Lemos&Crane Website Documentation

Introduction

This document serves as an introduction to the codebase used by all Lemos&Crane websites. It begins by giving an overview of the main entity types that exist in the system (Users, Companies, Projects etc.), the relationships that exist between them and how they relate to customers accessing the sites. It continues with a description of the different types of sites including the Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) that is used to manage all the objects on the system and how each site is edited using the Content Management System (CMS). The final part of this document gives more detail about the software and tools that have been used to build the system, as well as an overview of how the code is structured and where to find more detailed code documentation.

Lemos&Crane Website Documentation

Introduction

Entity and relationship overview

Main entities – User and Project

Subscription

Page

Inner pages

Company

User Defined Field Entries (UDFEntry)

Event

Award

Types of Project

Guidance sites

Current guidance sites

Features

eLearning sites

Current eLearning sites

Features

eReporting sites

Current eReporting sites

Features

Action planning sites

Current Action planning sites

Features

Other sites

Lemos&Crane

BlueSalmon

The Amsterdam Group (TAG)

Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) overview

Content Management System (CMS) overview

Code documentation

Software and tools

Program flow

Templating

Directory structure

Site entry points and Controllers

CRON jobs

Class browser

Appendix A – CRM documentation

Icon Guide

Management Guide

Viewing and editing contacts

Searching

Views

Reports

Training example

Setting up subscriptions to websites

Regular subscriptions

Limited users or multiple domains subscriptions

Setting up and editing awards

Adding a new award

Editing an existing award

Viewing and editing award entries

Viewing voting scores

Setting up and editing conferences

Adding a new conference

Editing an existing conference

Setting up and editing organisations

Searching

Adding a new organisation

Editing an existing company

Setting up and editing UDFs

Adding a new UDF value

Editing an existing UDF value

Deleting a UDF value

Deleting a UDF

Adding a UDF

Updating recently added on site home pages

Adding a new update

Editing an existing update

Uploading/editing documents to the sites

Structure of the documents on the web server

Importing data

Appendix B – CMS Documentation

Introduction

Common tasks

Save page

Insert link

Insert image

Insert document

Insert inner page

Paste from Word

Spell check

Lemos&Crane Site

Page types

Adding Conference pages

Adding Awards pages

Adding General pages

Hiding/showing pages

Excluding/including pages from the search

Adding websites and conference to the right hand column of a page

Entity and relationship overview

In this section the major entities used in the system are briefly described. All entities have their own class in the code, with further documentation.

Main entities – User and Project

There are two main entity types in the system: User, and Project. A User is any user of the system, while a Project is any site. A project is either a subscription site (Users can only register for the site when a subscription has been paid) or a free site (Users must still register, but no subscription is paid). In addition a User may have a free trial of a subscription site that gives them limited access to a subscription site for a limited period of time. The User is the main entity in the system and is the basic unit that all system activity is based around.

Generally there is only project per website, except:

eLearning – one project for site plus as many projects as there are courses (enables access to be granted only to particular courses)
Action planning – one project for guidance part of site, one project for action plan, one project for action plan questionnaire (product of being an Guidance/eLearning hybrid)

These site types are explained in more detail later

All the projects share the same single sign on system, so that a user only has to sign in once and can then access any of the sites they are entitled to, without signing in again.

A registered user is one who has registered for a specific project. Registered users can be of three types – regular, admin or sub-editor. Regular users have no Administration privileges. Admin users can edit page text, page titles and page attributes as well as add new pages and their edits are made live immediately. Sub-editors can edit page text, but any changes they make are not shown live on the site – instead an admin user can login to see what pages a sub-editor has changed and then review the changes, edit them and make them live.

Subscription

A subscription to a site indicates that an organisation has paid to access a site, usually for a period of one year. All subscriptions are automatically extended so that their end date coincides with the end of an annual quarter (meaning that most subscriptions receive an extended period of access when they first subscribe.) Subscriptions are always paid by invoice, and nearing the end of a subscription a pro-forma invoice is automatically issued for a period of one year. All invoices are produced automatically by the system.

All subscriptions have a Lead User who will be the main contact and to who all subscription communications will be sent.

