News Package Requirements
by Stefan Deusch
I. Introduction
This document outlines the requirements for the ArsDigita News application
built on the ACS 4.0 platform.
II. Vision Statement
Communities are formed with the goal of
disseminating information relevant to their members. Online
communities have the advantage of an ideal mechanism for disseminating
this information in a timely fashion. So it comes as no surprise that
the dissemination of news items to other members is one of the ways in
which online communities best realize this goal. The News application
allows community members to do just this. Posted news items can be
associated with community member comments as in a forum, however the
primary intention of the News application is simply to give members
access to community related news items. News items are listed by
date, and when news items are no longer current, they are automatically
archived after a administrator-specifiable number of days.
Since administrators may wish to give access to these news items by
appeal to a variety of access schemes, the News application is built
upon a hierarchy of administrative privileges which may be organized
to reflect a variety of publication policies. In so doing, the News
application allows for an open newsgroup approach as well as for a
closely moderated corporate publication channel. News is also
different from the Press application insofar as press items typically derive
from sources external to the organization in question.
III. System/Application Overview
The News application shall make
use of the content repository service. Each news item consists
of an entry in cr_items and keeps track of revisions in
cr_revisions. Additional attributes of a news item are
stored in an extra table, namely, title, body, release date, archive
date, templating info, and MIME type. The News application includes a
simple templating system which allows it to appropriately render an
individual news item embedded in customized HTML. An item is displayed
only within the context of the subsite to which it belongs. The
site-wide administrator should be able to publish an item into all
instances of a site. Thus there should be four levels of user
interface depending on the privileges of the viewer:
-
a site-wide administrator with all privileges of creating, revising, approving
and deleting press items in all instances of the news application,
-
a news administrator with the same privileges for a specific instance of
news,
-
a registered user interface with creation privileges,
-
a viewer interface for viewing the news items with the option to leave
comments.
IV. Use-cases and User-scenarios
The different classes of users are of the following categories: administrators,
submitters, and readers.
The administrative power is either site-wide or instance-wide. Typical
user scenarios are as such:
-
Community members use the News package to see current news postings.
-
Subsite administrators use the News package to post news of interest to
community members.
Suppose that www.company.com is running an ACS 4.0 based site. On
this site they have a Boston office subcommunity. Jane Administrator
is the subsite admininstator for the Boston office subsite. Instead of
spamming the employees in the office with Boston news, she decides to
enable the News package for their subsite. First, she checks that the
News package is installed and enabled for office subsites. If it's
not, then Jane must ask Judy Sitewide Administrator to do this. Once
the News package is installed and enabled for office subsites, Jane
enables the News application specifically for the Boston Office
subsite. Jane can also change the configuration of the News
application for the Boston office subsite if she so chooses. Thus
far, Jane has been using the Subsite Administration Tools. Now that
the News package is ready, she can start adding news postings. Jane
does this by going to the administration pages of the News
package. Jane can also edit existing news items at these pages. If
Joe User works in the Boston Office, then by visiting the Boston Office
News site Joe can read up on any current Boston office related news
that has been posted as such.
V. Related Links
-
Design document (not available yet)
-
Test plan (Not available yet)
VI. Requirements
VI.1 Data Model
10.10 The News application should use the ACS Content Repository
and/or ACS Content as well as tie in with the ACS Interface service package.
10.10.10 cr_news: subtype cr_revisions to define news content type
10.10.20 news_templates: use file system for new templates, no extra table
10.30 Privilege
10.30.10 Provide a site-wide admin level privilege: admin
10.30.20 Provide an instance-wide admin level privilege: news_admin
10.30.30 Provide registered user level privileges: news_create
10.30.40 Provide a public level privilege: news_read
10.30.50 Specify the intended parent/child relations between these
privileges.
10.40 Parameters
10.40.10 Provide a parameter 'MakeSearchable' which indicates
whether news item content should be accessible through the ACS
Content service package
10.40.20 Provide a 'MaxDisplay' parameter which indicates the
maximum number of items to be displayed per site page
10.40.30 Provide a 'DaysUntilArchive' parameter indicating the
default days until a news items is archived. This parameter should be
able to be overridden on a per news item basis through the
administration pages.
10.40.40 Provide an 'AllowCommentsP' parameter indicating general
policy regarding whether or not news items should be able to be
commented upon.
10.40.50 Provide a 'NotifyByEmailOnUploadP' if the news
administrator should be notified via email upon news items submission
VI.2 General User Interface
20.10 Provide a list of the titles and dates of all currently published items
20.20 Provide a link to the archive of old news items
20.30 Provide a one-item view of each news item, displaying it in
its associated template format together with a link for comments
20.40 Ensure that non 'text/html' news bodies are converted to HTML using
Intermedia text filters
VI.3 Registered User Interface
30.10 Same requirements as under 20.x.
30.20 Provide a link to create a news item
30.30 Ensure that the news application allows registered users to either enter text/html
in a text area or to upload a complete file.
30.40 Provide for various MIME types for uploaded items, including
MS Word docs.
30.50 Provide a display of those MIME types which are admissible
for upload.
30.60 Ensure that a news item shall be allowed to include an audio
file (real player) for live reports.
VI.4 Administrator Interface
40.10 Same as under 30.x.
40.20 Provide a link to the administrative pages
40.30 Provide an administrative summary page of all news items
40.40 Provide a switch to view either archived, live, or all items
40.50 Provide a selection box with commands for collective administration
40.60 Provide various archive functions on multiple items, like 'archive next day|week|month' for a set of selected items.
40.70 Allow for the approve functions to operate on multiple items simultaneously
40.80 Allow functions to move item(s) into different scopes (e.g. from
private to public news)
40.90 Provide an administrative page for each individual item with a list of
revisions
40.100 Provide a link to add a revision
40.110 Ensure that clicking on a revision brings up the page as it would look to the public
40.120 Provide a view of unapproved items only.
VI.5 Template Administration
50.10 Provide a link to an administrative suite of templates
50.10.10 Allow for the viewing/testing of templates through
provided sample news items
50.10.20 Upload template files
50.10.30 Associate templates to news items
50.10.40 Set default news template
VI.6 Additional Requirements
60.10 Provide a subscriber link to sign up for notifications for when
a new news item is posted. Ensure that notifications can be had at
user-specifiable frequency: immediately, daily, weekly, montly, and quarterly.
60.20 Provide a counter of how many times an item has been viewed
60.30 Provide a display of the ranking of most seen items
60.40 Provide a Yahoo-like 'Mail this news article to a Friend' link
stefan@arsdigita.com
Last modified: Tue Dec 12 14:15:00 2000