Press Requirements Document

by Chiao Cheng, Josh Finkler, Stefan Deusch and Sarah Barwig

I. Introduction

This document outlines the requirements for the ArsDigita Press application.

II. Vision Statement

The Press application provides a way for websites to showcase and archive articles in which the site has been featured or which have subject matter of interest to the users of the website. This application will provide a way to archive old press content, present recent accomplishments, and have up-to-the-minute press items available to the website users. Users coming to the site who are unfamiliar with the company may thus be given an opportunity to see what the public media has to say about the company while the company is given the opportunity to selectively filter which press coverage is presented to the user. Also, users are able to see press items which have been submitted by community members and filtered by the website administration.

III. System/Application Overview

This application is based upon one main component: the content repository. This system organizes and stores all of the press articles and references. The system provides a simple templating system so that press items can be laid out based on a variety of source material default formats, e.g. newspaper articles, journal publications, on-line publications, or even company press releases.

The Press module consists of three simple interfaces:

IV. Use-cases and User-scenarios

Press application users will largely fall into one of three user groups: recipients, submitters, and administrators of press items.

Press recipients will include, e.g., brokers researching the relative value of the company for their clients, consumers interested in learning more about a company before making a purchasing decision, suppliers investigating the company's perceived order processing efficiency, and so on. These people will have access not only to current media coverage of the company's activities but also to a searchable archive of such articles to better help them locate individual articles of interest or show a more comprehensive picture of the company's public side.

Press submitters will include active members of the community who will be adding the articles to the site. They will find information at various locations, and bring them to the administrator's attention for inclusion in the site.

Press administrators will also be adding the articles to the site. They will be the ones choosing which press items merit display, deciding how many press items should appear on the company's homepage, what the scope of the article's application should be, et cetera. The press application supports group scoping which enables administrators of individual groups to add press events for their group only. They may also add public articles which may be seen by everyone.

Ginny Mae Group-Moderator finds an interesting article on rope toys for birds. She uploads it, using the Press interface, to the bird section of the Pets community website. After previewing it, she revises it once, then submits it for approval and publication by the administrator.

Andie Admin is the administrator of the Press module and either receives an email alert or, if she has them disabled, simply remembers to visit the site to approve articles the community has submitted. She finds the article from Ginny Mae about rope toys. She edits it for clarity (Ginny Mae has the tendency to ramble), and publishes it in the Entertainment section of the Bird section of the Pets website.

Random Reader frequents the Pets website, and he is in search of something for his conure to do while Random is at work. He can't afford the web browser setup (from research at MIT in the language lab) that he reads about in the Entertainment area, however, the article by Ginny Mae about rope toys that has just been added fits right into his price range.

V. Related Links

None currently.

VI.A. Requirements: The Data Model

10.10 Each press item must have a unique identifier

10.20 Each press item must have a summary describing what is contained therein

10.30 Each press item must belong to one of three user_groups (registered_users, all_users, public)

10.40 Each press item must have a title

10.50 Each press item must have a body

10.60 Each press item must have an approval_state which defaults to 'unexamined' but can be changed for approval

10.70 Each press item has an optional approval_user

10.80 Each press item has an optional approval_date

10.90 Each press item has an optional approval_ip_address

10.100 Each press item has a required release_date

10.110 Each press item has a required expiration_date

10.120 Each press item has a required creation_date

10.130 Each press item has a required creation_user

10.140 Each press item has a required creation_ip_address

10.150 Each press item has a revision history.

VI.B. Requirements: Administrator Interface

20.10 The administrator can add articles

20.20 The administrator can edit articles

20.30 The administrator can delete articles

20.40 The administrator can archive articles

20.50 The administrator can approve articles

20.60 Templating

20.60.10 The administrator can add Templates

20.60.20 The administrator can edit Templates

20.60.30 The administrator can delete Templates

20.60.40 The administrator can associate Templates with press items

VI.C. Requirements: User Group/Maintainer Administration

30.10 The maintainer can add articles that the administrator has to approve.

30.20 The maintainer can edit articles that the administrator has not yet approved.

30.30 The maintainer can delete articles that the administrator has not yet approved.

30.40 Any user can sign up to receive press items by e-mail.

VI.D. Requirements: User Interface

40.10 Clickthrough tracking of how many users follow the links to the full articles should be maintained.

40.20 Display certain number of articles per page should be adjustable by the administrator on a webpage (not the ini file).

40.30 Allow users to click on links from the teaser page to the articles on the full display page.

40.40 Display brief summary about the article on teaser page to entice the user to click through to the full display page.

40.50 Access to archive of old articles.

VI.E. Requirements: Other

50.10 Ability to automatically archive press after a set period of time designated by the administrator.

50.20 Allow administrator to set an article to display for an indefinite period of time (i.e. override automatic archive function)

50.30 The administrator can specify whether article may be viewed only by a particular group or everyone.

VII. Revision History

$Log: requirements.html,v $
Revision 1.13  2001/01/09 03:04:58  jfinkler
minor edit and cleanup

Revision 1.12  2001/01/09 02:49:11  jfinkler
reverted to version 1.8

Revision 1.8  2000/11/27 19:39:14  sarahb
added pre tag at bottom

Revision 1.7  2000/11/22 17:42:58  deusch
*** empty log message ***

Revision 1.6  2000/11/14 01:02:17  sarahb
added comments

Revision 1.5  2000/11/10 22:33:40  sarahb
added table, fixed typos

Revision 1.4  2000/11/10 19:16:01  sarahb
added comments from meeting 11-8

Revision 1.3  2000/11/09 02:58:29  ron
useless change

Revision 1.2  2000/11/09 02:57:42  ron
added log keyword