ocPortal Tutorial: Drinking from the feature pool
Written by Chris Graham, ocProducts
This tutorial will describe the thought processes required to succesfully design a complex and personalised website using ocPortal.Table of contents
The process
The ordinary process of creating a bespoke advanced website (rather than just a basic site of pages) goes along lines as follows:- brainstorm, interview and analyse, to determine what requirements there are for the website ('requirements capture')
- design these features such that a coherent design of the website is constructed ('requirements analysis' / 'design')
- implement the design ('implementation')
- add content
Creating an ocPortal-based website is similar, but during the design phase it is very important to take into account that the system should be designed to make use of the features ocPortal already provides. This presents a huge economic reward, but also requires a special mode of thinking. During the phase, instead of thinking:
"how can I coherently structure this, and what set of features will I end up needing for it?"
you (or a designer working on your behalf) needs to be thinking:"what ocPortal feature best fits each of my needs?"
This may seem an obvious approach, but to do it, you need to open your mind, setting aside preconceptions that you may have developed about things, so that you can start thinking about them in ocPortal terms instead. Often, you will need to adapt your initial ideas so that they map better to what ocPortal can provide - not for the worse, but just to make your implementation easier; if you would rather avoid this, or find that the closest matching ocPortal features need adapting, you may want to contact ocProducts to see if any staff are available for commercial assistance.An example
I can personally attest to the confused image that comes from a client who is not implementing a system themselves, and the need for clarification (and the client cannot be blamed for this - they are not a trained systems analyst!). In this sense, implementing a solution in ocPortal is no different to any other - it will need to be refined before it can be implemented.Here is a made-up example, of written up notes of a clients requirement for one aspect of their website…
Client said
"There should be a set of pages where from each you can download one of our products. The user should get a choice between the version packaged for engineers, and the version packaged for managers. Files should be available in both zipped-pdf and pdf format."
On face value, this looks like it would not fit into ocPortal in a clean way (i.e. Without just putting a load of attachments on to a page and manually maintaining it), without implementing a new custom module. However, with some careful thought, this could be re-shaped to fit perfectly with features ocPortal provides…
ocPortal-solution analyst said
A download category tree should be provided as follows…
For engineers
<each product>
<pdf download>
<zipped-pdf download>
For managers
<each product>
<pdf download>
<zipped-pdf download>
It might not be exactly what was asked for, but it is good enough, and the client would likely be pleased to find that for "no extra cost" their products may have images shown on the download page, and outmoding: things that they might never have considered, but now love. If this example was a bit more complex, and the download system was lacking, then improving the download system would be substantially cheaper than writing a whole new module from-scratch.
See also
- Introduction to ocPortal (contains a partial list of ocPortal's current feature set)
- Choosing how to release your information
- Do's and Do-not's of an (ocPortal) website