to keep track of everything and develop this collaboratively. It goes without saying that we're building this on dotLRN.

1) Configure for intranet use. This includes at a minimum changing text at the level of changing "class" to "project". The extended version would be to factor out the class community into a separate package and have the dotlrn core package not know anything about that community type in particular. Ben said he estimated this at 2 solid hacker-weeks worth of work for someone who knows the stuff intimately. So definitely not trivial.

2) Simple CMS: Edit-this-page, ability to attach a directory of static pages to a community, something is needed. Again, we can do something quick for now, then expand later.

What I'm looking for, though, is really something that's compelling out of the box, so I'm going to add these things, too:

3) Graphic design: Make it look good. Don't shoot me! I think this would really, really make a difference. The quick solution would be to slap on some templates, for example using those from Sloanspace as a starting point, if they're willing to share. Deeper version would be to find a solution that would work for all of OpenACS, with skins, widgets, site-wide consistent design, etc.

4) User interface cleanup: Group admin UI is the classic, but let's walk through the whole UI and clean it up, streamline it.

5) And then let's configure it out of the box with an Employee group, departments groups, the ability to invite people to join your project group (extranet?), perhaps there's a default "company" community that spans the whole company, with subcommunities for each department ... I haven't thought this through all that much, but you get the picture.

There's lots more we can add, obviously, but I think this are the critical things that I think would make it compelling for more people to buy into this platform.

I'm researching a number of competing intranet systems these days, and I'll come up with my thoughts for what this thing should look like.

I think there'll be plenty of room for different people pushing different visions, all variations on a theme, and for this thing developing in really exciting ways over time.

My focus right now is on doing the least amount of work possible that we need to do to start attracting people's attention (and money) for real.

/Lars

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/23/02 11:30 PM

Forgot to mention:

6) Write documentation/online help text for both the administrator user ("Congratulations, you just installed dotWRK, now here's how you get started using it ...") and end-user documentation (for the employees of the company using this intranet).

/Lars

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Posted by Rafael Calvo on 09/24/02 06:30 AM

I am also interested and might be able to contribute parts of it. I had started writing requierements analysis and use cases, I will post them when I have something worth it

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Posted by Buel Chandler on 09/26/02 03:40 PM

Count me in for something. Integration of some of what I consider key packages of OpenACS (e.g., workflow, tickets, etc) into dotWRK is something I've been looking at by digesting some of the dotLRN setup stuff.

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Posted by Tilmann Singer on 09/26/02 11:33 PM

a note on 2) Simple CMS, on the "expand later" part:

I heard from several people who use it that a Wiki has proven to be an extremely useful tool in their intranets.

Imagine a Wiki that's integrated with OpenACS, like the versioning of the content repository, search, linking to arbitrary objects - wouldn't that be cool? Sorry, just a note to all those hackers out there that have too much time 😉

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Posted by Andrei Popov on 09/27/02 09:20 AM

I'd be interested.

On items listed/suggested above (by Lars) -- are you sure that, say, any sort of project-tracking could be done via existing class functionality of dotLRN? I somehow doubt it, especially if one were to consider nesting of projects, sub-projects, sub-sub-projects, ..., (n*sub)-projects... This is something that was lacking in ACS-classic project management -- only 2 levels (a parent and a sub) were possible...

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/27/02 09:49 AM

I wasn't thinking project tracking, I was thinking project communities. Project tracking is on the wish-list.

/Lars

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/27/02 02:17 PM

I finally got around to writing a little something up at the new dotWRK project home page: http://dev.openacs.org/projects/dotwrk/index. Nothing new. Just a recap of ground already covered in the thread.

I'll try to get the time to do a few mockups, maybe even over the weekend.

/Lars

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Posted by Buel Chandler on 09/27/02 04:24 PM

Perhaps if we get enough momentum going, we should break into a separate forum, so that we can start breaking down technical, philosophical and general issues?

