[Plone-Users] recommended approach for simple team collaboration website

[cheesedoggie]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out the best direction to go for a plone 2.5.1 site
I'm building. There are two components to the site: a public-facing site
and a team workspace. The team workspace consists of a blog (Quills, but
open to change), discussion board (Ploneboard, also open to change),
events calendar, and miscellaneous docs. All content in the team
workspace is not to be visible AT ALL in the public space, even search
results. confidentiality is important to this group; if the user is a
member of the group, all public and group content IS visible and
searchable.

That's pretty much it, beyond extending the member data itself to
include a couple more fields. No complex hierarchies/roles, etc.

I've been hoping that there would be a public/stable release of remember
to work on, but as one isn't, and I'm already committed to 2.5, I want
to make sure I'm not overlooking a simple option. I've tried b-org and
ATWorkflow, but they've either not worked or not worked with the above
products.

Any thoughts/recommendations by the group would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Robert

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[Jordan Baker]

Hi Robert,

I've been using GrufSpaces for a while now to do this. It works fairly
well out of the box but it is somewhat complex for simple use cases
(though i think it now ships with something simpler??)

But it doesn't really matter which approach you use. You could in fact
create your own simple solution by copying Folder type and then
assigning a different workflow with it. The trick is to remove the
Acquire flag from the permissions that outside users should not get...

Also take a look at the RestrictedArea product in collective. I
haven't fully tested it out yet but it looks very interesting since it
seems to bypass the limitations of workflow by using a publishing
traversal hook.

I was actually looking at adapting the method it uses to more securely
make a Plone site private (regardless of what workflow your content
types use)

Cheers,

On 2006-10-31 17:52:22 -0500, cheesedoggie

[Robert Carter]

Hi Jordan,

Belated thanks for your recommendation. Your suggestion for grufspaces
worked out great. I'm extremely appreciative.

Cheers!

Robert

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[Martin Aspeli]

cheesedoggie wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to figure out the best direction to go for a plone 2.5.1 site
> I'm building. There are two components to the site: a public-facing site
> and a team workspace. The team workspace consists of a blog (Quills, but
> open to change), discussion board (Ploneboard, also open to change),
> events calendar, and miscellaneous docs. All content in the team
> workspace is not to be visible AT ALL in the public space, even search
> results. confidentiality is important to this group; if the user is a
> member of the group, all public and group content IS visible and
> searchable.
>
> That's pretty much it, beyond extending the member data itself to
> include a couple more fields. No complex hierarchies/roles, etc.
>
> I've been hoping that there would be a public/stable release of remember
> to work on, but as one isn't, and I'm already committed to 2.5, I want
> to make sure I'm not overlooking a simple option. I've tried b-org and
> ATWorkflow, but they've either not worked or not worked with the above
> products.
>

b-org should work with this approach - though you may need to use its
various extension points to get usecase-specific metadata about groups
(Departments) and users (Employees - you can of course rename types in the
UI as appropriate) and projects. You may also need to tweak the workflow.
I'd be interested to hear about how it doesn't work for you, maybe I can
offer some suggestions.

Martin
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[michael nt milne]

I believe I read somewhere that it's best to go with ATWorkgroups for latest editions of Plone? Isn't it the case that the way that GrufSpaces is built or based on is about to become redundant? Anyway, irrelevant if you have GrufSpaces working (I couldn't get it running), but ATWorkgroups has a new release and is very good.

--
michael

[Justizin]

ATWorkgroups has not worked for me any better than mxmWorkgroup,
GrufSpaces, or TeamSpace. All of these products address a shortcoming
in Plone which is simply a lack of ability to delegate group
management to one or more group members.

After having been bitten many times by various special folder types
built for this purpose, I've decided that it's far easier to simply
manage groups and grant roles to users and groups via the 'sharing'
tab of folders.

A slight customization to workflow - adding a 'default' state and
transition to each of plone_workflow and folder_workflow which inherit
permissions from above - allows you to simply mark a folder as
'private' and grant a group or some users Owner.

I also added a Reader role who can, yanno, read content but not modify it.

