Hand drawn – Alive and inviting

Posted on 2013/03/05 by markjowen

In an earlier post (The Power of Comic Books!!) I talked about an interview with a Keegan Lannon, a Phd student studying the value of comic books. This was accompanied with a video of the interview.

In the video Keegan states “the more abstract a comic is, the more the person can relate to it”.

Interestingly enough, a couple of days later I stumbled across an interesting piece that validates this. In Rough and Hand-drawn: Alive and Inviting Tom Benthin talks about how, when compared to computer created images, “more abstract drawings of people allow us not just to imagine that a drawing is real, but that we are in it”.

This translates, as well, into techniques that are used for analysis and design work. When you either try and describe something to users, or try to draw out of them details on processes etc, a roughly drawn picture can be used.

An example of a Use Case Model

How Digital Comics Change The Way Comic Books Are Drawn – And Imagined (gizmodo.com.au)
26 Ways to Use Comics in the Classroom and 5 Free Tools for Creating Comics (freetech4teachers.com)

Information Architect (also known as “The Bridge Builder”)

Posted on 2012/02/24 by markjowen

Peter Morville described an Information Architect as a “Bridge Builder” in his Information architecture and findability column from August 2008.

He expands on this with the following:

An information architect builds bridges between:

Users and Content. We design search and navigation systems that connect users with the content and services they need.

Strategy and Tactics. We translate abstract visions into well-grounded, actionable blueprints for design and implementation.

Units and Disciplines. We facilitate cross-functional collaboration using boundary objects (e.g., wireframes) to start conversations.

Platforms and Channels. We sketch maps for new services and experiences that span multiple platforms, channels, and media.

Research and Practice. We use the scientific method, heuristics, analytics, user research, and ethnography to inform our designs.

You can read the full post here

The Future of Information Architecture (slideshare.net)
Some Generalizing about Specializing (subtraction.com)

A couple of reasons for me to travel to Switzerland – ARMA & Chris Walker

Posted on 2011/11/27 by markjowen

On Monday morning, I’m heading to Switzerland.

The Swiss Chapter of ARMA, is having their inaugural meeting, in Basel, and a fellow tweeter of mine, Christian Walker, will be giving the key note speech there.

Because I’m “in the neighborhood”, (sort of), he suggested I come along to it.

I’m really excited…for two reasons.

This is going to be the ever first meeting of the ARMA’s Swiss Chapter!
I’m really pleased that I have the opportunity to be present during this.

The second reason is that I really, really enjoy the chance to meet some of the really smart ECM people that I tweet with. Christian is a senior consultant at Oracle in Edmonton, as well as an “expert blogger” for AIIM. I’ve be connected to Christian for over a year now, and have been involved in many Twitter discussions with him (and others) on subjects ranging from ECM through to “toilet paper” (long story…maybe I’ll cover this in a separate blog). Needless to say – I am looking forward to meeting him in person.

(I had an excellent opportunity recently to meet up with another fellow Tweeter, Laurence Hart, in Paris, a few months ago (I was invited as a guest blogger to Nuxeoworld, where Laurence was giving the keynote speech.)
Because of various circumstances, I couldn’t make it – something I still regret).

Needless to say – I’ll be taking notes during the sessions (especially the keynote speech), and plan to write a blog post once I get back.

Related Links

ARMA International Releases Three New Guidelines for Information Management (prweb.com)

Getting Lost in a Wild SharePoint Site

Posted on 2010/11/19 by markjowen

In this post, I want to tell you about a unexpected,but interesting journey I have made.

——————–

Recently I was asked to help “trim” a SharePoint site that had become overly complex. The site was going to be migrated to a different domain, and the goal was to tidy up the site.

On first glances the site look harmless.

But once I started delving deeper, I could see that it was a jungle of sub-sites, interlinked in a strange M.C. Escher way.

To really get to understand how everything was connected, I decided to map it all out.

Using MindManager (it could have been any mind mapping tool – or even pen and paper), I started with the top site.

The beginning was easy, the path was clear. Things were

L O G I C A L.

Then as I got deeper, things started getting more complex. And, now and then, there were tricky little bits where I would follow a path and suddenly find myself in a totally different area, feeling disoriented. Fortunately with the use of a good compass and a ball of string I had been unravelling as I went along, I was able to find my way back.

I made notes, I took photos, and I saw some amazing things. (Unfortunately, my camera was damaged when I tripped over some metadata in one of the fields, so you’ll just have to take my word for it). Slowly, over several days, I was able to map out the site (and sub-sites, and sub-sub sites).