Anyway, in a prototype for our organization's management to see, I had mapped our Org Chart into communities with the following structure:

dotMECH (entire org)
- Division
  - Branch
    - Section
      - Team

Note that this was just a quick look to test basic functionality, as I only added a few test projects to just check sanity. I also was just seeing what could be done stuffing a non-LRN prototype into the dotLRN infrastructure easily and quickly.

For Terms, I used Fiscal Year boundaries (Oct->Sep in our case). Department was a singleton to represent our entire org. Subject was each customer (internal or external) for whom a project was being done.

Each Class was a discrete project, changing

Professor -> Manager (not necessarily Proj Mgr). This is the Supervisor/Manager ultimately resp.
Course Administrator -> Customer Service Rep
Course Assistant -> Proj Mgr
Teaching Assist -> Tech Lead(s)
Student -> Team members

I had looked around the (Oracle) SQL to see where to change labeling to reflect non-LRN use, but stopped to start looking at some stuff with ticket-tracker, workflow and lars-blogger to see how to fit them better into a "unified" project planning, tasking, and reporting environment (This was for another presentation to my mgmt).

Then ideally would be to "portlet" them to make all that available to the dotWRK environment.

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Posted by Roberto Mello on 09/27/02 10:24 PM

Tillman,

I'm working on a Wiki package. I am writing it from scratch, but I've wondered if building on ETP2 wouldn't be a better way.

I'm trying to make the Wiki package general so that with some modifications you can have different applications. Especifically, I want a Cookbook package with linking, ratings, moderation. I don't know if it'll end up being Wiki->Cookbook or two separate packages. We'll see.

38: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 09/28/02 10:25 PM

I've created a mock-up of what I'd like .WRK to look like eventually.

The mock-up is at http://www.collaboraid.biz/extranet/dotwrk/mock-up-home .

More info at http://www.collaboraid.biz/extranet/dotwrk/mock-ups.

Yet more info at the .WRK project home at http://dev.openacs.org/projects/dotwrk/.

Feedback?

/Lars

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Posted by defunct defunct on 09/30/02 11:42 AM

Hi Lars,

Yes, shaping up much as I'd expect. A portal-style view of corporate intranet is pretty much the way to go I think... however...

I think there's a few areas which are critically important to an intranet-in-a-box that are going to have to be included fairly early on, the danger being that if not all we end up with is a giant, super-fly message board.

One of the things complicating an intranet-in-a-box is that any company of any significant size is a collection of distinct, though related, functions. i.e. Marketing, Sales, Deliver, Support HR and so on...

I personally feel that in many respects the non-tech functions are the primary driver, as its often these folks who drive new investment in stechnologies like .WRK. Its also interesting to note thats its also these areas of a business that are not well served by existing proprietary systems. (got a partner in marketing).

I'd like to see things like these given high priority early on.

Account Management
Contact/Sales databases
Campaign Management (bulk mailing, auto responses etc).
Good story on how the intranet functions with existing web investment. Maybe this is XML/SOAP interfaces, maybe its a 'move your website to .WRK.. and so on..
Integration is key. Someone's already mentione Lotus Notes, and its products like these that dotWRK *must* offer interfaces to. Companies will already have investment in these areas, and products that don't/can't integrate are likely to be un-selected.
HR functions... Timesheets, Holiday booking, expense claims....
Project SubSites. Easy to create, subsited sections for individual projects/managers/teams...
Communication functionality. At it simplest CHAT.... figuring that most companies interested in intranets are probably also geographically separated.

Sounds a lot doesn't it but most of the above already has a basis/start-point in existing ACS functionality. We've already built a really simple contact/sales db app which might make a start for some of the things above.

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Posted by Lars Pind on 09/30/02 01:12 PM

Simon,

I totally agree that these other areas are super-important. At first I thought you'd be suggesting that I created areas for them on the intranet, like the Planet.Intra demo site linked from the dotWRK home page.

But then I realized that you're actually asking for functionality and integration. That's cool, but would obviously require some funding to get implemented. I've added it to the mock-up, so it can properly serve as a product vision.

