Intranet Design Documentation

by John Mileham, Michael Bryzek and many others

I. Essentials

User directory: /intranet
Sitewide administrator directory: /admin/intranet
TCL script directory: service_name/tcl/
Requirements document: /arsdigita/doc/requirements/intranet.html
Design document: this file...
Data model: service_name/www/arsdigita/doc/sql/intranet.sql

II. Introduction

The Intranet module ties together many functions of the ACS into a standard work environment in addition to adding functionality to facilitate project and personnel management. What kinds of organizations can get the most out of this toolkit? Ones just like ArsDigita, of course! We built this for ourselves. ArsDigita currently (May 2000) has approximately ten offices, 140 busy highly-paid people, and rapid growth (revenue doubling every six months). Coincidentally, it also works great for groups within larger companies. Consider Jane Manager at Hewlett-Packard who is forming a team to build a new product. Within a couple of weeks, she might be managing 100 people spread out among four physical locations in Japan, California, the Pacific Northwest, and Spain. That's much faster organizational growth and change than any startup company will ever experience. It would be awfully nice if Jane could go up to a Web browser and ask "Who works for me today? What are their names? What do they look like? How do I get in touch with them?"

III. Historical Considerations

At ArsDigita, we considered third party ERP systems (e.g. PeopleSoft, SAP, etc.). However, the time and cost associated with implementing these solutions make them impractical for small organizations.

We chose to design our own intranet to create a small software application specifically customized to our needs and to enable us to easily extend its functionality.

IV. Configuration/Parameters


[ns/server/yourservername/acs/intranet]
; Log email sent to groups as correspondance and enable auto-emailing of
; these correspondance to members of the group
LogEmailToGroupsP=1
; Use the intranet filters to restrict access to all bboard topic with a group_id
EnableIntranetBBoardSecurityFiltersP=1
; Set to 1 if you want to automatically redirect users to enter project reports
ForceUsersToEnterProjectReportsP=0
; If you want users to automatically be redirected to log their hours
; if they haven't, set this flag to 1
ForceUsersToLogHoursP=1
; How many results/rows do we show on a page before splitting up into 
; previous/next links?
NumberResultsPerPage=50
; On pages with dimensional sliders, having too many categories leads to 
; messy navigation. How many text characters do we allow before switching 
; from text links to a select bar?
LengthBeforeSelectBar=50
; If you want to include a default graphic in your
; intranet header, put the path to that graphic here 
DefaultGraphic=
; If you would like to track projects with a
; survey in the survey module, put the project
; type and its paired survey
ProjectReportTypeSurveyNamePair=Client - full service,project_report
;You may send email notifications of payment
; changes to members of a specified group
BillingGroupShortName=receivable
IntranetName=aD Intranet
IntranetEnabledP=1
; If you want to restrict access to the /shared/community-member
; page to users of the intranet only, set KeepSharedInfoPrivate to 1
KeepSharedInfoPrivate=1
; Should we enable bboard with the intranet pages? The BBoard
; module must be scoped or be altered to have a groud_id column first
BBoardEnabledP=1
; do we serve the generated /intranet/index page or something 
; else from the file system?
SpecialIndexPage=
DisplayVacationsOnCalendar=1
; the unit of measurement for entering salaries (month or year)
SalaryPeriodInput=year
; used to display salary
SalaryPeriodDisplay=year
; list of fee types
FeeTypes="setup" "monthly development" "monthly hosting" "hourly" "stock"
; Do we want to track hours?
TrackHours=1
; what's the url stub? i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com
IntranetUrlStub=/intranet
; Group Types
IntranetGroupType=intranet
ProjectGroupShortName=project
OfficeGroupShortName=office
CustomerGroupShortName=customer
PartnerGroupShortName=partner
ProcedureGroupShortName=procedure
EmployeeGroupShortName=employee
TeamGroupShortName=team
AuthorizedUsersGroupShortName=authorized_users
CustomerPortalName=Customer Portals
; What color do we put in the header row of tables?
TableColorHeader=#e6e6e6
; What color do we put in the odd numbered rows of tables?
TableColorOdd=#f4f4f4
; What color do we put in the even numbered rows of tables?
TableColorEven=#ffffff
CommentApprovalPolicy=open
; If we want to include people who are delinquent with project 
; reports in our status-report, what user_class_id do we use?
; Leave blank to skip this part of the status report
UserClassStatusReportID=

V. Acceptance Tests

Setup
- Set IntranetEnabledP=1 in the server .ini file and restart your web server
- Create an account for yourself
- goto /intranet - should be denied access.
- Log in as a site-wide administrator
- Add yourself as an employee (from Employee Administration)
- Go back to employee administration and add yourself as an Intranet Administrator
- Go to the admin user group page for intranet. Add news and address-book as modules associated with groups in intranet.
- Log in as yourself - should be automatically redirected to intranet workspace
Testing
- Add an office. Add yourself to that office and make yourself the primary contact. Email the office.
- Add a partner. Add a contact to and a correspondence with that partner. Spam people working with the partner.
- Add a procedure.
- Add a customer (Make sure it's marked as current).
- Add a project.
- Create a ticket tracker from the project page.
- Remove yourself from the project.
- Go back to your workspace. Make sure your customer shows up.
- Move your customer from current to past state.
- Click on status report. Make sure customer status change shows up.
- Click on "Your public information" and make sure your office comes up.
- Log some hours.
- Add an office absence. Edit it. Remove it.
- Upload a portrait of yourself.
- Edit your public information.
- Edit your h.r. information.
- Change your password, log out and back in.
- Add a couple of new users and make them employees from Employee Administration.
- Create one or two direct reports by setting the users' supervisor id's to you.
- Create some direct reports for your direct reports.
- Check the org chart from your workspace.

VI. Authors

System creator: David Rodriguez, Michael Bryzek
System owner: Michael Bryzek
Documentation authors: John Mileham, Michael Bryzek and many others

jmileham@arsdigita.com

Last modified: $Date: 2001/01/19 21:36:50 $