The
driving force behind this initiative was to foster content creation and team
collaboration across geographically dispersed user communities. The inclusion
of Web 2.0 concepts, such as user-directed content creation and
document/content tagging, will not only allow scientists to quickly locate data
within a very complex data store, but will also encourage participation so that
data is updated, relevant, and associated with other related material. Using
this technology platform, the client will be able to incorporate trends within
their research communities, provide real-time access to a wealth of
institutional data, build virtual communities, and consolidate systems into a
single point of access.
Solution:
CapTech assisted the client with
their vendor selection process, including writing the software vendor request
for proposal (RFP) and facilitating the scoring process. The client selected
open source tools, including RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 as the operating system,
JBoss as the application and portal server, and Alfresco CMS for document and
content management. While these tools have provided great flexibility for the
client, there are some functionality gaps when compared to commercial software
products.
Fortunately, where open source tools
fail to provide an exact match in functionality, they do provide a rich
programming interface based on current standards. CapTech was able to take
advantage of this extensibility and quickly develop the specific functionality
the client needed to close the feature by creating a decentralized governance
model within the JBoss portal framework and incorporating edit-in-place
functionality and full workflow management into Alfresco.
Tools:
RedHat Enterprise Linux 5
JBoss Application Server
Alfresco CMS
Java and Web 2.0 expertise
Results:
CapTech developed a solution to streamline
business analysis and workflow processes into an Enterprise Portal, providing a
single interface to all of the information and services available.
This functionality greatly enhances the everyday
work environment of the client’s employees and scientists, facilitating
information retrieval and sharing.
The portal implementation
goes beyond basic capabilities by utilizing Web 2.0 components, including
content and document management with user tagging and
categorization, virtual team rooms that include wikis, blogs, shared calendars
and other user-directed collaboration tools.