I've added the items you mention but I'm not sure about the structure that's there right now.

/Lars

41: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 09/30/02 07:06 PM

Here are some thoughts and recommendations, all IMO and based on my own company's needs:

Our company is very project based. We've got a bazillion projects going on at the same time, and the ability to track what is happening with each project and what has been done already is extremely important. For this reason, the projects have to be *very* flexible.
It was a fairly easy modification to ACS 3.4.10 to make more than 2 levels of projects. Our Intranet has unlimited levels of projects.
We should make it really easy to add different types of data to the calendar. We should also make it easy for companies to decide how their calendars are shown (group calendars, personal calendars, or maybe just one shared calendar in the company).
We need a very easy to use "collaborative to-do list" aka ticket tracker. These should be linked to projects, and shown on the calendar. The project page should show 1) what needs to be done on the project, 2) what has been done, as far as hours, closed tickets, etc and shown in one place, 3) what the current state of the project is (who is responsible for it, when if any the deadline for the project is, etc..
If we made a migration path from the old ACS 3.4.x Intranet to the new dotWRK, I'm sure we'd have a lot of early adopters that could test this code out 😊 It would also pull in more developrs, like me for example. Wishful thinking perhaps...
In our company, we are not geographically dispersed, so let's make sure that it's easy for a small 25 person company in one location to use this too.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts later. :)

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Posted by Michael Feldstein on 09/30/02 08:35 PM

I've been busy with work (yay!) so I missed this thread. To answer your earlier question, Lars, at this point we have done absolutely zero custom programming to transform dotLRN into dotWRK. There's a fair amount that you can do by simply tweaking configurations as a sitewide admin, but that's basically all we've done. Right now we're still in the early stages of trying it on for size. We may very well invest in some customization, which we would be happy to share with the community. However, I don't know what or when that will be just yet.

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Posted by defunct defunct on 10/01/02 10:41 AM

Jade,

I agree with your recommendations for functionality.

It also presents an interesting dimension that's building. People seem to be describing dotWRK not really as a corporate intranet, but increasingly as a project management tool..... and further to that the focus (and I'm only going on the few postings dotted abot so far) seems to be a little biased towards software companies!

Folks, I know this sounds a bit trite, but there are companies out there that do stuff other than develop software ;), perhaps we should consider what the difference in needs is between tech companies using intranets and more 'traditional' companies.

I'm worried that the requirements being built up are being largely by developers. Do we have anyone in the community *not* involved with tech as their main business. CAn we persuade them to get involved in this informal 'requirements capture'?

My partner is a marketing executive, and even a short discussion with her has radically changed my idea of what a company might want from an intranet (and she's in a tech company).

44: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by David Kuczek on 10/01/02 11:10 AM

I currently work at a multi-channel broker. I originally wanted to persuade them to use openacs, but then they got swallowed by their parent company and a LOT changed.
 
Features of our Intranet:
<ul>
<li>Profiles of employees.
<li>Books, magazine, studies database. Where can I find a book? They are often spread all over the company.
<li>Projects. It is supposed to show who is working at which project. You can upload .ppt, .doc etc. further explaining your work. There is no project planing or collaboration yet, but it surely would be helpful.
<li>Processes. Explains the process of every job position. They are mainly displayed as graphics defining the workflow of i.e. a call center agent. Some workflows are deeply branchen (if/else etc.). I have never looked at the workflow module, but it would be great, if it could define branched workflows and display them graphically.
<li>Forms. Content Repository for different forms.
<li>News.

</ul>

45: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 10/01/02 12:30 PM

Simon said: "My partner is a marketing executive, and even a short discussion with her has radically changed my idea of what a company might want from an intranet (and she's in a tech company)."

Simon, could you expand on that, please? What did you learn?

