TeamSite promises control of Web content
Connecting state and local government leaders
The premature Web postings that recently embarrassed the Bureau of Labor Statistics twice within three months could never have happened on sites with automated workflow, according to the chief executive officer of an Internet software company. Martin Brauns, CEO of Interwoven Inc. of Los Altos, Calif., said the posting errors by BLS employees showed "the Web has become as mission-critical as accounting systems, whether agencies realize it or not. Updating with a shout across the cubicle
The premature Web postings that recently embarrassed the Bureau of Labor Statistics
twice within three months could never have happened on sites with automated workflow,
according to the chief executive officer of an Internet software company.
Martin Brauns, CEO of Interwoven Inc. of Los Altos, Calif., said the posting errors by
BLS employees showed the Web has become as mission-critical as accounting systems,
whether agencies realize it or not. Updating with a shout across the cubicle wall is
risky.
Interwovens $70,000 enterprise production software manages Web authoring, changes
and deployment of content. The TeamSite software uses Perl or Common Gateway Interface
scripts to time the posting and expiration of content.
TeamSite and OpenDeploy move all Web content to a secure staging area for final
approval before manual or automatic release to a production server or public Web server.
After comparing the content on development and production servers, OpenDeploy 2.6
transfers only the files and directories needed to synchronize the directories. It keeps a
date-stamped archive of site content.
Brauns said the workflow aspect requires the information technology staff to set up
branches and permissions based on users assigned roles. In TeamSite, the four
principal roles are author, editor, master and administrator. Only the last two are IT
roles. In Web site production as in other areas, program managers and executives should
make the decisions about what to publish, he said.
TeamSite 3.0s whole-site metaphor shows the entire site to all the users involved
in Web production so they can make changes within the context of a whole document. The
software, which runs under SunSoft Solaris 2.5.2 or 2.6 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, is
in use for large Web sites at Cisco Systems Inc., Federal Express Corp., Nortel Networks
and AG Edwards & Sons, said Kathleen Means, Interwoven corporate communications
manager.
TeamSite users need a Web browser, an Internet connection and TeamSites
SmartContext Editing and TeamSite Templating tools to access work files.
The Interwoven production software follows the native file format of the underlying
Solaris or NT rather than storing files in a database, Brauns said.
He said production software must archive what a Web site looked like at a particular
time.
TeamSite tracks changes to the file system after taking a baseline snapshot of the
initial content. From there, we just track additions and deletions so the storage
isnt enormous, Brauns said. To roll back to a certain date is just a
matter of adding and subtracting files all the way back to that point in time, he
said.