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ConcourseConnect: Improving Upon the Team Elements Core Modules
Posted by Matt Rajkowski on February 18, 2009, 9:15 PM EST
This is the third post in a four (4) part series exploring ConcourseConnect. Part 1 can be read here: Introducing ConcourseConnect to Team Elements Users. Part 2 can be read here: Major Functional Changes to Team Elements in making ConcourseConnect.
ConcourseConnect improves upon several of Team Elements' modules and adds many more... here's a rundown of all the modules...
Profile: Profile is a new module that rolls-up information from the other modules for a given listing. A new "Images" feature has been added for personalizing the listing.
Reviews: Reviews is a new module that lets others rate a listing on a scale from 1-5. Others can decide which reviews are helpful.
Blogs (formerly "News"): Posting blogs now allows other users to rate and comment on the post.
Calendar: A new module to post event times and see them appear on the profile.
Wiki: An improved wiki editor which supports WYSIWYG editing, images, and links. Wiki Forms have also been added... these are data entry forms so that database-like information can be kept in the wiki. Forms add uniformity to an otherwise free-form capability.
Discussion: Posts are now characterized as questions or topics. The user that posted a question can indicate when an answer is satisfactory.
Promotions: This is a new module that lets others know about your listing. What better way to promote a new group or project then to run a promotion!
Classifieds: This is a new module that allows for placing classified ads on your system. Essentially a Craigslist for recruiting or finding resources for your listing.
Documents: Documents have been simplified and no longer are displayed as deep and nested folders. Of course you can still build a deep and nested folder structure, but now users can scan through documents much quicker and by relevance.
Lists: This module now allows list items to be built while surfing through the whole site. See an interesting group or project? Click to add it to your personal list or link the item to one of your projects. Inter-linking of listings is now very easy.
Plan: This module is essential for project management. Plans are not limited to just Projects though, they can be attached to any listing in the system. New features include direct importing and replacement of Microsoft Project plan documents and Omni Outliner documents.
Issues (formerly "Tickets"): This module has been renamed to better describe its functionality across all modules. If your listing has an issue that comes up, log it here.
Participants (formerly "Team"): Changes in this module have focused around user roles. Users are now characterized as Administrator, Manager, Champion, VIP, Member, Participant, and Guest, each with a specific purpose.
Badges: Badges are emblems associated with a user, group, or project. Badges provide flexibility at many levels. Some badges are awarded by the system for exemplary contribution, some are assigned based on external causes, and some are freely chosen by users to represent something interesting about themselves or their groups or projects.
Messages: An internal messaging system allows users to send context-based messages. For example, if a user wants to privately respond to another user's blog, that can be easily accomplished.
That's the features in a nutshell.
Read the final post in this series:
