Episcopal Church Collaboration and Community System

I. Introduction

The Episcopal collaboration and community system product is very comprehensive, from providing discussion spaces and community areas, to facilitating project collaboration and team-based ministry work. As such it will need to draw on the best-practices and toolsets of a number of conventional product categories, yet integrate them into a cohesive, robust yet intuitive system and end-user experience

The product will serve two main roles for its audiences: 1) collaboration and 2) community building. The first role would be for allowing teams of people, typically geographically dispersed, to come together in a common area to get something accomplished. This is the realm traditionally of groupware intranet and extranet applications. The second role is more difficult to define, since it does not rely as heavily on the toolset but more on the best practices of those individuals engaged in building and nurturing community, both online and off. The toolset used for this purpose in the past has been almost exclusively discussion forum or email list software, since community online has manifested in dialog and exchange of ideas.

The Episcopal collaboration and community system product will take the “best of breed” approach from both types of software roles, and benefit from the cross-pollination. Typically collaboration environments (intranets, project management applications, groupware) have been somewhat anemic in their community tools, in most cases offering a basic topic-response forum product for this purpose. Likewise community tools relying on simple email exchanges often overlook the benefits of common online “community resource centers,” well thought-out areas where archives of the discussions exist, files, dates, and other resources of interest to the community can be kept. The YahooGroups product comes closest to this, and as such has been highly successful. We hope to draw on this success and enhance the model with best-practices gained from individuals in the faith community that are pioneers and expert in creating and nurturing all types of communities

II. Feature Overview

A very brief overview of what is available in the system:

Personal Workspace

This area provides a “dashboard view” of all the modules available to the member, and includes an aggregate view of information from the following components.

Groups

Robust tools are included to manage collaboration groups, calendar dates, coordinate tasks, participate in polls, receive news, etc.  Groups can be either Public or Private.

Electronic mail

Each community member may use an electronic mail address that can be accessed via the Web, or by Pop3 and IMAP.

Discussions

Web and email accessible discussion groups are at the heart of the collaboration and community system.  Discussions can be public or private, with read / write or distribution only access.

Calendaring

Group calendars can schedule resources, and send out automated email notifications of dates to other group members. A personal calendar in the Workspace aggregates dates from group calendars.

Files/Link/Resources

Members are able to upload files or add links to groups in which they participate.  Electronic notifications of the additions are sent to members of the group.

Live Chats

Authenticated public and secure private live chat discussions are available to each group via the collaboration system Web interface or by using an IRC client that is capable of authentication.

The collaboration and community system will remain an Open Source system and adhere to RFC standards. The system will include, but is not limited to:

Basic components

The core system is comprised of OpenLDAP, PostgresSQL, NNTP, Apache Web server, AOL Web server, Cyrus mail server, and an IRCd compliant live chat server.

Executive Control Module (ECM)

 This is the code and process that knits all the Open Source products together.  It respects a complex series of permissions that determines access levels for each user.  Search features and member access privileges are determined by group permissions and member permissions.

Extended components

This project will serve as a contributing member of the Open Source project OpenACS.  The OpenACS modules extend the feature set of the basic system.  The modules are very diverse and customizable, and offer everything from groupware to content management.  More information on the packages available for integration and customization from OpenACS can be found at http://openacs.org/projects/openacs/packages/.

dotLRN

This expression of OpenACS was developed by MIT and is in use by over a quarter of a million users.  The inclusion of dotLRN configuration of OpenACS in the installation of the Episcopal community server will be highly customized during its installation.  For more on dotLRN, please visit http://www.dotlrn.org/.

Features

What follows is a list of features planned for upcoming releases of the Episcopal Communities environment. 

Redesigned interface. 

This redesign will provide a brand new look and feel for the Episcopal Church. 

Personal Workspace

This area will be revised as outlined by the wireframes provided by the Web department of the Episcopal Church.  These wireframes are subject to change and review throughout the development process.  The Workspace has a modular design with the following features -

• Mail folders
• Groups with new activity summary.
• Calendar with summary of dates in all groups to which the member belongs.
• Personal files area with summary of files in all groups to which the member belongs.
• Live chats available to the member.
• A news / announcement area that aggregates from the group news / announcements.
• An events list.
• Members can add additional pages to their Workspace, and customize modules that are available to view.
• Address Book (new feature – see scope change).
  • System members and non-system members
  • Standard address book functionality
• A task list area highlighting the tasks assigned to the user (new feature).
• User Profile. Enhancement of the existing member profile to include information made publicly available by the member, such as a photo, hobbies, and appropriate contact information.