By default, access to an organisation’s subscription to a project will be limited to Users who share an email domain with the Lead User. This default domain can be changed and additional domains can be added to a subscription if necessary. In addition single Users can be added explicitly to a subscription using their email address. Any User meeting these requirements can then register for the project.

Page

All of the projects consist of a series of Pages. A Page consists of a title and some page text. Pages can exist individually (known as orphans), or as part of a hierarchy of pages. There are several extra types of page (ExtraPage) that share the same characteristics as regular Pages but have additional attributes associated with them (e.g. ExamplePages).

Pages are identified by their unique id, and this id is usually specified in the URL. However for some projects URL rewriting is used and page ids are mapped in the code to shortnames that can be specified in the URL. As an example the Lemos&Crane is one such project, in which equivalent to

Inner pages

Orphan pages can be viewed like other Pages but are more often used as ‘inner pages’. Inner pages are pages that appear within other pages. They are inserted into pages using a special code along with their id, so that when the page is rendered their title appears in the page text, and can be clicked to expand and reveal the content.

Company

While the User is the main unit of the system, it is sometimes useful to group users together in companies. This is done by assuming all users with the same email domain belong to the same company. The Company entity provides a way of giving an official name to the company to which a domain (or domains) refers to.

User Defined Field Entries (UDFEntry)

UDFEntrys are values that can be associated with Users. They can be of two types, either strings or checkboxes, and a user can only have one value for each UDFEntry. UDFEntrys can be grouped together into a UDF, which in turn can be grouped into collections known as UDFGroups. The main use of UDFs are for mailing lists on the CRM as well as recording certain actions a user carries out on a site.

Event

An Event relates to a conference that Lemos&Crane are running. It encapsulates all information about the conference including pricing. A separate object (EventBooking) is used to store the bookings that have been made for an Event by a User, as well as automatically producing and managing invoicing.

Award

Awards are run periodically and are usually associated with a particular Project and Event. They enable users to submit documents through the Lemos&Crane site along with some supplementary details. Once the deadline for entries has passed, a shortlist is selected, and users are then invited to vote on their favourites. The result is usually then announced at the corresponding event.

Types of Project

Guidance sites

Guidance sites are projects that predominantly provide information and have limited interactivity.

Features

Guidance sites are split into sections known as tabs that appear as a horizontal menu across the top of the page. The sections can then optionally have an additional three level vertical menu on the left hand side. A right hand column contains details about the current user as well as shortcuts to other parts of the current site and links to other sites. The tabs that exist on guidance sites are:

Home
a summary of what’s been happening on other parts of the site
most content auto-generated
some content manual HTML
Guidance
up to 3 level hierarchy of standard text pages
content can be edited and added to by any Administrative user
can include inner pages (orphans or resources)
Resources
pages that contain collections of other pages, e.g. Examples.
collection initially appears as a list, and on selecting an item opens new page with resource content.
resources can be edited and added to by any Administrative user
resource types can also be searched through with specialised fields
Network
Various sections that hold user generated content
My profile – editable details of the current user’s profile
Members’ Zone – see a linear list of recent activity on site. Can also narrow down by activity type
Members listing – a searchable list of users registered for the current site
Forum – a discussion board for members to post questions, ideas etc. to other members
One discussion board per site (named after site topic)
Topics can be started in any board by any user
Any user can reply to any topic
Administrative users can start ‘poll’ topics that include a voteable poll
Administrative users can make a post ‘sticky’ meaning that it always appears at the top of the topic list
All boards shared across all sites
Board relating to current site displayed at top of list
Add an example
a form to allow members to post examples of their work
these get automatically added to the Members’ Zone
a copy gets sent to us which may then be manually added as a ‘proper’ example in the Resources section of a site

eLearning sites

The eLearning sites provide information split up into courses, lessons and individual lesson pages. For each lesson the user can make notes in their workbook and (optionally) a multiple choice test can be assigned to each lesson. In addition each course can have a ‘pre-course self review’ that contains yes/no questions that users can complete to obtain an assessment of their knowledge on the current subject before they complete the lessons.

Certain users can be assigned as managers to certain other users, and this enables them to reply to their users’ notes, to receive notifications on test results, as well as view aggregate management information for their whole organisation.

