[Takeaction-devel] Phase 2

[Mike G. <mi...@op...>]

Hello Justin,

How has your summer been?

> Another update on where we stand now. We are finally starting the second 
> "phase" of this project, where we complete Analysis of the system, design, 
> code, test and release it. There will be much more tangible progress in the 
> next three months. Our academic requirements are the production of a very 
> detailed design document, the fully functional system, and a presentation of 
> it. The design document will likely be of more interest to you than the the 
> Analysis document was, as it will contain all the details that were 
> deliberately left out of the Analysis document (as we were instructed to 
> do).

Glad to hear that this phase is going to move along more quickly.  Have
any of you had the time to take a look at Back-End lately?  With this
project it's best to work from the CVS as we're working to develop it as
quickly as possible. 

> It is necessary for us to model the existing Take Action code in our design 
> document, so that any work we do will fit within the current design. Could 
> I, therefore, have a copy of the current code? 

Absolutely!  As the project has developed we didn't separate out the BE
code from the Take Action code.  It didn't make sense as we were working
on both..  I can see that it would make sense to migrate them when you
start working on the code.

> I`ve been searching the files 
> in the sourceforge webspace (sf.net/projects/takeaction), but haven`t seen 
> anything other than the Statement of Scope (oddly enough, sf seems to be 
> down tonight - as of 9:00pm 23/08/2003).

I put together a snapshot here of the latest CVS code:
	http://back-end.org/snapshots/

The CVS is the most useful though:
	http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=6763

You're going to have to wade through the development doc a bit to get a
better sense of how it's organized.  The eAction & petition scripts have
classes, user pages, admin pages and templates.  If you've got questions
though please feel free to ask them on the Back-End mailing list:
	http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=6763	

This is mostly useful so that the notes/questions will be organized in a
location that may be helpful for other Back-End users.

> Your previous e-mail had some great system features that we would like to 
> implement. 

Great..  

> As you may recall, though, we are guided to strictly adhere to 
> the Statement of Scope, and to only produce code and documentation based on 
> the initial, established system requirements. We realize that much of this
> functionality will already be in place come October/November, and so I am 
> communicating with the school, in order to find some way to add the extra 
> features and still obey academic guidelines.

Some of the items in the scope (like the petition) where pretty vague. 
The campaign side can probably be enhanced more as can the work to
duplicate the user tracking such as there is in:
	http://whistler.sierraclub.org/action/actionindex.jsp

The current action code does a good job of allowing campaigners to set
up campaigns and have people participate in it, but it still doesn't
have the level of knowledge that the sierra club's site has.  The
remember me function is quite nice in the example take action script but
not at all implemented in Back-End.

I do think that there will be enough work to keep you busy and within
scope..  If you run into having more time, stress testing, in-line
documentation, user documentation and other campaign tracking tools can
be developed.

These two features are also useful (and can be considered in scope as
far as I am concerned):
	http://whistler.sierraclub.org/action/profile	
	http://whistler.sierraclub.org/action/history

> In the likely event that the school says no, we can relate some of the extra 
> features to the "desirable" requirements as found on pages 14 and 15 of the 
> Statement of Scope, so that we can do them anyway. 

Yup..

> Any other features that 
> were not mentioned in the Statement of Scope are out of the bounds of this 
> project, BUT if the system is completed on or before schedule as is 
> expected, we can take some time to implement the extra features, as 
> extra-curricular work.

There's a eCard tool within Back-End's gallery that can be enhanced to
integrate with the user tracking for the eAction tools.  The petition
and the take action tools aren't integrated and haven't been tested to
see if there are any conflicts.  

Export tools could be enhanced to export the data set as a OpenOffice
spreadsheet so that folks could import it easily.

Modules can be built to more easily integrate the eActions & ePetitions
into existing Back-End sections as blocks.

Adding a pdf version of the eActions so that they could print out a
letter to send in the mail rather than faxing or emailing the letter
would be good.

There are probably a heap of other things too..

Mike
-- 
Mike Gifford, OpenConcept Consulting
Free Software for Social Change -> http://www.openconcept.ca
Site Launch - Make Every Vote Count - http://www.fairvotecanada.org
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. -- Robert L Stevenson