Electronic mail

Each community member will receive an electronic mail address that can be accessed via the Web, Pop3, and IMAP.  Mail clients utilize user name and passwords to retrieve mail; Web access authentication deploys user name and password via SSL. 

Spam is filtered through common IP based blocking lists such as SpamCop, ORBL.org, and many others.  Also, messages with known virus formats are automatically filtered out (specifically application / octet-stream files).

Enhanced address book will allow users easier access to lists of groups and members for insertion into address fields of the email form.

Members using email get a combination of features unique to the collaboration server. 

• IMAP users get automatic folder creation for each discussion group they join.
• For those members using the Web and IMAP, messages are automatically sorted into IMAP folders.
• Remote access features are available, including
  • Join and unjoin groups via email feature.
  • Old note retrieval, file upload notifications, and calendar addition notifications are sent via email. 

Groups

This area of the collaboration system is fully featured, and includes a “dashboard” view of the modules associated with the group. Modules include:

• Discussion area with “unread / all” notes feature.
• Calendar with group dates.
• Shared Files/Links.
• Live chat area for members of the group.
• A news / announcement area controlled by the group creator.
• Polling feature that allows members of a group to vote in a poll, create a poll if they have permission to do so, and see the results of a poll.
• Frequently Asked Questions controlled by the group creator
• An RSS feed module customizable by the group creator.

Discussion

Web and email accessible discussions are at the heart of the collaboration and community system.  These discussion groups have the following characteristics:

• Public discussions
  • Public discussions can be seen by any registered user; users who are joined can contribute to the discussion.
  • Private discussions
    • Private discussions can only be accessed by invitation, and invitations can only be initiated by the group creator. 
    • The creator can invite members of an entire existing group, or they can invite members individually.
    • Conversations can only be seen by members of the group.
• Group creators / moderators
  • The group creator is the initial moderator.  This person has control over group permissions and over the individual permissions of the members. 
  • The creator may assign some or all moderator privileges to other members, and has complete control over every aspect of their group, including the deletion of notes.
  • Each discussion group that is public has the option of making an information page (knows a /topic) available to the public.  From this page, prospective members may join the group.
  • Read and write to a discussion.
  • Moderated posts in public or private meetings
  • Moderated discussions require the creator or designated moderator to review and release new posts.
• Digest email delivery of notes (new feature)
  This is a single message that is sent daily that contains multiple messages to that group for the day.
• Threaded discussions view (new feature)
  Group notes viewed in sequential order or by thread.
• Search
  • Groups to which a member is allowed to participate in can be found via search.
  • This feature will not allow a member to access any information on groups to which they do not have permission to join.
  • A simple member search can be executed

Calendaring

The system will include group calendaring that aggregates dates into the personal Workspace.  It can export calendar data for import into clients such as Outlook from Microsoft.

• Notification system:
  • Email notifications of new dates to members of the group.
  • Email reminders of events (new feature).
• Views of Events:
• By month with short descriptions of events in the box for each day.
• By week showing each day of the week and the events in time slots for the day.
• By day showing events in their time slots.
• By list showing upcoming events over a specified period of time.
• Resources can be tracked and allocated: for example, members can look up a resource, such as the availability of a conference room, by time and date (accomplished by joining members to a group calendar for the resource).
• Busytime view of people and resources by group (new feature – may not be part of initial release).
  • Show busytime view aggregating personal calendars and all group calendars for individual. 

Files, Links, and Resources

Users are able to upload files, add links, and create folders for groups in which they participate.

• Files include a description and a summary, and are listed alphabetically.
• Links, such as URLs, can be listed with a description and a summary.
• Files and links can be assigned to folders.
• Electronic notifications of the new files or links are sent to members of the group.
• Permissions for accessing the files and resources follow the access permissions for the group.

Live chat

User name and password authenticated public and private live chat discussions are available to each group via the collaboration system Web interface, or by using an IRC client that is capable of authentication.  Features include -

• Moderator enabled permission that provides for members either just reading a live chat or have a “voice” and participate.
• Multiple moderators are allowed.
• Moderator functions such as the ability to block users from entering
• Moderator functions to ban users after they've entered the chat. 
• Calendar a live chat room for discussions.
• Upon completion of live chat, notes can be archived, reviewed by a moderator, and released to the group or to the public.

Groups Listings and Access

The groups page will have different ways to view the groups to which a member belongs, including –

• All groups to which a member is joined.
• Quick “jump to” menus. 
• Search for new groups to join
  • This is a permissions based search, and members can only locate groups to which they have permission to join, such as all public groups, and private groups to which they have been invited.
• The ability to create groups, either as new top-level groups or as subgroups of a main one, sort of like taking a discussion into a small group before returning to the main table.
• Delivery options for each group.  This allows the member to choose to read discussions in the Web or forward discussions to an email address.  More than one email address can be used, and this address can be different for each discussion.
• A view of all groups presented in a hierarchical manner. (new feature – see scope change).  This view will display groups and subgroups below. A Web mechanism for expanding and contracting the groups view will allow for clean presentation of the tree structure.

Documentation

Complete documentation for the system will provide a highly efficient way to learn about the system and its features, including:

• Online help
• Terms and conditions
• User manual
• Admin and moderator guides

Later Development

Planned for a future release of the system in 2005:

API and interaction with external systems

• Calendar information pulled from external sources, assuming an xml-based web services call, and aggregated into the main calendar
• Module-based information presented as an xml web services stream – Following the filter logic fed to the call as parameters (see calendar server document)
  • Calendar Event records
  • Discussion records (e.g. to integrate public discussion thread at the bottom of an article page)

Project Management

Fully featured task and project management module for groups and personal workspace.

Blogs

Blog module for groups and personal workspace, allowing the group a public-facing view of information from the group.

RSS

• RSS feed module for personal workspace.
• RSS formatted group note

Enhanced Search

Enhanced search feature for discussions, resources, events, and other modular records at the group level.

• Simple search based on free text.
• Advanced search with specific info -- e.g. start dates of events, authors of notes, etc.

Directory

Directory hierarchy of discussions, live chats, blogs, and resources.  This will be a combination of static public discussion, live chats, blogs, and resources, and a dynamically generated private directory per authenticated member of the same resources.

Book / publication module

This would include metadata for author, publisher, and publication date and would link to the site for purchasing a book, and could even allow a 'partner' relationship that would credit the group for the purchase.  This will likely interface with the file/link/resource listings of the group. Based on an existing dotLRN module.

More Discussion Features

The ability to schedule release of notes by date (for example, creating a months worth of devotionals and have the system send them out each morning).

Enhanced Calendaring

Meetings List Module – events that are speficially meeting events will be shown in their own area. These will include:

• Face-to-face meetings (such as in a meeting room or hotel).
• Phone conferencing.
• Online, live chat meetings.
• Online discussion groups.

Enhanced Files Area

• File views can be sorted in the interface by the following criteria:
  • By category using a drop-down menu or similar method, this will allow resources to be aggregated by their folder structure. Folder represents primary keyword for file.
• By file type (word, excel, jpg, text)
• By creator (person uploading/entering the files/resource)
• By date uploaded/created
• Ability to upload a thumbnail (or extract) a thumbnail for a graphic image
• Versioning – show latest with a link to prior versions
• File Status – Draft / Confidential, Group Only/ Public

Notifications / tickler system enhancements

More types of notifications will be added to the system

Live chat improvements

• Upon completion of live chat, archived notes and transcripts can be emailed.
• Review user posts before releasing to the room, either alone or with a response.
• Review user posts before forwarding to a 3rd party (such as a speaker) who then responds.
• 'Help desk' that allows for prospective chat users who aren't members
• Multiple layouts for chat pages
• Have Files/Links listing on chat page for related info
  • Have graphic area or slideshow where moderator can advance a graphic, or a simple navigation between slides that the user can advance.
  • Embed chat area next to a video stream