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Customizing a Municipal Web Site with eDirectory™ and GroupWise® WebAccess

Customizing a Municipal Web Site with eDirectory™ and GroupWise® WebAccess

Jim MichaelI.S. Manager, City of ChesterfieldNovell Support Connect Sysopjmichael@chesterfield.mo.us

Brian AndersonWebmasterCity of Chesterfieldbanderson@chesterfield.mo.us

Session Objectives

• Demonstrate how the City of Chesterfield, Missouri has leveraged Novell technologies to add dynamic content to its web site

• Make network administrators and webmasters aware of the technology they may already own, but don’t realize can be used to enhance their web sites

• Show that dynamic content is not all “rocket science”

Web Site Problems

• Static content Web site served only HTML pages

• High maintenance Webmaster required to constantly tend to

content• Poor ROI

Other web applications sidelined• Redundant data

Information on the web has already been created elsewhere

• Error prone Multiple places for mistakes to be introduced

Web Site Goals

• Dynamic content Always current

• Scalable Can grow with the city

• Low maintenance Employees manage their own content Separate design from business logic

Web Site Goals (cont.)

• High ROI Employ technology already owned by the city

• Seamless Technology must work transparently

Target Areas

• Web calendar

• Document management/publishing

• Search engine

• Employee directory

Web Calendar—Old

• HTML Static

How It Worked Then

Webmaster FTPs information

to server

Webmaster edits the HTML

calendar

Secretary e-mails

webmaster

Secretary enters info into

GroupWise®

New meetingis scheduled

Web Calendar—Recent

• AUOffice Calendar Limited

customization Requires

Microsoft Web Server

Requires Windows box with GroupWise®

client

Web Calendar—Current

• GroupWise WebAccess

Dynamic Customizable Fast

• Demo

How It Works Now

New meetingis scheduled

Info is immediatelyaccessible on web site

via WebAccess

Secretary e-mails

webmaster

Web Calendar—Details

• Current calendar—GroupWise WebAccess Underlying technology

• Java servlets/JSP

• NetWare® 6

• Tomcat 3.3• Template engine

Configuration Modifying the templates Security

Document Management—Old

• HTML Static

How It Worked Then

Secretary creates Word

document

Use Word-HTML conversion?

Secretary e-mails document to webmaster

Spend an hourcleaning up

proprietary tags

Webmaster FTPsdocument toweb server

YES

NO

Spend an hourcoding document

into HTML

Five minutes later,secretary makes

edits to thedocument

Document Management—Current

• GroupWise WebPublisher

DynamicCustomizableFastLow maintenance

• Demo

How It Works Now

Secretary creates Word

document

Saves documentto GroupWise

Automatically indexed

and available on web site

Five minutes later,secretary edits

document

Document Management—Details

• Current document management—GroupWise WebPublisher

Configuration Modifying the templates

Search Engine—Old

• Perl script Slow Limited

configuration Doesn’t index

non-HTML documents (i.e., PDF)

Can’t crawl dynamic URLs

Search Engine—Current

• NetWare Web Search Server®

Fast Indexes PDFs Indexes

Dynamic URLs Really fast

• Demo

Search Engine—Details

• Current search engine—NetWare Web Search

Configuration Modifying the templates

Directory—Old

• HTML Static

How It Worked Then

New employee

hired

Administratorupdates

eDirectory

Administratore-mails changesto webmaster

Webmaster updates HTML, FTPs new code

to server

Employee is fired,gets married,

changes phone,moves, etc.

Directory—Recent

• JDBC Painfully slow

• Demo

Directory—Current

• Novell eCommerce Beans

DynamicCustomizableLudicrous speed

• Demo

How It Works Now

Everything on web siteis administered

through eDirectory

Directory—Details

• Current directory—Novell eCommerce Beans Brief overview of Beans Configuration Accessing eDirectory information via web pages

Resources

• developer.novell.com WebAccess customization documentation eCommerce Beans Sophisticated demos using eCommerce Beans All available in the Novell Developers Kit (NDK) free

• jakarta.apache.org Tomcat servlet engine

• www.chesterfield.mo.us• AU Office Calendar

anderbr@auburn.edu