Current eLearning sites

eLearning Housing Management (
eLearning Adult Social Care (

Features

Split into courses
a course consists of a collection of lessons, grouped by themes
a lesson consists of a collection of pages that are completed in a linear manner
each page contains text and an area for the user to make notes, or to answer questions posed in the text – the notebook
these pages are editable by any Administrative user
at the end of each lesson there is a series of 5 multiple choice question pages that act as test for that lesson
once started the user must complete the test, and all attempts are recorded on the workbook
these pages are editable by any Administrative user
the workbook is an overview of each lesson
contains index of lesson pages
for each page, displays any notes/answers the user gave on that page
displays any notes the manager has made for each page
indicates howmuch of this lesson the user has completed
indicates how many times, and what scores were achieved, in the test
Case studies are lessons that contain pages related to a particular case study. They work in the same way as other lesson pages, but they can also contain ‘revealable’ content that appears when the user clicks a ‘reveal’ button
The self-review section consists of a series of multiple choice questions used to gauge the user’s current understanding of the topic. There is a question for each lesson in the course. Based on these answers the user is shown a table indicating their performance, and how long they should spend reviewing this content.
Each user also has a progress page that lists their progress by course and lesson
Users can also access the same forum available on Guidance sites, with a specialist eLearning topic that is not viewable from outside eLearning
Types of user
Regular
Can take any lesson their organisation has subscribed to
Can see a list of other user’s at their organisation
Cannot see anyone else’s progress/workbooks
Manager
Can see all users from their organisation who have signed up for eLearning
Can see these users workbooks, and comment in the workbook on their progress
For users who have been assigned to them, receive notifications of test results by email
Has access to management section that lists aggregate information about eLearning at their organisation
Can choose other eLearning users at their organisation to become managers

eReporting sites

eReporting sites provide organisations with a method to collect data from their customers online. The public facing section of the site enables reports to be made through a series of forms, the details of which are available through the admin interface which appears as an extra tab in the associated guidance site. Diaries can also be kept by the user who made the initial report to enable them to add any further information at a later date.

Current eReporting sites

ASB Reporting (

Features

Public interface
Users can submit a report by clicking though a series of predefined questions
Questions are not editable by the subscribing organisation
On completion of the form, the details are sent managers at the subscribing organisation
Users can remain anonymous if they wish
If the user completes their email address and their date of birth, they can continue to update the report through a unique link using their email and birth date as credentials (the diary)
Management interface
Managers of the subscribing organisation can view and search submitted reports through the eReporting tab of ASBActionNet
Reports can be narrowed down using various criteria
A hotspot map can be viewed to highlight problem areas
Each report can be viewed online or as a Word document
Aggregate data is also available

Action planning sites

Also known as ‘Share&Compare’ sites, or ‘Bloom type sites’, these types of project enable the user to complete a series of questions about their ‘scheme’ to build up an action plan (much of the functionality here makes use of the eLearning functionality). Actions can then be viewed, edited, removed and new actions added through the Action plan page. Based on the number of completed actions, the user is rated as having either ‘Lots of experience’, ‘Some experience’, or ‘No experience’, with this rating changing as the user completes more actions.

These types of sites exist as a hybrid with a Guidance type site, the action planning functionality appearing as an extra tab within the Guidance site.

Current Action planning sites

Bloom (
Shape (
RISE (

Features

These are a combination of a Guidance site and a modified eLearning site
The Guidance part of the site is the same as the other Guidance sites
The modified eLearning part takes the form of an action plan
By completing a series of pages, users can add actions to their action plan (equivalent of adding a note to a lesson page in eLearning)
The action plan can be viewed by going to the ‘Action plan’ tab
This displays the themes. Each theme can be clicked to expand it and see which actions have been added under which subject.
New actions can be added
Current actions can be edited or marked as complete
Marking an action as complete moves it to the last theme ‘Completed actions’. From here the action can be deleted, or marked as incompete.
Users can also complete a ‘service review’. This is a series of Yes/No questions based on their current service status – this is generally carried out before the action plan is used.
Each page is tied to a subject and once the whole review has been completed, the status of the organisation in each of these subjects is displayed.
The overall progress of an action plan is indicated by the ‘Service status’ rating.
There are three levels of rating for each Action Planning site
Lots of experience
Some experience
Little experience
The status is decided by how many completed actions there are, as well as their level of experience as indicated by the ‘service review’

Other sites