Mira Groupware (from now: Mira) is an Open Source groupware platform that will allow users to work together and collaborate on projects regardless of their timezone or location and will thus be ideal for project and data management.
shall consist of one or more Workplaces,
shall be secure,
shall offer the ability to be self-updatable,
shall offer data replication services,
shall offer automated archiving services,
shall offer automated versioning services,
shall provide a context-aware help service,
shall allow Users to search an entire Workplace for a specific term,
shall offer additional functionality in the form of Mira applications called Utilities,
shall allow Utilities to communicate and interoperate with each other,
shall allow Users to have discussions in real-time with other Users of the same Workplace,
shall allow Users to send low-speed Messages to other Users in the same environment,
shall allow Users to send, receive and manage email via external mail environments,
shall offer an application development interface for Mira Utilities which will be used in Workplaces, such as:
Files Utility: to share files with other Users,
Discussion Utility: forum-like, to enable communication between Users,
Calendar Utility: to allow Users to set and share meetings and appointments,
Notes Utility: to share and collaborate on temporary notes,
Poll Utility: to create and vote on topics,
Forms Utility: to allow Users to enter data into a database as outlined by the creator of the form,
Project Utility: to allow Project Managers to set deadlines and manage resources in a project,
CRM Utility: to allow Users to collect, manage and analyse customer data,
Whiteboard Utility: to allow Users to draw on virtual whiteboards.
can create, manage and destroy environments,
can add Users to and remove Users from an environment,
can authenticate Users,
can add software or hardware to environments,
can create, manage and destroy Workplaces,
can link Workplaces to external data sources.
can share their work with other Users,
can store work-related information coherently in a Workplace,
can share calendars, appointments, a whiteboard and other data according to the Utilities in use in the Workplace.
Discussion
One content remark:
- “using external POP3/IMAP/SMTP resources”, instead write “via external mail environments”
Suggestions to think about:
- full-text searching in a Workplace
- a Project utility
- a CRM utility
- a Utility designer utility
- an Administrator utility
- context-sensitive help
- workflow (?)
- translation services (???)
Utilities should be able to integrate seamlessly with (data of) other utilities, e.g. the Calendar utility could also be part of the CRM or Project utilities.
I have added some of those suggestions.
However, about the others:
Is this required? Do you not think that we should simply provide and document the application development interface (i.e. to use the proper acronym which we wish to avoid for the DS: API) so that Utility developers can use these to produce Utilities? I don’t think it would make sense to have a Utility designer utility, because it would be out of place in a Mira environment. However, I do think that we could perhaps produce a tool to allow developers to preview what a Utility would look like based on what they have coded?
This is not required - I shall illustrate this in a mockup. :)
Both very good ideas which I have forgotten to mention - I will promptly add them.
Could you please elaborate on this? What do you mean by ‘workflow’ in the context of a Mira environment?
Likewise, by this do you mean a translation Utility or are you talking about localisation in the platform?
Thank you.
Workflow: Tom has some task to do, when he’s finished some action is required by Dick, and Harry needs to finish the job. Or a review cycle: someone updates a document, marks it as “Ready for Review’, a message is sent to the reviewers, they review the document and approved (individually or together). Therefore: A sequence of events by people working in a group.
Translation services: well, it’s for the future, but what if people in Spain and Pakistan want to (or have to) work together, and they don’t speak English, could it be possible that a document is translated automatically in the other person’s language when he opens the document? Messages automatically transated?
Hey, it’s just a weird idea, but not totally impossible.
The Designer within the system is not necessary of course. The idea comes from Lotus Notes, which has databases with the design the database embedded in the database. The Designer therefore operates on a database to modify the design. When a database is replicated, the Design gets replicated as well. Instead of database you can read “Workplace”...
Thanks for clarifying. Workflow sounds as if it could be included as part of the Project Utility? I’ll work on a mock-up for it.
The translation service is possible, but will probably not be easy to implement. Could we perhaps utilise the API of an online translation service for this? The main difficulty in its implementation will probably be on-the-fly translation of documents due to the necessary extraction and parsing of documents such as ODT and DOCX to translate them and the more complicated parsing of cryptic proprietary formats such as DOC. This would be an interesting feature to include, although I’ve never had much luck with translation services in terms of accuracy. :)
I have just added some requirements, namely: