Consider an alternate/streamlined interface for authors/mgrs

[jpotts]

Don't forget that usability is of particular concern to web authors. If the management tool isn't completely intuitive, they won't use it (or they'll complalin about using it) and adoption will suffer. Many web publishers today that don't use a formalized WCM system simply FTP their content to a web server. Your challenge is adding the features of WCM we all know and love without making it much harder to use than their friendly FTP client.

The typical tasks a general knowledge manager might do day-to-day are pretty different than how a web author works. Will the WCM interface be a customized version of the existing Alfresco UI or will it be completely different, built from the ground up to support web managers?

The already-present capabilities around CIFS and WebDAV will make it easier for content contributors to get content in to the repository. But it also has to be simple to manage taxonomy, submit that content for publication, transform content, etc.

I'm anxious to see what you guys come up with.

Jeff

[kvc]

We hear you there!

We will be upgrading the current Alfresco UI to support content managers, web publishers, web designers, and web developers.  This upgrade will include access to a task management console and a project navigator that will allow power users to see all the different stages of web development and view all the in-progress change sets and sets of approved content scheduled to go live.

Of course this is not the interface we want general knowledge workers to see!

For knowledge workers we are planning to simply enable a publish wizard from their existing document workspace to post web-ready content (XML from a transformed doc, and generated HTML or PDF assets) to one or multiple websites or a simple publish wizard to create native web content (XML) via forms that can be accessed from either the Alfresco web app, an email message (task-driven content creation), a generated HTML page in the live website, or from a portal via a JSR168 compliant portlet.

I will be posted material to our wiki in two weeks highlighting our proposed UI.  Please look forward to that.

I would also be interested in a 1:1 session with our lead developer here to have you outline the actors and use cases within your organization to see what learnings you may have for us.  If interested, please send me a private mail.


Kevin

[kvc]

We hear you there!

We will be upgrading the current Alfresco UI to support content managers, web publishers, web designers, and web developers.  This upgrade will include access to a task management console and a project navigator that will allow power users to see all the different stages of web development and view all the in-progress change sets and sets of approved content scheduled to go live.

Of course this is not the interface we want general knowledge workers to see!

For knowledge workers we are planning to simply enable a publish wizard from their existing document workspace to post web-ready content (XML from a transformed doc, and generated HTML or PDF assets) to one or multiple websites or a simple publish wizard to create native web content (XML) via forms that can be accessed from either the Alfresco web app, an email message (task-driven content creation), a generated HTML page in the live website, or from a portal via a JSR168 compliant portlet.

I will be posted material to our wiki in two weeks highlighting our proposed UI.  Please look forward to that.

I would also be interested in a 1:1 session with our lead developer here to have you outline the actors and use cases within your organization to see what learnings you may have for us.  If interested, please send me a private mail.


Kevin