Doc134: How is information organized in Traction TeamPage

Title: How is information organized in Traction TeamPage

The basic units of organization in Traction TeamPage are project (spaces), entries (articles, comments, pages), labels (tags) and time. Wiki Page Names (which may be assigned to Entries) and Relationships ("this comments on that" or "this e-mails that") are also important to how information is displayed and linked together.

Entries (including comments) are the content stored in project spaces, to which labels are attached. Entries can be shown in creation time order (like a blog), or linked together by name and shown as a web of pages (wiki style).

A TeamPage server may have any number of project spaces. A project may be referred to as a space, a blog or a wiki. Best practice generally creates project a workspace scoped to a group of people with a common interest (for example, Engineering) and with common permissions applied for reading or sharing that information with a wider group (including the general public) . Each person may have their own unique permissions in a project (author, comment, edit, erase, and so forth).

You post entries (referred to as articles, pages or comments depending on how they presented and used) to a Traction project and you may apply any number of labels from that project or any other project where you have author or change label permissions.

Articles may be assigned relationships to other articles. Most relationships are generated automatically. For example, when you make a link from one article to another, it creates a References/Referenced By relationship and when you comment it creates a Comments On / Commented On By relationship.

An Article is posted to a given project and minimally consists of a Title and Body Text. It may also have Attachments, Labels and Wiki Page Names. Other meta-data includes the author, the editors, the date/time it was posted or edited and the references to it or from it.

An article is not much different from an email message, with a title, body and attachment(s). The articles you post are delivered to a browser through Traction's interactive web interface as well as through the automated email digest, RSS or Atom feeds, synchronous email notification, and other methods.

The Front Page and Project Newspages include sections which display the content. The sections typically help the reader see what's important (over all time as well as right now) and, if they include the Add button, encourage the reader to collaborate in a certain way (e.g. a Status Report section begs the reader to Add a Status Report).

The server or project administrator may use very few sections (a wiki style project might just use one section that shows one page (see Concepts of Wiki Projects) or they might use a lot of sections, to provide a sort of Dashboard or Newspaper style interface. Sections can display any cross-section of content in Traction, and can be sorted chronologically, alphabetically or even at random!!

Why use sections? Think of how a newspaper works. A newspaper layout is a time-tested way to present and distribute information in context and over time. It provides the reader with a way to rapidly read information by priority (a front page that features the most important and most recent content) and by subject of interest (fror example sports, business, life, and arts sections, each with their own priority driven delivery and topic based organization).

Like a newspaper, Traction has a front page and a list of projects, each with its own newspage. Depending on your permissions, you will see a custom view of the system and get a customized, permission filtered email digest.

The sections which appear on the front page and the project newspages are configured by the server and project administrator. For example, a section may simply display recent articles, show the most recent 3 articles with the Headline label, show a specific collection of articles, or list articles labeled FAQ alphabetically.

The example below, taken from the starter journal that ships with Traction, shows a Front Page view with headlines, and recent entries in the body. Projects you can read are listed on the left sidebar, and date navigation is handled through the calendar in the right column allowing you to traverse any view over time periods.

The Headline label is used in this case to raise important information, be it a status report or important question, to a prominent place (in this case, the Headlines section) on the front page.

The vector of time as a means for organization is a way of presenting information in context and keeping people abreast of events as they are happening. Traction views are based on a period of time – such as a week, month, or year – that you can select, jump to, or flip through, like the editions of a monthly magazine. You can also choose a view of all time which is the default, and is easier on users than starting in a selected time slice.

By default, content searches look across all time, but you can narrow your focus using the Advanced Search form.

Note: As time passes, entries can get buried under the latest articles. By using labels (see below to learn about labels) and creating newspage sections with lists of links, it is possible to keep open issues or key resources at the front page or newspage level.

What is a Project?

Projects might be subject based (Competition), a group of people (StarCustomer or ProductAlpha), or named for the person who owns that project (to create a personal workspace or blog). Each project has its own set of permissions defining who can read articles, create articles, edit articles, change labels on articles, define new labels, erase articles, and access project setup.

Note: An article posted to one project is not confined. You can extend read permission to users in other projects by assigning it a label/tag from another project. Learn how to do this in the Publishing section.

What are Labels (tags)?

Think of Traction labels like the tape flag labels you can stick to any paragraph in a paper document to flag key items for information or action.

In most products, labels (or similar concepts like tags, categories, or even folders) are generally used to organize by category. In Traction, labels may be used more creatively. Labels can be applied to a whole article, or any paragraph within an article for purposes of:

Description (Pricing, competition, interface, knowledge management, humour)
Action Status (To Do, Done, Delay, Duplicate)
Emphasis of priority (Headline, Alert, Priority 1, Priority 2)
Type of post (Issue, Question, Requirement, Milestone, Status)
Assignment to a milestone (Alpha, Beta, FCS, R40) or to a person (manager:jordan)

Because traction page sections, searches and drill down navigation allow for dynamic views, you can use labels in combination. For example, to track an issue, you might label it To Do, Competition, and Priority 1. A product requirement could be labeled Interface, Release 2, To Do, Priority 2 and Requirement.

Depending on the project and front page settings determined by your administrator, labels may have the effect of elevating articles to a position on the front page and project newspages (rather than only being listed in Recent Entries).

The News project template, for example, includes the following labels with the following effects:

headline labels, for example, make the most recent articles marked headline appear on the top section of the corresponding project newspage and the front pagetoo.
to do and done labels make articles appear in the Recent To Do and Recently Done sections of the project news page. These sections display content based on the date the label was applied rather than the date the article was published. So, if you mark an old task Done today, it will display at the top of the list today.
bulletin label will make an article appear in the Bulletins section regardless of the time period selected. You could navigate your calender back to the 1800s and the Bulletins section of the project will still appear!

The Project Team project template has these labels as well as team oriented labels and corresponding sections such as Issues To Do, Questions To Do, Meeting Notes, and Status Reports.

Using Labels to Extend Visibility of an Article to another Project's Audience: Labels can also be used to make an article in one project visible to a new group of users by applying a label from a different project. For example, if an Article is in a project named Executive, applying a headline or FYI label from the Engineering project would make it visible to persons who are allowed to read articles in the Engineering project, in addition to people who are allowed to read articles in the Executive project. NOTE: This will only work for the readers of Engineering who also have Access permission in the Executive project. The Access permission is a bit like a firewall around a project.

Search Allows you to Scope to Any Cross-Section

You can filter Traction views by project(s), label(s), author(s), time range, and text. Search supports boolean combinations and paragraph matching. You may also search across views ordered by when labels were added, rather than the publish date of the article to which it was added. For example, you may want to see which articles were marked Done last week.

Attachments:

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referenced by (2)

Doc357: Traction User Guide Doc216: Space Setup - Tags

Article: Doc134 (permalink)
Date: March 22, 2008; 4:04:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Author Name: Documentation Importer
Author ID: importer