The map was big, with lots of colorful lines showing relationships between the various parts, as well as highlights and comments. When you looked at it at its original size, it looked like some strange alien exoskeleton. It was not until you increased resolution that you got to see the fine workmanship.

My “client” was impressed with what I had done. The didn’t have MindManager installed, and when I tried to create a flash, or PDF version of said map, MindManager bailed on me. Thank goodness for the MindManager Viewer. At the time of writing, this had not been installed. I’ll know when it has been…I’ll hear lots of “Oohs” and “aahs” and other sounds one makes when one is impressed with something.

SharePoint map governance Note – artist’s rendition

Site Mapping Tools

Now, it may be that there are tools, or applications, out there that will achieve what I did, automatically.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

SharePoint Sites, Growing Like Weeds, Need Governance (pcworld.com)
AIIM White Paper on SharePoint Deployment (arnoldit.com)
SharePoint: On Premises and in the Cloud (arnoldit.com)

New & Classic – Ways that SharePoint & Traditional ECM systems can play together

Posted on 2010/11/16 by markjowen

In this post I look at some SharePoint-ECM Integration scenarios.

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The AIIM SharePoint Master course material that I am studying at the moment presents 4 scenarios about how SharePoint can be used alongside, or integrated with, traditional ECM systems.

These are:

1. External Storage Provider

In this scenario, SharePoint is used to manage indexes, metadata, user presentation, etc, and the ECM application manages content storage/retrieval

2. External Repository of Record

In this, all content is managed in SharePoint, until it is declared a record. Then a copy is pushed into the ECM application, where it can only be accessed by Record Managers. SharePoint provides the user interface where documents are created, and edited. The ECM application handles the security, record retention, etc of the document once it has the status of a record. Content only gets into the ECM app via SharePoint.

3. Cooperative

In a cooperative scenario, all documents are created in SharePoint, where they can be edited, etc. The ECM system is used to manage and control documents that have the status of a Record. Unlike the External Repository of Record scenario, in the Cooperative scenario, content can only exist in one system at a time.

4. Portal

In this scenario SharePoint acts merely as an interface into the ECM app. All documents are created, and managed there.

In researching this further, I came across Andrew Chapman blog “Never Talk When You can Nod“. In it he covers the use of SharePoint with existing ECM systems a lot better in his .

Andrew offers 8 scenarios. I won’t regurgitate all of what he has written (you can read the posts yourself – see link at the end of this post), but I do want to summarise his 8 scenarios, and discuss where the AIIM scenarios match. (Andrew has got some really cool images on his post that visually represent each of the 8 possibilities beautifully. I’ll use this as well, but remember, they came from his site :-)

Andrew Chapman’s 8 Reference Architectures

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1: Keep Systems Separate, Restrict Usage.

1: Keep Systems Separate, Restrict Usage.

Content is moved manually from SharePoint into the ECM application.

2: Loosely Coupled Solution

2: Loosely Coupled Solution

Content is moved from SharePoint into the ECM application based on some rule, or event.

3: Use SharePoint as a Portal Container

3: Use SharePoint as a Portal Container

SharePoint uses Web Parts that allow content from the ECM application to be seen, and at the same time, other Web Parts that allow the user to interact with content in SharePoint.

4: Passive Unification in Web Part

4: Passive Unification in Web Part

SharePoint contains Web Parts that allow a user to see content from both the SharePoint system, and the ECM system. This is from within the same Web Part. The user is unaware that the documents are located in separate systems.

5: Active Unification

5: Active Unification

Similar to Architecture 4 except that in this Architecture, the user is able to perform more complex operations with the content (managing versions, attaching objects to versions, etc).

6: Passive Back-end Aggregation

6: Passive Back-end Aggregation

An aggregated view of all the content stored across all libraries in created in the ECM. This aggregated view could then be used to make security decisions, perform risk analysis, monitor file usage, etc.

7: Active Back-end Aggregation

7: Active Back-end Aggregation

All content is aggregated from SharePoint into the ECM system where it is managed, and controlled.

8: Synchronized, Intelligent, 2-way Shortcutting

8: Synchronized, Intelligent, 2-way Shortcutting

As with Architecture 7, all content is transparently moved from SharePoint into the ECM system. However in this scenario, users can still act upon the document directly from SharePoint.

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As you can see, Andrew Chapman has put a lot of thought into the various possibilities of SharePoint and tradition ECM systems working together.

Looking at what the AIIM SharePoint course material mentions, and comparing it to Andrew’s various architectures, there are close correlations – the AIIM scenarios match the first four of Andrew’s Architectures, with the last four describing variations on the Portal concept.