/Lars

46: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by defunct defunct on 10/01/02 12:57 PM

Yeah, was a bit cryptic that ;)

Well I won't go inot it all here, but I'll try to summarise the main points:

1) Technology is largely irrelevant i.e. they don't care whats its made from, just what it can do.
2) That the most likely 'sponsors' for intranets-in-a-box are not likely to be the tech/internal folks, but much more likely to be salespeople, marketing and account management.
3) Integration with existing technology figures really high. i.e. going in with a 'this is a great toolkit... but it works on its own' is a sure fire non-starter.
4) Don't build a super-functional clever-wizzo system. Academice may be prepared to experiment and try new approaches, businesses much less so. Somehting that does simple things really well is much more preferable.
5) The kinds of people who will make extensive use (sales, marketing, management) are also the kinds of people who aren't usually prepared to adopt complex, rigid, involved or prescriptive systems. The more flexibly the platform can be used the better. I seem to remember aD found this same thing with Seimens.. i,e, you can build clever knowledge-databases, informaiton analysis and so on... but salesmen end up doing it all with informal bulletin boards ;)
6) Make it work on their PCs with little effort. i.e.
7) Make it solve existing business problems, not provide clever functionality that enhances existing operations. i.e. don;t give them something they never had before, replace something they never liked.

As you can see this kind of thinking suggests a different kind of platform.

One comment that was made was 'if it worked with Lotus Notes, thats more important than if it was all that good'......

It also seemed to me that integration was far more salent than operation...

47: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Torben Brosten on 10/01/02 06:40 PM

Simon, I totally agree that dotWRK should not be software-project centric. The data models should be simple, yet flexible. This means having a built-in short-list of functions, such as:

1. "Log" package - posts "description", "done by", "date" with options to activate/display fields in "duration", "confirmed by", "authorized by", "comments/notes" "WBS/outline reference" "job code" "status" etc. where fields displayed can be filtered/sorted by content, and ability to add or change values and headings based on permissions.

2. accounting package with simple ledger functionality (account, item ref, original date, to/from, for/exp-code, credit/debit, project/client ref, their ref, statement date, papers filed, tax ref etc.), and again extra fields (other1, other2) included (so a DB/OpenACS expert doesn't have to get involved everytime a project is a little different) --saves time for everyone.

3. time ledger package that integrates with calendar (adds and removes alerts to it as schedule changes). again, extra fields

4. research package/info-log that tracks progress of unknowns to facts. This could be a table consisting of fields: Info type - (about subject from other than subject, from itself, from subject about other), entry date, citation/source, comments etc. Subject may be Person, Entity, Witness, Topic, Product/project feasibility...

All four of these are a variation on a cluster of similar functions and procedures that perhaps can be rolled into one package and mounted/configured in different ways --more than one instance working in the same "realm" ....perhaps integrating across package instances hmm.. that may be too much too fast! =)

Many times, extra functionality is not as important as an appropriate place to put the info, authority to edit/change it, and ability to customize how it is reported.

The packages should include a few extra blank long fields with generic field names--where the displayed fieldnames can be changed.

Also, the ability to export/import to/from a spreadsheet (as tab delimited text or CSV) would be useful in case some field data needs changed based on functions or batch editing, for charting etc.

Perhaps some fields could contain custom calculations... starting with (filtered) pure tcl represented 1 line equations that reference other fields in the same table set...

think customizable, flexible, integrable

48: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 10/03/02 06:26 PM

It also presents an interesting dimension that's building. People seem to
be describing dotWRK not really as a corporate intranet, but increasingly as a
project management tool..... and further to that the focus (and I'm only going
on the few postings dotted abot so far) seems to be a little biased towards
software companies!

Hear hear! A lot of the work I've had to do customizing our ACS based Intranet
has been to make it useful for non-software companies. For example,
changing the ticket tracker to be a real collaborative to-do list (very
valuable!)...

Project management is going to be extremely important for us. I'm not really
sure what everybody is agreeing on with the idea to build dotWRK, but
depending on the form it takes, I might be on board. Can we agree what our
goals are for it?

