Content Migration and Hosting Project:
Tool Requirements
February 19, 2003
VERSION 1.0
Version Control
Approved / Summary of Changes / Change file name
1.0 / 2/19 / Original Document / N/A
1. Document Purpose and Outline 1
2. Publishing Tool Requirements 1
2.1. Single Logon 1
2.2. Workflow 1
2.3. Real-time Posting 1
2.4. Business Rule Support 1
2.5. Source field 1
2.5.1. Source Field Options 1
2.5.2. Business Rules Associated with Source Field 1
2.6. Category field: 2
2.7. Country grouping field 2
2.8. Country field 2
2.9. Related articles field (Search Related Capability) 2
2.10. SITREPS and Combat Reports 3
2.10.1. Displayed Fields 3
2.10.2. SITREP HEADLINES 3
2.11. Record Names (slugs) 3
2.12. Scheduler 3
2.13. Content "Push" (Second Tier Requirement) 3
2.14. Media Partners Support 3
2.15. Field Configuration 4
2.16. Increased Field Area 4
2.17. Key Words 5
2.18. Hyperlinks Support (Second Tier Requirement) 5
3. Site Management Tools Requirements (Webmaster Tools) 6
3.1. Promotion Support 6
3.2. Component Generation 6
4. Site Search Requirements 7
5. Appendix A: Country Groupings 8
6. Appendix B: Current Stratfor .biz Home Page Components 15
7. Appendix C: Keywords 20
1. Document Purpose and Outline
The purposes of this document is to establish requirements for modification of certain tools required to complete the Stratfor-ECNext Content Migration and Hosting Project (CMH Project). As part of this project, ECNext has previously developed publishing and site management tools. These tools have been dormant and no longer meet Stratfor’s needs as they are. As part of this project, these tools will be modified to meeting Stratfor’s current needs. The requirements for each tool are included in the appropriate section of this document. As appropriate, PowerPoint files will be created and maintained as appendices to these requirements.
2. Publishing Tool Requirements
These requirements are written from the perspective of modification to existing tools. Therefore, it is incumbent on the reader to be somewhat familiar of the current tools capabilities in order to completely interpret this document. To expedite this project and keep this document succinct, no attempt is made to fully specify the tool, but to specify changes which must be made to the tool in order to satisfy Stratfor’s current needs. If un-stated, it is assumed the tool will maintain current functionality unless a modification to that functionality is stated in these requirements.
Some requirements are considered desirable, but not required for completion of this project. A section called “second tier requirements” is included. If a second tier requirements is fulfilled as part of this requirement, they will be annotated as completed for the purposes of QA (which will be testing against these requirements).
2.1. Single Logon
A user will have a single logon to the Administration Tool which will grant access to the publishing tool as established by the rights of the user in the Administration Tool. No separate logon to the publishing tool will be required, and administration of the publishing tool access will be managed within the administration section of the Administration Tool.
2.2. Workflow
Progression of the work flow queues should be writers, editors, and copyeditors in that order. Only copyeditors will be allow to publish articles to the web.
2.3. Real-time Posting
The publishing tool will support “Near-time” posting, meaning the system will process the posting on a transaction basis, pushing the single article to the content site on command as activated in the publishing tool (versus posting via a “ batch” or “sweep” basis which posts to the site at pre-defined intervals). (Other articles already in the queue for loading may cause the posting to be delayed on the order of magnitude of minutes, thus the term "near-time" vice "real-time".)
2.4. Business Rule Support
The publishing tool will support the business rules for publishing to the content site as defined in Appendix B.
2.5. Source field
2.5.1. Source Field Options
Options should be Biz, Com, Info, Terrorism. Stratfor will have the ability to modify (delete or add to) the selection available in this field. This ability may be included in this tool, or a separate tool.
(TBD: Would these options be better if they described the subscription level versus the current site. I.e., Biz = Premium, Info = Basic?)
2.5.2. Business Rules Associated with Source Field
The publishing tool shall support the current business rules associated with the use of Source Field.