--
Justizin, Independent Interactivity Architect
ACM SIGGRAPH SysMgr, Reporter
http://www.siggraph.org/

[michael nt milne]

Isn't ATWorkgroups = mxmWorkgroups ?

>After having been bitten many times by various special folder types
>built for this purpose, I've decided that it's far easier to simply
>manage groups and grant roles to users and groups via the 'sharing'
>tab of folders.

Isn't it possible to give a group member 'manager' permissions for the whole object through the ZMI?

I quite like the email functionality and archive functionality in mxmWorkGroups (ATWorkgroups?). Along with using say PloneBoard a lot of project emailing could be pushed onto a space like this.

michael

[Robert Carter]

Hi Martin,

As memory serves the Ploneboard product I was using at the time did not
work (i.e., I was not able to create a functioning board limited to
members of the group) when installed into the Department I created for
that purpose. I'll be the first to admit it was likely user error. I'll
reinstall and try to repro the problems and get back.

Appreciate your help and interest,

Robert

[Todd Graham]

It seems to me that there are basically three separate efforts ongoing
trying to solve the same problem; providing a way for logical groups of
users to work together in a collaborative environment, while
distributing the overhead of account management and folder/object
permissions. Ironically, my organization, at my request, chose Plone
to satisfy this exact need and sometimes I wonder :)

The three options GrufSpaces, TeamSpace and ATWorkgroups have all just
made new releases and I have just tested all of them in hopes to find
a solution before going live across the organization.

GrufSpaces, which I am currently using in a semi-production state at
version .06 works well once you get the email functionality working,
and configure the workflow to your needs. GrufSpaces 7.2, the latest
release has some issues with Migrations (search this list for my
specific, unanswered, problems). There are also problems with the
email functionality with the Safari browser which is a show stopper for
my upgrade path. (search this list for specifics) The new version of
GrufSpaces does have some nice features, like portlets that allow you
to see who is in the GroupSpace, and what roles they have. Improved
email functionality, providing you are not using Safari. The 7.2
version is also based on Archetypes, which will allow you to add
_at_rename_after_creation = True to the code base to get rid of the
ugly url strings.

GrufSpaces would also benefit from an Issue Tracker on Plone.org, as
other than watching the svn for commits, it is difficult to tell if the
product is being actively maintained.

ATWorkGroups - seems to be a very nice product and I have looked at it
several times hoping to find a solution. My latest attempt came this
morning, working with a fresh Plone Instance, I registered two users,
added the ATWorkGroup Product 2.0.2 and logged in as user1 and created
a workgroup, added user1 and user2 as GroupMembers. User1 owned the
workgroup and could add content types without issue, User2 logged in
and could see the workgroup but could not add any content items. Upon
further investigation, it appears that ATWorkgroup sets the default
workgroup policy for the plone site to workgroup_content_workflow, but
does not provide a workflow for the content type of ATWorkflow. I may
be missing something here, but wouldn't it be a good idea to have the
content type have a dedicated workflow so you could control what types
can be added and by who?

TeamSpace - I looked at the product about 8 months ago when it still
required CMFMember, and was encouraged to see it hit plone.org last
night with the CMFMember dependency removed and added emphasis to Zope3
technologies. I spent some time this morning with the product in a
fresh plone instance and when trying to add a member to a team the
membermgmt form could not find any users. I headed over to Plone.org
to report it as a bug only to find it had all ready been reported last
July. It does seem like a good product, from what I remember it had
nice features that allow users to be active members vs inactive members
of teams.

Anyway, for now I'm sticking with GrufSpaces 0.6 for production, but it
just seems to me that a lot of talented people are working on three
seperate efforts trying to solve basically the same problem.

-- Todd
Plone 2.5.1, Zope 2.9.5, MacOSX 10.4.8

[Justizin]

You might also know if there was an issue tracker that an associate of
mine spent the past four days rebuilding a site he nuked by installing
Grufspaces. I have told hiim 100 times that he should never install
new products without consulting me, and this is why. The name seems
to imply strongly that this product has a design flaw.