49: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 10/10/02 11:10 AM

Hi all,

I've transformed the mock-up into a running prototype at <a href="http://dotwrk.collaboraid.net/dotwrk/">http://dotwrk.collaboraid.net/dotwrk/</a>.

Please check it out and let me know what you think.

/Lars

50: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Deds Castillo on 10/10/02 11:30 AM

Is this a bug? Or did you really set it to auto-login as you and
become an admin? :)

51: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 10/10/02 01:15 PM

Not a bug, I did. I should probably change that ...

/Lars

52: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 10/14/02 08:21 PM

Wow, it looks very slick, Lars. Here's what I imagine the users at my site would say about this:

What is the difference between departments and groups? They seem to be the same thing.
The idea of projects and project management seems to be missing from this particular mockup. Our small company of 25 people has about 1000 projects going on at once, and each of these projects has to keep track of a vast array of information: who is in charge of it, what has been done for it (project reports), what needs to be done for it (a modified ticket tracker)... It would be nice if it were possible to add arbitrary fields of information to track throughout each projects... I'll put up some mockups of some ideas.
so if I wanted to add in a collaborative to-do list (simplified and refined ticket tracker), I could do that as a portlet, and it would appear under Company? Would it also show up as a link under each group/department, and/or under the projects, if projects are going to be a part of it?
It's nice having the control panel where it is.
Other ideas for portlets: room reservations, company glossary, hour logging
Just playing devil's advocate: what is the advantage to me as a developer in writing an Intranet on dotLRN instead of just OACS?

I'll put up some mockups to hopefully aid in this discussion.

53: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 10/14/02 08:37 PM

Hi Jade,

Thanks.

I've only put up the things that were already readily available as dotLRN applets, which means that a number of applications are still missing. There's a bit of work remaining in dotLRN'ifying all the other applications out there, which I haven't tackeled yet--but as soon as we get a client for this, we'd love to 😉. That includes project management, hour logging, room reservations, form generator, company glossary, knowledge management, wiki, task list, workflow, etc.

Departments are groups, too, yes. The idea is that department groups are centered around departments, whereas the other groups will typically be centered around a project. I just figured that Departments were special yet common enough to warrant their own little special treatment.

If you built a collaborative to-do list and wrapped it to become a dotLRN applet, yet, it would show up in all the groups where you create an instance of it.

Regard dotLRN vs. OACS as the basis for an intranet, I think the dotLRN groups and portlets infrastructure is just subsites and OACS groupware functionality done right. If you want groupware functionality in your intranet, I don't see any downside to building on the dotLRN codebase.

I'll be on vacation for a week from now, but I'll be looking forward to your mock-ups.

/Lars

54: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Danielle Hickie on 10/16/02 04:58 PM

Hello Lars..
Just a small comment about your very rough mock up for what your dummy intranet might look like. Calenders, inside companies, are often more useful if they are a group calender - so you can see what the whole organisation is doing at a glance. The choice to personalise it, or hide it all together, would be up to the user. Just a quick thought.

55: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by defunct defunct on 10/16/02 05:26 PM

Don't know if its already been mentioned but its not so much the calendar as the individual entries that one might one to be private/public....

also, you would probably want to be able to have degrees of visibility. For example as Director I'd probably want certain things private, but visible to co-directors and my PA perhaps (if I had one ;) but not visible to other employees.

So you'd want to be able to create closed-user-groups.

As well... and this is something I've recently been asked by a customer, GSM adn PDA integration is key... SMS notifications of diary changes entries for example, and being able to sync the system.

I guess you;ve already used the SMS Broker, so you'll know it won;t affect the application, other than you should put in the option to put an SMS on the queue at these key points.

If you say PDA/Mobile integration to a customer who want an intranet their eyes light up ;)

56: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 10/16/02 07:07 PM

These options for the calendar should also be able to be hidden, at the
discretion of the person setting up the Intranet.

I'll get my mockups up today or tomorrow, so that you all can see how our
company is dealing with these issues.

