The SUCRE portal functionalities and specifications

Transcription

1 Deliverable D5.2: The SUCRE portal functionalities and specifications Date: 04 January 2013 Authors: Timo Mustonen (MFG) Dissemination level: PU WP: WP5 Version: 1.0 Keywords: Web Portal, Drupal, Wiki, Partner Collaboration. Description: The document specifies the structure and the functionalities of the SUCRE portal. It also defines the reasons why particular solutions were selected. FP7-ICT Coordination and Support Action SUCRE (SUpporting Cloud Research Exploitation) Project No.: Project Runtime: 10/ /2014 Copyright SUCRE Consortium

2 Document Metadata Quality Assurors and Contributors Quality assuror(s): Giovanna Calabro (ZPH) Contributor(s): Tim Ebermann (MFG), Eleni Toli (UoA) Version History Version Date Description /12/2012 Finalised ToC /12/2012 First Draft, portal layout, additional functionalities /12/2012 Technical specifications /12/2012 Executive summary, Updates in chapter /12/2012 Version for final check /01/2013 Final version SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 2 of 18

3 Disclaimer This document contains description of the SUCRE project findings, work and products. Certain parts of it might be under partner Intellectual Property Right (IPR) rules so, prior to using its content please contact the consortium head for approval. In case you believe that this document harms in any way IPR held by you as a person or as a representative of an entity, please do notify us immediately. The authors of this document have taken any available measures in order for its content to be accurate, consistent and lawful. However, neither the project consortium as a whole nor the individual partners that implicitly or explicitly participated in the creation and publication of this document hold any sort of responsibility that might occur as a result of using its content. This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of SUCRE consortium and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union. The European Union is established in accordance with the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht). There are currently 27 Member States of the Union. It is based on the European Communities and the member states cooperation in the fields of Common Foreign and Security Policy and Justice and Home Affairs. The five main institutions of the European Union are the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers, the European Commission, the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors. ( SUCRE is a project partially funded by the European Union SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 3 of 18

4 Executive Summary This paper is a short description of the rationale, the key functionalities and the main specifications of the technological solutions used in the realization of the SUCRE portal. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 4 of 18

5 Table of Contents 1 SUCRE portal rationale and layout Home News Resources Project Collaboration Corner Partners Area EU - Japan Experts Group Submission of Abstracts and Articles Additional functionalities Technical Specifications SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 5 of 18

6 List of Images Image 1: SUCRE website home screen... 8 Image 2: SUCRE News page... 9 Image 3: SUCRE Media site Image 4: SUCRE Deliverables page Image 5: SUCRE Videos embedded on the portal Image 6: About Sucre Image 7: Sucre Partners Image 8: SUCRE Contact page Image 9: SUCRE Partners collaboration page Image 10: Wiki login page for partner collaboration and EU - Japan Experts Group Image 11: Form to Submit Articles SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 6 of 18

7 1 SUCRE portal rationale and layout The SUCRE portal aims to be a one stop shop for news on open source cloud computing. The primary objective of SUCRE is to offer a communitycentric portal and not a project-centric one. The portal will therefore present in the first instance activities, news and information related to the communities that the SUCRE project has to serve. It is apparent, that the SUCRE portal will be not a static website, but will provide fresh news and updates for and from the open clouds community and support the dialogue among various actors. Social media plug-ins will allow the integration, sharing and dissemination of portal contents on the most popular social media. The portal will of course also promote project events and achievements. In this light, it will evolve as the project evolves and reflect any updates. It will host several features that allow it to success in the above. A major update that will be implemented in the next version is for example the Japanese section of the website. Finally, the layout is designed for ease of use, clarity and professional look. 1.1 Home The Home page will provide key news in a blog style. It provides a quick single look into what are the latest developments both in the project and elsewhere. It will host the following features: Calendar To present a quick look into the international events past, present and future that will take place mainly in Europe and Japan and that are of interest to those involved with cloud computing. News Main body to show 3-5 news articles in short form from the main news section in blog style. Moreover, the homepage will host the user menu with log-in option and account information, a search field, as well as comments posted by the registered members of the portal. The search option will be also given on each page. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 7 of 18

8 Image 1: SUCRE website home screen 1.2 News News page hosts the main news submitted by the project partners. It will be in blog form with an archive link to access past articles. It will also contain the articles linked to the calendar events. Calendar will be visible on this page as well as the home page. Commenting on the news will be available through the registration and log-in. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 8 of 18

9 Image 2: SUCRE News page 1.3 Resources This page is divided into three subpages: Media will host the main news items produced by the project for collated source of all important developments of SUCRE project. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 9 of 18

