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As a business consultant on IT projects, one is often expected to learn about a new client organization rapidly and start interfacing with business clients. Frequently, understanding of the business area within the IT team is heavily dependent on the business analyst or architect.

Here are things I normally do to prepare myself for detailed discussions with subject matter experts. An added bonus, one is better positioned to get the big picture before drilling into details. The key here is to absorb information rapidly by skimming through and coming back to the information as needed.

• Review of the organization's internet and intranet site - First stop for information about an organization
• Review of annual report/plans and priorities - Useful with plenty of information about what the organization does
• Review of the organization chart - Who's who
• Review of IT/business strategy documents - Ensure future requirements fit in with overall organizational strategy
• Review of the project charter - Project scope, governance, roles and responsibilities of IT and business areas.  Unfortunately, this document sometimes tends to fall by the wayside as a project progresses
• If this is an upgrade project, complete a preliminary review of the current system - A very high level understanding of what the primary processes are and what the system does 
• Connect immediately, with team members - Get their informal take on various aspects of the project and the organization particularly if they have spent significant time on the project

 Plone4Artists Video is part of a larger suite of products called Plone4Artists. This suite includes audio, video, calendar, newletter, and Flash upload products. Plone4Artists Video can upload video files to your server or embed YouTube or Google videos. It is one of the few Plone products with both these capabilities. It presents the videos in a folder with a clean page layout, thumbnail photos, along with web syndication. 

Currently, I'm using Plone4Artists Video and PloneFlashUpload. While PloneFlashUpload was easy to install and works very well for bulk uploads which is not provided by default in Plone, I found Plone4Artists Video to be a bit tricky to install. It took several attempts before I could get it working perfectly.

The issue seemed to be that some of the product dependencies were not picked during installation and not very well documented. I did a bit of research on the web and finally had to explicitly list all the dependencies for my Plone 3.2.3 instance. In case anyone is having difficulties installing this product, I've attached relevant sections of the buildout file I'm using. This product is recommended but I would perform appropriate testing before installation on a production server.

I've been busy lately working on designing and integrating a new website using the Plone Content Management System which is built on the Zope application server. This is ongoing and iterative and will serve as a basis for exploring new Plone related technologies as dictated by requirements. The first phase of the site will be launched in September.

Profile

The Ottawa Guild of Potters is a non profit organization comprising over 160 professional ceramic artists, teachers and students of ceramic arts. Its mission is to further the knowledge of ceramics and support the work of area (E. Ontario and W. Quebec) ceramic artists. To support this mission, the Guild executive recognized the need to develop an overall re-branding and communications strategy that will accomplish the following objectives

• Raise the profile of the Guild as a premier organization for ceramic arts in the region
• Communicate the activities of the Guild to the public and its members
• Broaden overall public support for Guild shows and other sales events and increase appreciation for ceramic arts
• Increase the number of members by demonstrating the value proposition of membership

The development of a re-designed website as a critical communication channel in addition to traditional channels is part of this strategy. Requirements were developed in consultation with the Communications Committee and Guild Executive.

High Level functionality

• Public facing, members only, and restricted content
• Content publishing team members responsible for different sections of the site
• Studio map of artists through Google map integration
• YouTube integration for videos related to ceramic processes, artists interviews etc
• Integration with social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook
• Gallery for displaying work of members
• Classifieds for individual members shows, used equipment, studio rental
• Integration with Mailman 
• Newsletters
• Blog
• Events
• Book Reviews
• Membership and subscription management
• Online payment processing for member fees, show fees, workshops and other services

Plone is a very good fit for these requirements and the site is being implemented on an existing hosting service from Webfaction

Pros

• Plone provides considerable functionality and fulfills the requirements with additional add-on products downloaded from the Plone site
• Easy to use for content publishers
• Very rapid development is possible
• Excellent security model with very fine grained control
• Workflows, keyword management, and other standard CMS features are available
• Continuous development in an open-source model
• Multiple Plone sites can be deployed form a single instance of Zope application server. Need to install products once with a buildout configuration file

Cons

• Frequently cited as having a steep learning curve for developers. Need to learn Plone and Zope
  • My recommendation is to approach Plone as you would approach a commercial COTS CMS product and not as a development platform for extensive tweaking and custom development although this is possible. This will make upgrades go easily. Most of the time, the standard functionality of the system along with add-on products is rich enough to provide desired results
• Knowledge of several technologies is needed to theme the look and feel. Control of various elements occurs in different layers of the application. Steps are being to taken to address this with theming tools etc
• While Plone/Zope itself is a very solid system, third party products may be variable in quality. Some products will break your site. Testing on a test Plone instance is a must before installing products on a production site

In upcoming posts, I will be reviewing some of the products I am using from a deployment and user perspective.