The business rules currently in place mandate that premium subscribers (.biz site) gets everything published, the .com site mimics appearance of Biz in real-time but links navigate to special "buy" pages, and the Basic Service (.info site) gets only content specifically designated for Basic service (either in tandem with or following publication to Biz).
2.6. Category field:
Options for this field shall be General Analysis, Geopolitical Diary, Global Market Brief, Strategic Markets, Sitrep, Combat Report (which would behave like Sitrep), Quarterly Forecast, Annual Forecast, Decade Forecast, Intelligence Guidance, Special Report, Net Assessment, Stratfor Weekly. This should be a multi-select field.
Stratfor shall have the ability to add to this field with the provision that other categories shall behave exactly as these current categories behave. This ability may be included in this tool, or a separate tool.
2.7. Country grouping field
At launch, ECNext will support Stratfor in adding country groups and the countries within the groups. These groups and the countries within these groups are maintained in Appendix A.
Second Tier Requirements
Stratfor will have the ability to add groups and manage countries within the group. The tool to perform this may be within the tool, or in a separate tool.
2.8. Country field
Ensure it reflects "Serbia and Montenegro" as opposed to "Yugoslavia".
2.9. Related articles field (Search Related Capability)
To efficiently use this field, Stratfor requires the ability to search all articles previously published. This capability will be readily available from within the tool. The search capability will also be included on the content site (for the end user) and will include the following functionality:
· Analysis wants to search mainly by:
Boolean
Country
Region
Date
· IT requirements for search engine are:
Full-text searches
Case-sensitive searches
“regular expressions” – technical sense
date ranges
· To support the site search, the following fields must be added to category
Add “politics”, “economics” and “security”.
TBD: Other metadata may be needed based upon the final selected search screen designs.
TBD: Mockups for the Search Screens implied here are needed.
Second Tier Requirements
Search within quotes
2.10. SITREPS and Combat Reports
2.10.1. Displayed Fields
For SITREPS and Combat Reports, all fields will not appear within the tool except the following:
· Source
· Headline
· Body
· Country groupings/country
· Publishing date and time
2.10.2. SITREP HEADLINES
The tool will include a visual indicator to aid the determination of character-count. This visual indicator may be a static visual cue on the tool.
2.11. Record Names (slugs)
Each article must have a unique identifier. These are called record names (or "slugs). The publishing tool will facilitate the automatic system generation of slug.
TBD - The Slugs will be logical and sequential (e.g., ARTICLETYPE_YYMMDD####, or some other pattern to be defined).
2.12. Scheduler
Default setting for publication time should be current time and date. Stratfor will have the ability to change this for pieces that need to post at a pre-set, future time or date. There will be no 15-minute posting sweeps on the scheduler. Instead, the system will use "real-time" posting at the designated time in the schedule (i.e., same functionality as presented in paragraph 2.3.
2.13. Content "Push" (Second Tier Requirement)
Stratfor has removed one option from the "category" field, the option for Free Intelligence Brief, as this relates to reuse of existing content rather than a specific product set in its own right. With their new site design, Stratfor now has some other "content push" options as well -- specifically, "Suggested Readings" and hopefully, in the near future, "a la carte" options they could promo on the dot-info site (these may be linked together). They desire a tool that tracks their choices for "suggested readings," FIBs, etc., but this may or may not be part of the publishing tool proper.
(TBD: Stratfor and ECNext should explore in more depth these requirements and options for satisfying them.)
2.14. Media Partners Support
Currently, Stratfor shares 2 pieces/day with the Economist Intelligence Unit and 3 per week with Fox News. The sharing process is automated under the current publishing system. These pieces are tagged with the appropriate metadata during the posting process, which ports them to a separate Web page. For example, anything tagged eiu shows up on this page http://www.stratfor.com/media/eiu/mediachannel.php?ID=2. The media partners go to their appropriate page ("outlet"), and using a secure log on, down load the appropriate articles that have been published to their outlet.
The pub tool will replicate this functionality, and the appropriate site(s) will be built to enable the partners to access the appropriate articles.
(TBD: Details of this requirement, to include information pertaining the media partners, etc., are required for set up.)
