The Study Material Production Process in NWU’s Alfresco environment

Chrissie BlumeIT Consultant @

North-West University

15 September 2011

SGP (Study Guide Production) system : Why this system was needed

• As from 2001 it was approved that students should be issued with interactive outcomes–based study guides for each module presented at the Potchefstroom University

• In 2002 it became evident that there is a big need for a system where the progress of the development and production of study guides can be managed and monitored.

• Such a system was necessary to prevent delays and bottle-necks in the production phase and to deal with enquiries about where in the process a specific study guide is.

• A Study Guide Production System (SGP) was developed with the BPM software called Metastorm e-Work, implemented at NWU in 2003.

• From 2004 until 2008 SGP had been enhanced several times to satisfy changing business requirements. Due to the increasing costs of licences, external programs were developed to manage some processes outside e-Work but added complexity of the system.

• With the university merger (1 January 2004), NWU acquired a new campus (Mafikeng) where English is the predominate language. As SGP was developed with an Afrikaans user interface , this presented a problem.

NWU’s Study Material Production system called SMP: Agenda

• SMP: Background and History• SGP: The “old” e-Work Process• SMP: Components in the Initial Development of the process in

Alfresco• SMP: Methodology used during initial development• SMP: Technologies used for developing• SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco

– Space Structure– Actions– Wizards– Workflows– Custom View– FTL (Freemarker templates)

• Integration Diagram of SMP with other NWU systems• Background and History of the greater Studymaterial

Process• Some statistics

SMP: Background and History at the NWU

• In 2009 a decision was taken to align the requirement for a multi-lingual Study Material Production system with the wider ECM strategy to implement Alfresco throughout the institution.

• Using Alfresco’s BPM capabilities, most of the SGP functionality was built into the standard open source ECM functionality.

• It was also decided to build interfaces with the student administration system (VSS) as well as the financial system (Oracle ERP).

• Interestingly, once the user group was exposed to the English version of the system they decided that a multilingual solution was not required after all and the system was only developed in the one language (English).

• SMP Phase 1 was implemented in July 2010• SMP Phase 2 (certain high priority changes, improvements and

new requests for changes) was implemented in July 2011

SGP: The “old” e-Work Process

SMP: Components in the Initial Development of the process in Alfresco

The process to prepare and develop content, configure the layout, edit and translate the language and deliver it to the stores for distribution to the students was broken into 3 sub components:

Prepare starts with registration (only for the first year), activation (every year), development, printing eCopy and ends when the study guide is ready to be configured. Role players are the Study Guide Coordinators, the Lecturers (or Author) and the Printers.

Configure SG starts when the study guide is received by the production department which coordinate tasks, like language editing, translation and page layout (if required) takes place. Role players are the Production Coordinators, Language Practitioners, Page Layout Coordinator and Page Layout Designers.

Process SG starts when selected Printer receives the study guide. The study guide then goes through proof printing, verification and final printing, then delivered to store to be distributed to students. Study guide will be “on shelf” until activation for the next year is required. The main role players are the Production Coordinator, the Printers and the Store.

SMP: Methodology used during initial development

• Team composition: – Developer group was made up of both internal NWU staff as well

as external vendors (predominantly i-Kno Knowledge Solutions). There were other role players like Business Analysts, Project Manager, Steering committee responsible for providing guidance on the overall strategic direction.

• Standards– Standards were defined for the project and the document was

expanded and modified throughout the development life cycle as required.

• Specification– From high level specification done for the entire system to detailed

specification for each functional unit.  

• Development– Due to the geographically disparate team and in order to create

synergy and facilitate knowledge transfer the team used paired programming in the first two phases of the project. Daily standup meetings were held to report progress and discuss the next tasks.

• Conclusion– The SMP project was the first of it’s kind undertaken by NWU and the

lessons learnt will add much valuable to future projects.

SMP: Technologies used for developing

• An Alfresco Share development site as a collaboration site for the project, where all discussions, documents and collaboration took place and where all the specification and standards documentation were made available to all the team members. (Wiki) http://143.160.38.140:8080/share/page/site/sgpdev/dashboard

• The Eclipse Platform that was installed on all the developers’ workstations, that was used for development and sharing of all the code, and building jar files to first deploy to local Alfresco machines, then to Alfresco development and test servers and finally to production Alfresco server.