57: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 10/18/02 01:20 AM

I have 17 html files that are NOT linked, that may give some possibilities for
dotWRK. They are a combination of the way our Intranet is currently, and
where it will be soon. I edited out any information that should be kept within
our company, but I'd like to only send it out by request instead of putting it out
on the internet at large.

I think the tickets and calendar may be of particular interest.

If you'd like to see these mockups, please email me, with the following in the
body of your email:

"I will not distribute these mockups without permission. I am also not working
in the baking industry and do not currently have a client in the baking
industry."

Sorry for the legalese-ishness. I just don't want to give away too much
information on our intranet to potential competitors.

58: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 10/18/02 09:08 PM

I've been getting a lot of request for the mockups. Good -- I'm glad I wasn't wasting my time in making them. I welcome feedback on them, in public or private.

I posted a thread on a possible scheduling app for dotWRK: https://openacs.org/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 0006gy&topic_id=11&topic=OpenACS

59: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 10/22/02 05:41 PM

Just got back from vacation :)

Danielle, Simon, Jade, excellent feedback, thanks. Hopefully someone in the community will soon find the resources or clients to push ahead on this for real!

/Lars

60: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lachlan Myers on 10/27/02 04:27 AM

I'm interested - I have a particular interest in taking bookings for a number of number of venues, at relatively brief intervals (5-10 mins).

Has any-one ported the room reservation system to 4.5/6 and prepared to let the cat out of the bag?

61: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Carlo Moneti on 12/09/02 09:38 PM

Folks,
I came across an interesting discussion on the display of project management information. Specifically, the presentation of gantt charts and alternatives are discussed. I thought it might be of interest:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/301705610/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?usca_p=t&msg_id=000076&topic_id=1&topic=Ask%20E%2eT%2e

A significant leap in improving the way project information is displayed (and entered) would, I think, make dotWRK standout well above any available competition.

62: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Chip Mefford on 12/19/02 11:34 PM

Okay;

This thread seems to have died a couple of months
ago.

Did it move to another location?

I think the dotWRK concept is wonderful.
In fact, I'm drooling over it.

Be glad to help in any way that
I can. About all I can do is write
and test.

Any news?

63: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 12/20/02 12:15 PM

Chip,

I think we're at the point where we've proven that the concept is the right on, we just need one or two or more organizations who need it and want to fund the development work needed to really make it happen.

We're working on that part, but we're definitely interested in finding more.

/Lars

64: Re: Response to Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 38)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 01/10/03 10:23 PM

Some more feedback on the .WRK mockup:

I think the navigation bar on the left could be taken out. Perhaps it could be replaced with a bar at the top or something? It just seems to take a lot of unnecessary space.

Eventually, I'll get around to posting what we've done on our Intranet. I've just updated the interface, so the mockups I've sent out are old. I think it's improved quite a bit..

65: How is .WRK progressing? (response to 1)

Posted by Paul Steinbach on 01/27/03 10:30 PM

I've been working with stock OpenACS 4.6, building some of the things I see in Lars' prototype. Then I stumbled across the .WRK mockup...

Are other people in the community pitching in with this work? Are there any items that need some volunteer help?

-- Paul

66: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 01/27/03 10:44 PM

It seems to me that we can share ideas and mockups, and critique design documents and so on, but things don't really start getting interesting until someone actually builds enough of it that other people can start using it and modifying it and extending it.

So let's continue to share, discuss, and so on, and if you have something you're working on, by all means, feel free to share what you've done.

But in my opinion, dotWRK won't become a reality until someone releases some code. :)

67: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Eric Wolfram on 02/19/03 02:38 AM

I used the intranet in 3.2.5 for our company gnosio.com -- Specifically, we used the customer sales database and the hour logging. We also modified team pages. I'm interested in supporting dotwrk as a user or tester. I just installed ACS 4.6 and I'm looking for the intranet application. Is that .wrk?

