Status

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A social what ?

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency.

Wikipedia.org

Examples

Why this is powerful ?

A social network can provide to the company the following benefits :

• Connecting people more quickly by easily expanding their network,
• Increasing the communication between people,
• Opening the field of vision by giving access to others connections : share contacts,
• Allowing people to gather together around subjects,
• Promoting collaboration and open questions,

What are the limits ?

Even if those social networks are easy to use and get benefits :

• Social network provides people a public visibility to the rest of the world : what is sent over the network is sent, no way to cancel it. Publicity for co-workers is difficult to manage.
• In a business context, it could be used to get information people normally does not have access to. Managers want people to exchange real information but not critical one.
• It’s generally not plugged with another solution (CMS, GED, ECM) already installed in the company. The company has to have another application for this service, with the same problematic (SSO, Search, Security…)

What features are missing ?

The aim is to provide a controlled social network for the company :

• Integration in the information system of the enterprise (security, authentication…)
• Integration with another solution to merge features (maps, surveys, WYSIWYG, captchas…) and merge solutions (newsletter engine, CMS, Search engine, CMF…).
• Democratize the social network in the company, not only reserved for young people or ITs. Everyone has an advice and may want to share it !

Concepts

Messages and people

The design pattern used under Status is now quite familiar and used in every social network.
The base of the communication is always done through a message that can handle a media : text, image, video, map, invitations…
People who can interact with messages are :

• Producers : they produce messages.
• Readers : they read messages.

People can be both producers and readers.

Vocabulary

To get in, a bit of vocabulary :

• Follower : reader consuming messages from a producer.
• Leader: producer followed by a reader.
• Follow : a reader has subscribed to all messages issued by the producer.
• Mutual followers : about people that are followers one for each other.

Spreading messages

The last concept used in Status is the ability to spread a message.
This means that you can transfer a message to your followers, even if you’re not the leader of this message.
By this way, you can share a pure message to your followers, without modifying the leader original information.

Features overview

• Home page and Profile
• Favorites
• Followers and Leaders
• Private Messages
• Search

Home page and profile

Message related

• Type a message
• Remove a message
• Spread / Un-spread
• Add to favorites / Remove from favorites
• Send direct messages
• Show a full discussion
• Access to people and subject through special characters @ and #

Person related

• Overview data about messages and people
• Search on subjects and people

Favorites

Message related

• Show all your favorites messages
• Remove a message from your favorites

Followers and leaders

People related

• Show the list of people : followers or leaders
• Follow or un-follow people

Private message

Message related

• Send a private message to a mutual follower
• Remove a private message
• Show the full discussion

Person related

• Messages can be send only to mutual followers

Search

• Subjects
• People

UI and ergonomic features

• Tool bar
• Dialog boxes and messages for important actions
• Icons
• Easy to skin / override
• Compliant with any modern browser

Integration with eZPublish

• Authentication and personal data stored inside eZPublish’s User content class
• Workflow events for creation and remove of users
• Search
  • People via eZFind
  • Messages directly via SolR
• Performance
  • Cache mechanism
  • eZJSCore
  • Optimization for Web Performance
• Multilinguism / Internationnalization (i18n)

Requirements and dependencies

The requirements are the following :

• Apache Zeta Components : 2009.2 minimum.
• PHP : 5.2.x minimum.
• eZPublish 4.4 with eZFind 2.2, eZJSCore and eZFlow packages installed.
• A compliant database system : MySQL or Oracle, supported by Apache Zeta components.

This extension is dependant on :

• jQuery 1.4.4
• jQuery 1.8.7 and a custom theme

Installation

The process is the following :

• Unzip / untar the source
• Copy the extension in the "extension" folder of eZPublish
• Log in the back office, go to Setup > Extensions.
• Click on wse_st and click on "Update".
• Click on "Regenerate autoloads array for extensions".
• Go to cache management.
• Click on "Clear all caches".

Set up

You must configure each siteaccess if you want to have a redirection to the homeafter user logged in :

• Edit the settings/<siteaccess>/site.ini.append.php
• Locate the "SiteSettings" block or if it does not exist, create it.
• Specify the following default page that will be used after login :

DefaultPage=/status/home

• Save the file.
• Clear the caches.

Specific Settings

The specific settings are set in the "settings/status.ini.append.php" file in this extension.

Global Settings

• StatusLimit : number of status by page.
• BioAttribute : string identifier of the class attribute used for biography. See further for how to set the bio. This attribute must be the same for all the user classes. See below.

Workflow Settings

• UserClasses : string identifiers of the classes used for users.

Debug Settings

• DebugAjax : if set to enabled, the error is returned in the XHR response and you can see it with Firebug or another debugger.

Advanced set up

The following features can be set up :

• Auto creation of the profile before user creation :
  • Go to the back office with admin rights.
  • Go to "Workflows" and chose your group of workflows ("Standard" by default).
  • Create a workflow.
  • Name it : "WSE Status - Auto status account created".
  • Add one event of type : "Event/Auto create an account for WSE Status"
  • Click on OK
  • Go to "Triggers"
  • In the list for "content > publish > before", select the workflow you have created.
• Auto removing of the profile and status data after user removing :
  • Go to the back office with admin rights.
  • Go to "Workflows" and chose your group of workflows ("Standard" by default).
  • Create a workflow.
  • Name it : "WSE Status - Auto status account deleted".
  • Add one event of type : "Event/Auto delete an account for WSE Status"
  • Click on OK
  • Go to "Triggers".
  • In the list for "content > delete > after", select the workflow you have created.
• Add a bio information to the native "User" class :
  • Go to the back office with admin rights.
  • Go to Setup > Classes > Users > User
  • At the bottom right, choose "Text block" and click "Add".
  • Fill the new attribute with "Biography" as "Name" and "bio" as "Identifier".
  • Save the class.
• Set up the bio from an existing user class attribute :
  • Edit "status.ini.append.php".
  • Change the setting "BioAttribute" to the field that will contain the bio.

Troubleshooting

There's no know bugs even it has passed all the classic QA tests.

Changelog

v1.0.8 - Major update to be compliant with SolR 2.2 / ezfind 2.5

v1.0.1 to v1.0.7 - Minor bugfixes and improvement after beta test run

v1.0.0 - Initial version