[Zope] Zope in intranet - the cool apps?

[Heimo Laukkanen]

This is an email to open discussion about development of Zope 
applications to be used somewhere where they could mean a lot - in 
intranets, used by people who don't want to use hacker stuff, but do 
work - more likely do work better than in real life, in just personal 
contacts with people.

Groupware applications - email, PIM, calendar are out of this 
discussion. That should be a whole discussion of it's own and have 
connections to possible real calendar servers ( are there? ) and tools 
that poeple use ( handheld compatible etc.). Other people are allready 
trying to or have tried to solve these challenges.

However I would like to talk and discuss with others about the other 
applications, the stuff that makes the difference and could be really 
important for the success of Zope.

My favourites.

1. CMF

  No questions asked. This is the thing that is a great foundation to 
build on top of. You can count Plone to this section too, since it is 
just a skin.

But CMF is a priority in many people's lists, so I am not worried about 
that. I just wish it would be bigger and better even faster ,-)

One thing that is missing from CMF, is a way to create new content types 
more easily than ZClasses or Python Products. I mean something like 
Metapublisher but butter userinterface and all. It would be so great if 
user could just select the fields they want and create new type and 
later on even modify it with the same tool. Ofcourse the new type would 
be made either as a ZClass or python product so that experienced users 
would be able to extend them easily. That would be - kewl.

2. CMF Wiki / ZWiki

ZWiki is taken care of and developed all the time(?), but CMF Wiki is not.

For me CMFWiki is great - fantastic, absolutely perfect tool for 
intranet. Building knowledge has never been faster, and it works inside 
CMF - great!

It would be really great thing, if someone or a group of people - who 
are comfortable with creating CMF-applications could possibly take over 
the CMFWiki and work with ZWiki developer Simon to make combine these 
efforts in a way that development being done with ZWiki could be taken 
automaticly in use with ZWiki. Just like a wrapper.

3. ZUBB / CMF Forum

Threaded discussions - and usamble inside CMF. This is needed. Squishdot 
or it's possible future reincarnation Swishdot are also a nice thing, 
but for different purpose I suppose.

What I like is a simple - intuitive threaded discussions that people 
will feel comfortable to use as soon as they see it. We don't need many 
different discussion applications, we need just one - really good and 
customizable.


4. Some way to access files in filesystem LocalFS or similar?

In intranets this is nice, cool and very good thing to have - since in 
many cases you will have a big pile of old files somewhere on samba 
share or otherwise.

People want to save and use files in really easy way, in many cases it 
is through the windows explorer. Or access the files through intranet.

Compared to samba share or similar problems are allways the smae. 
Locking - how to upload files etc. People are not ready to do something 
more complicated than what they are used to, forexample write metadata 
to files etc.

If it was in windowsexplorer that a popup windows would come up and user 
would have to type, or user would have the possibility to type the 
metadata, then it would happen. Maybe.

Here is possibly some work to be done in the future.

I have a couple of wishes or thougths:

   1) There would have to be an easy way to share files when things are 
still cooking and people just throw files back and forth. Possibly 
normal network folders ( samba share ) is the best way to do this.

   2) Files and folders from local filesystem should be easily copied 
into Zope system, so that they are created as a full CMF-objects and 
user has to either type in metadata or metadata is automaticly created. 
In this sense at this phase the files are like first time published 
publicly and made available for others.

   3) Or everything would be in a cool versioning system that would also 
automaticly site behind windows explorer extension and objects would be 
accessed from zope through some interface.

Or something else?



What else do you have in intranet running and what should be developed? 
How do you see Zope as an appserver running corporate intranet?



----


While writing this email I've been watching Abyss SE from DVD. Had 
totally forgetten how great film this was, amazing underwater feelings 
and great images packed to a movie with love and pasifistic - be a 
better person towards everyone - message. Damn. This is a movie to watch 
once every three years,-)


-huima