I mentioned a few posts ago that the Printcasting.com project has elements that we have built into tools we’ve created. It combines content management, automated layout and PDF generation technologies. Last time I talked about content management and RSS feed utilities in the award winning Trekk.com site. This time I want to talk about our Adobe Newsflash collaborative communication tool.
You can read more about the Newsflash project via our case study. But the purpose of the project is to allow content management system (CMS) based content and/or RSS feed based content to be incorporated into predefined design templates. The template defined layout, initially as formatted HTML email, and in the future as PDF documents. Articles of content, typically structured as a headline and paragraph or two of body text and one or more images, are assembled into an issue for publication. The publication goes into an approval queue. Once approved the HTML email is published to a Microsoft Outlook template, or emailed to a list of recipients, or sent to a profession email partner for fulfillment. Sound anything like Printcasting.com to you?
Since this is a tool for an international group of people within Adobe, there are some additional collaborative features. Different regions have different communications objectives and thus they have different templates. Within each region, people are assigned different roles, from content contributors, to editors to publishers. Each role has different access privileges and workflow responsibilities. Additionally some content needs to be managed in multiple languages for use in multiple regions, while other content is only appropriate for a single region. To address these requirements, we leveraged the features of the Ektron CMS400.net CMS product.
The CMS manages article content as a simple document. It manages issues as a combination of articles in specific orders and selected templates. The CMS also manages HTML layout templates to allow easy editing, additions and removal. The really interesting feature for the tool is the near WYSYWIG user interface made available through innovative use of JavaScript via the jQuery library. Users can easily select article content made available to the interface through RSS feeds from the CMS. Once an article is selected, the interface refreshes the select areas with HTML formatted content per the template definitions.
To filter available content to a list appropriate for the user, region and publication, each article is tagged with predefined categories. Tags are selectable by the content authors or editors. Each article can be written in a target language and then a sibling piece of content can be generated and the article translated into other languages for other locales. Once an article is generated or referenced, it is available to issue editors based on the editor’s group privileges and article group assignments and tags categories assigned. The combinations of multi-lingual content management, tag categories, region and role permissions and privileges allow for Adobe staff to work in a worldwide distributed collaboration on content creation and issue publications. Each article and issue has an approval chain. When items are completed, they are submitted for approval. Notification is sent to approval group members via email. Approvals can either approve the item, or reject it with comments. Rejections are sent back to editors and contributors with email notifications.
Similar to Printcasting.com, the Newsflash tool allows users to easily generate publications via web based interface. The publications are built from predefined templates. From a cross-media perspective we can publish via first HTML templates and, in the near future, PDF and multimedia templates. These templates could include predefined or selectable ad content and be personalized to individual recipients. The Newsflash tool allows publishers to choose the desired fulfillment channel. We see this tool as a major leap into the future of cross-media publishing. What do you think?
Posted by JA Stewart at 11/07/2008 09:10:42 PM |