68: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 67)

Posted by Jade Rubick on 02/19/03 09:32 PM

Eric, .WRK has yet to be built. I'm going to be working on it at some point in the next few months, but even the organization of it is pretty tentative at this point. Lars was leading up the project, but seems to be working on some other projects right now.

It will happen, but it needs some attention and developer time. I am using ACS 3.4 for our Intranet, with a heavily customized interface. We've been using it for about two years, and I've learned a lot in the process, and hope to use that to help in the .WRK effort.

However, I'd like .WRK to be a pretty flexible entity.

One of the major problems with the ACS 3.4 version of the Intranet package was that it was written so specifically for ArsDigita's needs.

One concern I've had is that if one of us goes off and writes this package, it may do the same thing all over again. That certainly is what my own tendency would be.

Another problem I'm going to face, that many of the rest of you won't, is that I have to migrate all of my old data from ACS 3.4.

We've heavily customized the ticket tracker, to where it is not for tracking bugs, for is a collaborative to-do list. I've thought about porting it to OpenACS/dotWRK. I'm not really happy with any of the ticket trackers right now. None of them are general enough to be used for all to-do items, and I kind of like the interface we've developed here. However, it is a fair amount of work.

The whole project is fairly large though, especially because it's difficult for those involved to sit down and plan out how it might work. Collaborative programming works, but it's easier if you have something concrete to start from. Or at least that's my (limited) experience.

69: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 68)

Posted by Jeroen van Dongen on 03/13/03 11:10 AM

I'm in more or less the same situation as Erik (although I'm migrating away from a completely home-brew situation to oacs), and as such heavily interested in dotWrk.

Althoug I agree with Jade that it is most likely that things will speed up more and more with a growing code-base, I also think that the project needs what in the oacs community seems to be called a 'gatekeeper' - otherwise I see a risk that people start independent dotWrk-a-like things (I know I would), which distracts valuable mantime from dotWrk.

Is there already somebody (actively) assuming that role? If time is an issue - I can 'donate' time to the project, not a whole lot (say 8h/week) but on a fairly structural basis for the coming 3-4 months at least ('cause it has a strong relation with part of my daytime job).

IRL pulling large projects is a big chunk of what I do, so besides coding I can bring something to the table here in the area of planning/coordinating/pushing.

To summarize: I've time to offer to spend on dotWrk-a-like things. I can either spend it on a 'fork' or on 'the real thing'.

Rgds,
Jeroen

71: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 69)

Posted by Jeroen van Dongen on 03/13/03 11:30 AM

From my previous post one may wonder whether or not I actually read the stuff around dotWrk - I did. And I saw the 'people' and 'todo' etc. However I didn't notice any real progress so far - so that's where my questions/remarks come from.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

70: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 1)

Posted by Lars Pind on 03/13/03 11:30 AM

Jeroen,

You're absolutely right that we need someone to lead this project. I suspect that I'd be the current lead or something, but as you've all noted, I haven't had the time to follow through on this.

So your offer is most welcome.

I think a good place to start would be to catalog the current state of affairs:

- the interested people and what they're willing and able to contribute

- the tasks, what needs to be done, not just in terms of code, but also in terms of design, infrastructure service modules, enhancements, information architecture, etc.

I'm still very determined to present a proposal for a new information architecture/user interface scheme around the time of the conference here in Copenhagen, but people shouldn't be waiting for me before taking action.

In fact, we should have visible project leads for all of our subprojects -- openacs.org, documentation, dotWRK, CMS, dotLRN, etc. -- but that's another story.

/Lars

72: Re: Who wants to built .WRK? (response to 70)

Posted by Jeroen van Dongen on 03/13/03 12:21 PM

Well, in that case I propose that I'll start the cataloging job - starting with the people listed in the 'people' section of the current dotWrk project page.

Somewhere in the coming 2-3 days I'll craft a mail and send it to that list in order to probe for interest and capabilities.

Parallel to that action I'll see if I can come up with a proposal for a 'plan of attack'.

How can I publish any results in that area on the project page?