Using TownPortal as an extranet wizard

Thu 23rd December 2004 10:48 EET

We've been thinking how to keep our client extranet pages up-to-date and in somewhat standardized condition. Currently we have opened some ViewerGrouped topics to our MidCOM powered site to facilitate the meeting notes and other written specifications. Another interesting new feature will be the (OpenPSA) Support ticket viewer for clients. This would allow clients to track their tickets and in the end let them be in semi-full control (no deleting please) of their tickets.

So, there are two major components in play here:

  1. Extranet wizard, that would allow us to open new extranets "with a click of a button", and later on help managing those sites (i.e. open up new features to selected clients etc.).
  2. Support ticket viewer. So far we've agreed that this should be a MidCOM component that utilizes OpenPSA's API. Basically providing only the user interface.

For the extranet wizard Bergie came up with an idea to use the TownPortal as the basis. Currently TownPortal already has:

  1. A "new group" functionality to open preset objects (group & topics) into Midgard database.
  2. A "manage sites" functionality that would provide us with the interface to open/close features to selected clients. This is also configurable with an array, which means we can come up with some pretty complicated setups.

Obviously we will need to do some major improvements and possible differ from the original TownPortal ideology but at least we will have something to start with. These changes are scheduled to be started asap, which in my case means "next year".