Wiki at GSI: Towards a collaborative application platform

Abstract

As it is growing GSI's TWiki installation is evolving from a free-text documentation system to a rapid development toolbox for web-based groupware applications. I'd like to present the TWiki features and extensions that enable this functionality and also give a report on the current installation status in general.

Start presentation

Slide 1: Welcome

TWiki as a toolbox for bottom-up web applications

Slide 2: Situation pre Wiki

• No central documentation system in the IT department
• Most of the knowledge esp. about workflows only implicit
  • You have to go and ask
  • People must be available

Slide 3: Wiki paradigm in brief

• Collection of HTML pages (topics)
• In place editing with simple markup (WikiML)
• Easy cross-referencing using WikiWords (CamelCase)
• Revision control

Prominent Wiki implementations:

• Mediawiki
• Moinmoin
• TWiki

See my talk at last Hepix in Karlsruhe

Slide 4: TWiki praise

TWiki: A Wiki focussed on cooperate intranets

• Integrated access control on a per web and per topic basis
• Attachment support
• Tracing of most recent changes
  • Syndication with RSS newsfeeds
  • Email notifications
• Hundreds of plugins and add-ons
• Implementation in Perl based on the UNIX toolbox:
  • Filesystem based
  • RCS for revision control
  • Search using grep
• Powerful markup including macros

• http://www.twiki.org/ twiki.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Wikis 4th largest wiki apart from Wikipedia
• Successfully used by BT, Disney, Motorola, SAP, Wind River, Yahoo, ...

Slide 5: Current status

• Central installation of TWiki since 2 years
  • Substantial growth during the last six month
    • Nevertheless satisfactory performance and usability (since upgrade to recent TWiki release and hardware)
  • Central documentation and coordination tool of the IT department
  • Separate wikis for CBM and Hades collaborations:
    • Virtual Wikis : run on the same server, common codebase
    • Distinct topics, attachments and users

Slide 6: Statistics

GSI wiki key figures for September 2005:

• Total users: 270
• New registrations: 50
• Topics: 2600
• Topic views: 90000
• Topic edits: 4000
• Attachment uploads: 800

Slide 7: TWiki pros and cons

Cons

• Recent TWiki vulnerabilities
  • Debian package already secured by hardening patch
• lock, modify, unlock (RCS) instead of copy, edit, merge
  • Content loss due to early lock release (only once?)
• Editor a bit too simple:
• No offline editing

Pros

• Shallow learning curve
• Tables are easily operated thanks to EditTablePlugin and TablePlugin
• Inspirational like a good toy (a geek tool?)

• (T?)Wiki is an excellent toolbox for modelling workflows
  • bottom-up approach

Slide 8: Vacation Calendar

• Out of the box with HolidaylistPlugin:

• 20 Oct 2005 - 24 Oct 2005 - Helmut
• 10 Oct 2005 - 14 Oct 2005 - Walter - Hepix SLAC
• 10 Oct 2005 - 14 Oct 2005 - Christo - Hepix SLAC
• 07 Oct 2005 - Hans - ill -
• 17 Oct 2005 - Christo
• 10 Oct 2005 - Sergei
• 21 Oct 2005 - Sergei

Slide 9: Meeting minutes à la TWiki

Search

• Topic name or full-text search, optionally with regular expressions
  • Display of search results may be completely customized
    • may contain partial content from of the search results using pattern matching

• Retrieve a list of existing meeting minutes formatted as a table:

%SEARCH{"MeetingMinutes[0-9]{6}" scope="topic" regex="on" limit="12"
        nosearch="on" reverse="on" nototal="on" 
        header="| *Date* | *Minute taker* | *Latest change* | *Revision* |" 
        format="|  [[$topic][$pattern(.*? (\d+[ .]+\S+[ .]+\d+).*)]]  |  $createwikiusername  |  $date by $wikiusername  |    $rev  |"
}%

Slide 10: Meeting minutes à la TWiki

Templates and Forms

• New minutes are created via a simple webform:

<form name="new" action="%SCRIPTURLPATH%/edit%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%INTURLENCODE{"%WEB%"}%/">
     <input type="text" name="topic" value="MeetingMinutes%SERVERTIME{$ye$mo$day}%" size="23" />
     <input type="hidden" name="templatetopic" value="MeetingMinutesEditTemplate" />
     <input type="hidden" name="formtemplate"  value="MeetingMinutesForm" />
     <input type="submit" value="create" />
</form>

• The created topic uses the given template

• The meeting participants are listed using the associated DataForms:

| *Name* | *Type* | *Size* | *Values* | *Tooltip message* |
| Participant | checkbox+buttons |  7  | FirstParticipant, SecondParticipant, ... |  |

Slide 11: Meeting minutes à la TWiki

Finalization

• Probably meeting minutes must not be changed after all participants agreed on their content (i.e. ISO 9000)
• TWiki:Plugins/ApprovalPlugin models this workflow

Slide 12: List of server topics

• %SEARCH{...}% again ...