• Used Alfresco Better Practices:– Use Alfresco forms.– Use web scripts rather than JAVA APIs.– Designed a number of smaller workflows rather than one big

workflow.– Try to keep Java programming to the bare minimum.– Use internal Alfresco functionalities rather than external third

party software

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco

1. Space Structure

2. Actions

3. Wizards

4. Workflows

5. Custom View

6. FTL (Freemarker Template Files)

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (1)

1. Space Structure

2. Actions 3. Wizards 4. Workflows 5. Custom View 6. FTL’s

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (2) 1. Space Structure

2. Actions (SMP actions available on Guide folder , depend on stage where guide is in process and on role of user - distinguished by Mortarboard Icon)

3. Wizards 4. Workflows 5. Custom View 6. FTL’s

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (2)

1. Space Structure

2. Actions (Peripheral functions

only available to administrator in

“More Actions”-menu)

3. Wizards 4. Workflows 5. Custom View 6. FTL’s

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (2)

1. Space Structure

2. Actions (Register of Study Material only available to certain roles like SGC)

3. Wizards 4. Workflows 5. Custom View 6. FTL’s

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (3)

1. Space Structure 2. Actions

3. Wizards

4. Workflows 5. Custom View 6. FTL’s

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (4)

1. Space Structure 2. Actions 3. Wizards

4. Workflows(Can go to My Share for lists of Assigned Tasks for individuals and Pooled Tasks for groups)

5. Custom View 6. FTL’s

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (4)

1. Space Structure 2. Actions 3. Wizards

4. Workflows(For Pooled tasks one of group members must first Take Ownership of the task)

5. Custom View 6. FTL’s

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (4)1. Space Structure 2. Actions 3. Wizards

4. WorkflowsExample of

“workflow”-screen with

more than one possible

transition “button” (1),

required fields to fill in (2),

showing some metadata (3) and

the workflow history (4)

5. Custom View 6. FTL’s

1

2

3

4

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (5)

1. Space Structure 2. Actions 3. Wizards 4. Workflows

5. Custom View(so that user get one screen with lists of all the Guide’s he has access to and to his tasks. Can also filter and sort on various fields.)

6. FTL’s

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (6)

1. Space Structure 2. Actions 3. Wizards 4. Workflows 5. Custom View

6. Freemarker Template ( “View Details of Study Material” to show all the metadata of a study guide)

SMP: Building Blocks in Alfresco (6)

1. Space Structure 2. Actions 3. Wizards 4. Workflows 5. Custom View

6. Freemarker Template (“View Audit of Study Material” to show a study guide’s process through the different stages)

Suggested Integration of “old” SGP system with other NWU systems

Background and History of the greater Studymaterial Process

• SMP is only small part in the greater Studymaterial Process• ESB/Web Services: In our case, BPEL is the ESB. The BPEL

protocol is used providing a real-time environment with audit trail, therefore better to always use BPEL.

• The greater Studymaterial Process was implemented on the Potchefstroom campus successfully, we are in the process of rolling it out to the other campuses (Vaal Triangle and Mafikeng) as well.

• The Study material issuing process was revamped in Oracle ERP and VSS.

• Integration of the SMP system with VSS-APD (Academic Program Development) and ERP-Inventory (ERP-INV) eliminates certain hand processes of the past. Because of hand processes, data integrity was lacking.

• We also has an automatic process in place to copy final documents of the guides to eFundi (SAKAI), the eLearning system at NWU. Therefore students have also electronic access to guides even when printed copies are not available.

Integration Diagram of SMP with other NWU systems

SMP: A few statistics

• For Semester 1 2012, that is the guides that are in process at the moment, there are about 3050 different study guides registered in SMP.

• For each module there are at least two different guides, one for each different language (Afrikaans, English), presentation method(Contact or Distance) or campus (Potch, Vaal Triangle and Mafikeng). Total different modules in SMP: 1810

• For Semester 2 2011, the current semester, there are 2190 different study guides. 2160 of them have been processed through all the stages and are current in the stage “On Shelf”.

• For Semester 1 2011, the first semester that was done in the SMP system, there were 2910 different study guides (from which 2880 are “On Shelf”).

• For Potch campus Contact students there was in 2011 requests for approximately 166,000 printed copies for 2800 different guides!

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves

will affect us. 

~Stephen R. Covey