Second Tier Requirement
The ECNext tool will provide Stratfor a means to manage (add, delete, and modify) media partner information and media partners.
2.15. Field Configuration
Certain fields should be reordered to align with those categories (i.e., things the analysts should be concerned about populating should go at the top of the publishing tool site). The field configuration in the tool shall reflect the following organizational structure:
Field for analysts at the top:
· region
· country (ies)
· country groups
· headline
· summary
· body
· related articles
Fields for the editors go in the middle:
· Source
· Category
· Rank
Fields for copyeditors should go at the bottom, the last areas to be filled in prior to posting:
· Publishing date
· Image file (this is how we attach display art to a piece)
Visual delimiters (i.e., separating lines and different-colored backgrounds) between these three sections will be included.
2.16. Increased Field Area
In general, the space allotted on-screen within the current tool for some fields is too small considering the intended use of the fields. The following fields will be increased in size so as to allow more content to be displayed within the field, thus reducing the amount of scrolling required. This applies to the following fields:
· Summary
· Related articles
· Countries
2.17. Key Words
The Key Words section will include three selection boxes: one each for Geopolitics, Geosecurity, Geoeconomics. The Key Words area will also allow for free form text.
NOTE: A Key Words section is included in these requirements under Appendix C.
2.18. Hyperlinks Support (Second Tier Requirement)
Stratfor makes heavy use of hyperlinked text and coding for in-piece graphics. With the current system, the coding either must be input through an interface after publishing to the site or – if input prior to publishing in the Filemaker system – they must go in through the ADMIN interface and “activate” the codes (hitting “edit” and “save” so the HTML code isn’t apparent to readers on the site). ECNext will automate the codes for us without this extra step.
3. Site Management Tools Requirements (Webmaster Tools)
The tools must support the current Premium site (".biz" site) components. These are defined in Appendix B. The requirements below reflect the required changes to the current ECNext Site Management tools.
3.1. Promotion Support
The tools must support a method to post links into the "Suggested Readings" section of the Website and any future promotional boxes on the templates.
3.2. Component Generation
The tool must support the generation of like components based upon behavior. Stratfor will have the capability to generate additional products listed on the left Nav bar (e.g., Strategic Markets, Forecasts, Geopolitical Diary, Global Market Brief, etc.). The additional products will have the same behavior, look, and feel as the current products listed on the left Nav bar (see Appendix B for a description of the left Nav bar).
4. Site Search Requirements
Search engine for site should look more like Google. The search engine must be able to search by proper names (people, organizations and regions or countries), dates and "category" and/or record name (for instance, can't figure out our nav buttons on dot-biz? Type in "weekly" and have all of George's stuff appear!)
See paragraph 2.8 for other related search requirements.
NOTE: This specification should be modified if there is additional functionality required beyond the current ECNext search engine functionality. Please see the tutorial at the following URL, which defines current ECNext search engine functionality. http://www.ecnext.com/shared/customercare/functionhelp/tutorial_v2.shtml#ConstructingaSearchString
TBD: The site search screen(s) require a mock-up.
Second Tier Requirement
The search engine should have the ability to recognize NEAR matches on keyword terms (e.g., “Gadhafi” or “Qadhafi” or “Khaddafi”)
For searching on the site (Production), options that require adding are:
Need to add options “politics”, “economics” and “security” to “category” or other metadata
5. Appendix A: Country Groupings
European Union
· Germany
· Britain
· France
· Italy
· Spain
· Netherlands
· Greece
· Belgium
· Portugal
· Sweden
· Austria
· Denmark
· Finland
· Ireland
· Luxembourg
· Poland (May 2004)
· Czech Republic (May 2004)
· Hungary (May 2004)
· Slovakia (May 2004)
· Lithuania (May 2004)
· Latvia (May 2004)
· Slovenia (May 2004)
· Estonia (May 2004)
· Cyprus (May 2004)
· Malta (May 2004)
· Romania (2007/2008)
· Bulgaria (2007/2008)
NATO
· Belgium
· Canada
· Czech Republic
· Denmark
· France
· Germany
· Greece
· Hungary