Andrew Chapman’s post: Eight Reference Architecture Organizer

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SPX Series – A little bit of history (markjowen.wordpress.com)

Small Brain Notes on CMIS

Posted on 2010/06/26 by markjowen

In 2008 I became aware of CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Standard), and started following its progress (from afar). I knew that several big players in the ECM world were pushing CMIS, and that it would allow interoperability between different repositories. (I blogged about CMIS in an earlier post.)

However, I never really understood how CMIS worked on a technical level. I know that there is a plethora of content about how CMIS worked, but, not having a BIG brain, I had a tendency to jump in at the deep end, and almost drown in the information that was available.

This has changed (a little bit). I’ve just watched several short YouTube videos. One in which Dr David Choy (Chair of the OASIS CMIS TC and a member of EMC’s CTO staff) discusses the technology behind CMIS, and another where Jignesh Shah (Product Manager for EMC’s DFC technology) talks about the application of CMIS. (Links to these are at the bottom of the page.)

… I made notes! Here they are:

================================================

Mark’s small Brain Notes on CMIS

CMIS Technology Primer

=========================

What is it?

———–

A proposal from EMC, IBM & Microsoft developed in collaboration with OpenText, Oracle, Alfresco and SAP to provide an inter- operability standard to allow a generic application to access different content repositories without product-specific interface code.

Why is it needed?

—————–

Many companies are running disparate repositories from different vendors. This can be, for example, because each repository offers specific functionality that a specific business unit within the company makes use of, or that the company has acquired the content store/repository through the purchase of, or merger with, another company. Having a standard that allows an application to access each repository (regardless of which product the application belongs to) allows the Enterprise to make full use of the information that it has.

How does it do that?

——————–

CMIS offers a Service Oriented Infrastructure (CMIS APIs) that an application can use to access the content from each repository. This means that an application does not have to worry about how to communicate with the repository – just the CMIS APIs.

Design points for CMIS

———————-

The design goals were: – platform independent, programming language independent, protocol independent. – easy to lay on top of existing repository (cannot be complex – the data model should be able to sit on top of existing repositories so that the data model and behaviour match that of the repository.

What isn’t it?

————–

CMIS is not a full-function interface to explore the priority functionality of priority content management systems. It provides, however, core functionality that is common to all CMS products that are on the market today.

What does CMIS consist of?

————————–

1. An abstract data model that describes the content stored in the different repositories. It is a generic model that can be easily mapped to different priority applications.

2. Set of abstract services that allow an application to access the content stored in a repository.

3. Two web binding protocols. These allows the CMIS’ generic services to be made available via the web to an application regardless of the specific protocol used by the CMS.

The web binding protocols currently used are: * SOAP * REST using APP Additional protocols may be supported in the future.

Data Model

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= Predefined object types =
There are 4 object types defined by CMIS, Each has an immutable object_id.

1. Document – represents elementary asset that is stored in the repository (document, image file, video, etc). Document objects can be versioned, and are searchable.

2. Folder – container object – can contain other objects (including folders, thus folder hierarchy is also possible). Document objects can be stored in multiple folders (multi-filing). Document objects can also be “unfiled” (orphaned) – that is they do not reside in a folder.

3. Relationship objects – Represents binary relationship between two other objects. The relationship can have its own properties.

4. Policy Object – administrative policy that may be applied to other objects. (E.g. content retention policy)

| DOCUMENT
| FOLDER |
|

=========================================== = Basic Services = i) Access

CMIS provide basic services to access these 4 objects – CRUD Create Retrieve Update Delete Applies to all 4 types of objects A repository can create subtypes using the above 4 basic types Basic services also apply to sub-types.

CMIS also allows services to apply a policy on an object, (effectively placing an object under the control of an administrative policy). ii) Query capability CMIS allows for the querying of objects.

Data Model

———–

The CMIS Data Model consists of object type definitions. The object types define the schema. (The schema is effectively a set-up of properties for each object).

On top of the model, a Relational View is defined.

A property in a data model will appear as a column in a table. On top of that a subset of SQL92 is used. This can be used to search against the relational view. This was extended to be able to – do FullText searching, as well as – searches on multi-value properties. (Each column in a relational view is single-value, however in content management a property can sometimes have multi- ple values) – ability to limit search within a particular folder, or folder tree

Thus – two basic functions: 1. CRUD 2. Query

This allows a generic application to access repositories without writing repository-specific code.

Further Information

Dr David Choy’s video discussing the Technology behind CMIS

Jignesh Shah video discussing application scenarios of CMIS

Alfresco’s – Getting Started with CMIS

http://markjowen.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/small-brain-notes-on-cmis/