10 Image 3: SUCRE Media site Deliverables will have the links to the main project public deliverables as downloadable.pdf files. It will provide all the key documents on a single page for ease of access and availability for wider public. Image 4: SUCRE Deliverables page SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 10 of 18

11 Videos will hold the embedded videos from the Youtube site of the project ( Youtube as a host for the project videos was chosen to both save server space and allow for smaller use of bandwidth. The cloud solution works also well in ensuring the availability of all the videos in an easily accessible form. Image 5: SUCRE Videos embedded on the portal 1.4 Project The Project page is divided into three subpages: About page provides an overview of the project and its main objectives. It is a quick introduction of the ideas that created SUCRE, as well as a brief outline of what is expected to be achieved and how. This is also the default page of Project menu item. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 11 of 18

12 Image 6: About Sucre Sub-page titled Partners presents all the partners participating to SUCRE with links to their respective websites. Here also regional contact persons are given. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 12 of 18

13 Image 7: Sucre Partners The sub-page Contact provides the user with main contact details to the project as well as the legal disclaimers. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 13 of 18

14 Image 8: SUCRE Contact page 1.5 Collaboration Corner This page will offer an exchange and discussion forum to groups and individuals participating in SUCRE. It will hold the links to partner document sharing solution via the EU-Japan Expert Group working area, as well as the collaboration site for the editorial board of the magazine, along with a link to the reviewing tool for the submitted articles ( It is divided into three subpages that are the partner wiki, EU-Japan Experts Group Wiki and Submission form for articles for the SUCRE CloudSource magazine. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 14 of 18

15 1.5.1 Partners Area Image 9: SUCRE Partners collaboration page This area hosts the collaboration wiki that the SUCRE partners will use in their work. Each partner has the right to access, edit and work on the wiki EU - Japan Experts Group This area hosts the collaboration wiki that the EU Japan Experts Group will use in their work. Each expert will be given the right to access, edit and work on the wiki. Wiki format was chosen to facilitate active participation and ease of collaboration among the experts and partners. Wiki structure allows for ease of editing, following of changes and other functionalities valuable to dynamic collaboration. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 15 of 18

16 Image 10: Wiki login page for partner collaboration and EU - Japan Experts Group Submission of Abstracts and Articles The portal currently hosts a submission form that allows for attaching of documents. This form will be used for the submission of the abstracts, as the magazine requires a two step submission, first the abstract and then, in case it has been accepted, the full article. The user must be registered and logged in to use the form. This prevents spam, unwanted documents and increases the security of the portal. During the second phase, all authors who have submitted a successful abstract will be asked to submit the full article using the easychair platform, which will be integrated in this part of the website as well. The use of easychair will facilitate the peer review of the articles and the exchange between the Editorial Board members. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 16 of 18

17 Image 11: Form to Submit Articles 2 Additional functionalities The portal will use a single sign on system that allows the upload of news and events by the project partners to on the news section. Single sign-on solution will be implemented throughout the portal, but at this project s stage some technical difficulties prevented the implementation of the aforementioned solution. The system will allow the experts to access the collaboration wiki as well as partners the possibility to submit news and events to the calendar and news page. The portal hosts a submission form that allows for attaching of documents. These submissions for news/events/documents for the magazine will initially be sent to info@sucreproject.eu to allow for editing of inputs, but other solutions will be looked at to improve the submission process. On the right column on all the pages the following elements will be present: Login Sharing on social media Latest comments SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 17 of 18

18 Search The portal description and features are in English, though some parts will foresee translations in Japanese. Specifically, bilingual areas are the pages Project, Home and main parts of News. The possibility of integrating e.g. a Yahoo! Pipe RSS feed to show cloud computing news in ticker form on the home page will be looked at and added on a second phase if possible. 3 Technical Specifications The portal uses Drupal version 7.15 as its content management solution. This open source resource was chosen to both fit in the technical requirements of the University of Athens servers that host the website and to support the SUCRE ideology through open source. Drupal also allows for plethora of functionalities so all solutions the project website needs can be implemented. Template chosen via a vote by the project partners is The choice was made with the specific requirements of clarity, professionalism and simplicity of design. The template also works well on mobile devices. Wiki solution used is Media Wiki. It provides full wiki functionalities and works well together with Drupal. As the current Drupal version in use is the latest update, the plugin wikis do not yet fully support the unified user interface. Therefore the single sign-on will be implemented most likely with a user identification tool plugin, should other means prove unsuccessful. The development of the web portal will be continuous throughout the project. Should a specific need arise it will be implemented to the existing layout and technical solution. SUCRE D5.2 The SUCRE Portal Functionalities and Specifications Page 18 of 18