> ATWorkGroups - seems to be a very nice product and I have looked at it
> several times hoping to find a solution. My latest attempt came this
> morning, working with a fresh Plone Instance, I registered two users,
> added the ATWorkGroup Product 2.0.2 and logged in as user1 and created
> a workgroup, added user1 and user2 as GroupMembers. User1 owned the
> workgroup and could add content types without issue, User2 logged in
> and could see the workgroup but could not add any content items. Upon
> further investigation, it appears that ATWorkgroup sets the default
> workgroup policy for the plone site to workgroup_content_workflow, but
> does not provide a workflow for the content type of ATWorkflow. I may
> be missing something here, but wouldn't it be a good idea to have the
> content type have a dedicated workflow so you could control what types
> can be added and by who?

You should already be able to do the "dedicated workflow" you want on
any folder in Plone 2.5 using PlacefulWorkflow and TTP addable type
restrictions.

Further, you'll notice less erratic behaviour if you add some users to
a group in Plone's control panel, grant this group Owner or Manager in
a folder, and mark the folder and all contents as private. A simple
workflow tweak defaults all new content to the permissions of its'
container, which is handy for this use case.

> TeamSpace - I looked at the product about 8 months ago when it still
> required CMFMember, and was encouraged to see it hit plone.org last
> night with the CMFMember dependency removed and added emphasis to Zope3
> technologies. I spent some time this morning with the product in a
> fresh plone instance and when trying to add a member to a team the
> membermgmt form could not find any users. I headed over to Plone.org
> to report it as a bug only to find it had all ready been reported last
> July. It does seem like a good product, from what I remember it had
> nice features that allow users to be active members vs inactive members
> of teams.

Maybe this has changed, but TeamSpace used to allow only one team
leader per team, and there was no concept of users having "roles" in a
team. Still, I'd like to see this functionality group onto Zope,
Plone, and membrane groups.

> Anyway, for now I'm sticking with GrufSpaces 0.6 for production, but it
> just seems to me that a lot of talented people are working on three
> seperate efforts trying to solve basically the same problem.

And they should all be pushing their code upstream, but they probably won't.

If you dig the archives, you'll probably find a message from me a year
or more ago saying nearly the same thing you said. Wanna collaborate
on a proposal for this functionality to live upstream?

--
Justizin, Independent Interactivity Architect
ACM SIGGRAPH SysMgr, Reporter
http://www.siggraph.org/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Justizin]

On 11/21/06, michael nt milne <michae...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Isn't ATWorkgroups = mxmWorkgroups ?

that depends on your definition of '='. This falls into the category,
for me, of products which entirely start from scratch every time a few
APIs change, adding to the mayhem.

> >After having been bitten many times by various special folder types
> >built for this purpose, I've decided that it's far easier to simply
> >manage groups and grant roles to users and groups via the 'sharing'
> >tab of folders.
>
> Isn't it possible to give a group member 'manager' permissions for the whole
> object through the ZMI?

elaborate? you can give a user permissions, or a group permissions,
you cannot, afaik, attach permissions or roles to a group membership.

Martin Fowler has a *great* pattern for this, but it will take me a
while to implement an example because there isn't a ton of client
demand.

> I quite like the email functionality and archive functionality in
> mxmWorkGroups (ATWorkgroups?). Along with using say PloneBoard a lot of
> project emailing could be pushed onto a space like this.

email functionality? archive functionality? elaborate. All
mxmWorkgroups ever did for me was make an entire folder full of
content inaccessible to anyone - I bet I can write a custom folder
type in a few minutes that tosses everything at /dev/null. ;)

I'm glad to hear some details, though. Check out OpenPlans, they are
using TeamSpace and CMFMember under the hood, which I still think is
overkill design wise, but they have something which sounds similar to
what you want. One of the more interesting tools developed at
OpenPlans is listen, a mailing list with a web gateway ("archive").
I'd *really* like to see some amalgmation of Ploneboard, listen, and
Poi at some point -- in fact this is something I've been working on
the design for in the past few weeks. If you have similar goals,
you're free to contribute. ;)

--
Justizin, Independent Interactivity Architect
ACM SIGGRAPH SysMgr, Reporter
http://www.siggraph.org/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

[michael nt milne]

>that depends on your definition of '='.  This falls into the category,
>for me, of products which entirely start from scratch every time a few
>APIs change, adding to the mayhem.

I was meaning 'the same as', as in the same product. Is that not the case?

>elaborate?  you can give a user permissions, or a group permissions,
>you cannot, afaik, attach permissions or roles to a group membership.

>Martin Fowler has a *great* pattern for this, but it will take me a
>while to implement an example because there isn't a ton of client
>demand.

I thought you could 'attach permissions to a group' ? I may be wrong but don't you then suggest you can do this in your later email?

"Further, you'll notice less erratic behaviour if you add some users to
a group in Plone's control panel, grant this group Owner or Manager in
a folder, and mark the folder and all contents as private"

>email functionality? archive functionality? elaborate.  All
>mxmWorkgroups ever did for me was make an entire folder full of
>content inaccessible to anyone - I bet I can write a custom folder
>type in a few minutes that tosses everything at /dev/null. ;)

Yes,  ATWorkgroups or mxmWorkgroups had an 'email to group' feature which works well. You can select all group members or a subset. Also you can attach documents to this email. Furthermore, the communication and attachment is archived in the email archive tab. Quite useful if you were to install PloneBoard as well for post email discussion. Good as it combines email and a groupspace. In trying to get people off email it's almost impossible unless you have a combination approach.

I need to check out Todd's finding on this though before I progress with ATWorkgroups..if this is a bug it needs fixed as it means it doesn't do what it basically sets out to do and that is allow group colloboration and creation of content.....

" I registered two users,
added the ATWorkGroup Product 2.0.2 and logged in as user1 and created
a workgroup, added user1 and user2 as GroupMembers.  User1 owned the
workgroup and could add content types without issue, User2 logged in
and could see the workgroup but could not add any content items."

michael

[Max M]

Justizin skrev:

> On 11/21/06, michael nt milne <michae...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Isn't ATWorkgroups = mxmWorkgroups ?
>
> that depends on your definition of '='. This falls into the category,
> for me, of products which entirely start from scratch every time a few
> APIs change, adding to the mayhem.

Oh you mean like its been a stable product for about 3 1/2 years, and
that is to little?

Please name any another Plone product that has been stable, developed
and supported in that timeframe!

The new version "ATWorkgroup" even has a migration path from the old one.

The Plone platform had simply changed so much over the last three years
that I had to do a rewrite to base it on ATFolder.

The ability to extend via archetypes, default views, limiting content
etc. Besides that Plone 2.5 broke CMF based content types. So I should
eiyther fix Plone, or do a long needed upgrade.

> email functionality? archive functionality? elaborate. All
> mxmWorkgroups ever did for me was make an entire folder full of
> content inaccessible to anyone - I bet I can write a custom folder
> type in a few minutes that tosses everything at /dev/null. ;)

I have never had a customer loose data because if it. And I have
probably used it on 50+ sites over the years.

So more likely you did an upgrade on a production site without testing
first ...

> I'm glad to hear some details, though. Check out OpenPlans, they are
> using TeamSpace and CMFMember under the hood, which I still think is
> overkill design wise, but they have something which sounds similar to
> what you want. One of the more interesting tools developed at
> OpenPlans is listen, a mailing list with a web gateway ("archive").
> I'd *really* like to see some amalgmation of Ploneboard, listen, and
> Poi at some point -- in fact this is something I've been working on
> the design for in the past few weeks. If you have similar goals,
> you're free to contribute. ;)

I have a version of ATWorkgroup that supports maillists. It is in the
trunk. But it is a lot more tricky to get right than i guessed. I am now
convinced that it cannot be done properly without control of the smtp
server. So it is better left to a Twisted and Zope 3 based approach.

--

hilsen/regards Max M, Denmark

http://www.mxm.dk/
IT's Mad Science