collective.spaces 1.0

Simple collaboration spaces for Plone

Introduction

collective.spaces is a simple way of creating mini-sites within the Plone CMS, with each mini-site based on a fully-customisable template. This product deploys a light-weight Dexterity-based content type (called a Space) within Plone and provides various additions that would be useful in a self-managed, collaborative environment. For instance:

• Ability for users to self-create Spaces
• Each Space appears as a sub-site
• Customisable logo per-Space
• Ability for site administration to customise a template used for new Spaces

What this offers

• Simple Dexterity-based content type
• Web-based forms built using plone.app.z3cform and friends
• Leverages existing Plone tech (such as authentication, INavigationRoot and Dexterity behaviours) on offer.
• Other options (such as collective.lineage) provide unnecessary features or else introduce extra dependencies

Use Case (aka when-to-use-this)

1. Desire to allow various groups of users to collaborate but without administrative overhead/intervention
2. Users should be able to create new sub-sites at the Plone root, without the need for administrative intervention
3. Each workspace should be able to be self-managed
4. Each workspace can be allowed limited customisation
5. Workspaces should be all contained within a single Plone site
6. Desire for a template to be easily customisable, with arbitrary content attached within Plone.

Installation

[buildout]
extends =
    ...
    http://good-py.appspot.com/release/dexterity/1.2.1?plone=4.2b2

...

[instance]
...
eggs =
    collective.spaces

Suggestions

Whilst this product is opinionated regarding aspects like default security permissions, a configurator can use the rest of Plone's functionality to enhance Spaces (and reduce administration overhead). Some examples are:

Authentication

Enable user self-registration on Plone or enable another authentication mechanism to reduce administrative input needed (or both). Intertwining mechanisms like local authentication, LDAP, CAS, or Shibboleth can easily mean that users can self-manage collaboration with local and external users.

Navigation

If users are expected to be creating many Spaces, then the Plone portal tabs will quickly consume lots of space. To combat this, simply either turn off the Automatically generate tabs option in the Navigation settings control panel, or else de-select the Space content type from the Displayed content types option. If using this latter strategy, then consider how users will actually access their Space - hiding from navigation entirely likely means users need directly access their URL.

Email notification

A common situation may be where a site administrator wants to keep track of the Spaces being created. A Plone Content Rule is provided with this add-on to satisfy this use case. Using this Rule is completely optional -- it is installed but not enabled by default.

Collaboration

Source code is available within the collective GitHub at https://github.com/collective/collective.spaces for submission of issues, fixes, and improvements.

To Do

• Tests for email notification content rule (when enabled)
• Handle issues with displaying ID field - can we sanely present users the ability to change their Space ID?

Contributors

David Beitey (davidjb), Author

Changelog