• Topic creation form
  • Special topic template

• InterwikiPlugin: Shortcuts to GSI's hardware database web-frontend
  • GsiDbDetail:lxdv10

Slide 13: List of server topics

CommentPlugin for logbook entries

• %COMMENT{type="logbook"}%

• Comment template definition (UserCommentsTemplate)

%TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:logbook}%
<textarea %DISABLED% name="comment">%MESSAGE%</textarea>
<input %DISABLED% type="submit" value="Add entry"/>
%TMPL:END%

%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:logbook}%%POS:AFTER%
| %DATE% | %URLPARAM{"comment" newline="<br />"}% | %WIKIUSERNAME% | 
%TMPL:END%

No such template def 'PROMPT:logbook'

08 Oct 2005

Condition clear

Christo

Slide 14: A light-weight Trouble Ticket System

ActionTrackerPlugin:

• %ACTION{closed="10-Oct-2005" due="10-Oct-2005" creator="Main.ChristopherHuhn" state="closed" who="Main.ChristopherHuhn"}% Hepix talk at SLAC

Assigned to	Due date	Description	State	Notify
Christo	2005-10-10	Hepix talk at SLAC	closed	HpcGroup	edit

• %ACTIONSEARCH{...}% for todo lists
• actionnotify cron job

Slide 15: A light-weight Trouble Ticket System

• CommentPlugin
  • CommentPlugin Template to create %ACTION{...}% entries

No such template def 'PROMPT:incident'

Assigned to	Due date	Description	State	Notify
WalterSchoen	2005-10-17	Alles kaputt - Created by Christo, 07 Oct 2005 21:28:56	closed		edit

Slide 16: Carpool token management

Modus operandi:

• Drivers earn one point for each fellow passenger
• Passengers must give away one point per ride

• EditTablePlugin for from based table input

• SpreadSheetPlugin for calculations: %CALC{"$IF( $SUM(R2:C2..R6:C2) = 0, Error! Sum must be 0! , )"}%

• ChartPlugin for the diagram: %CHART{type="bar" table="carpooltokens" data="R2:C2..R6:C2" xaxis="R2:C1..R6:C1" yaxis="on" datalabel="box"}%

Slide 17: Next projects

• Project management
  • TWiki:Plugins/ProjectPlannerPlugin

• Portal for system announcements
  • Replace all wall shell script mess
  • Form-based input
  • Distribution with RSS
  • Category-based cleanup

• Email notifications enhancements
  • Immediate notifications
  • Subscribers list form
  • Plugin to automatically subscripe editors

Future: A portal for system announcements

Month	wiki.gsi.de total	hades-wiki.gsi.de total	cbm-wiki.gsi.de total	Registrations	Topics total	Topic views	Topic edits	File uploads
Apr 2004	8	8	8	1	377	501	118	29
Apr 2005	78	78	78	42	1312	20316	1711	682
Aug 2004	13	13	13	0	606	4533	896	120
Aug 2005	171	209	214	39	2361	77543	2139	290
Dec 2003	6	6	6	0	173	213	27	1
Dec 2004	20	20	20	1	703	1641	347	209
Feb 2004	6	6	6	0	299	1009	84	5
Feb 2005	30	30	30	1	955	9573	1816	516
Jan 2004	6	6	6	0	237	0.1	0.1	0.1
Jan 2005	29	29	29	9	829	7574	1614	382
Jul 2004	13	13	13	3	458	2023	171	0
Jul 2005	139	170	175	44	1992	39954	4444	762
Jun 2004	10	10	10	2	398	705	53	2
Jun 2005	104	126	131	44	1594	16683	1686	693
Mar 2004	7	7	7	1	356	1049	225	15
Mar 2005	36	36	36	6	1135	20419	2162	717
May 2004	8	8	8	0	384	443	64	17
May 2005	81	84	87	9	1400	12335	1446	698
Nov 2003	6	6	6	6	135	560	93	4
Nov 2004	19	19	19	3	687	3246	332	19
Oct 2004	16	16	16	2	644	1119	89	8
Sep 2004	14	14	14	1	631	1785	228	4
Sep 2005	202	256	268	54	2629	90517	4200	796