Webdogs 3.0 http://webdogs.org site sentient since 2006 Tue, 15 May 2012 00:10:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Google Drive and the price of progress http://webdogs.org/2012/05/14/google-drive-and-the-price-of-progress/ http://webdogs.org/2012/05/14/google-drive-and-the-price-of-progress/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 18:07:26 +0000 Brian Lawlor http://webdogs.org/?p=2975 Last year we started work on the LSNC Google API Project, a project we completed a few months ago. The gist of the project was to exploit open source Google APIs to integrate components of the Google Apps platform with the Pika case management system. At the most recent TIG Conference in Albuquerque, I gave a non-technical presentation about the project; last month, Michael Cizmar of MC+A in Chicago and Mark Sawyer, LSNC IT Manager, gave an IT-oriented presenation about the project at the most recent NTEN Conference.

Working on this project has been particularly daunting at two major breakpoints, no pun intended: We had the courage–perhaps the folly– last year of working on the development of our Google Apps integrations right at the juncture when Google made enormous changes to the underlying architecture of its core Google Apps, including Gmail, Calendar and Docs. (Anyone who was an active Google Apps user last year understands how significant the changes–hundreds of them–were made.) Those architectural changes in short order broke our project code. We rolled with it and spent additional months refactoring the code.

In March, we rolled out in sequence our updated code set to our entire organization with integrations of Gmail, Calendar and Docs and Groups. A month later, Google rolls out Google Drive, its very impressive replacement for Google Docs. And, not so surprisingly given our earlier experience, Google’s changes with the new Google Drive architecture broke our Docs and Gmail integrations. Again. Presumably, this is because both our Docs and Gmail integrations have dependencies on file synchronization and share processes that have changed with the Google Drive architecture. We’re on it, but we will have to make further changes, again.

The price of progress. But looking at the long term, I think Google Drive is well worth the cost to our project.

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]]> http://webdogs.org/2012/05/14/google-drive-and-the-price-of-progress/feed/ 0 First take at responsive web design http://webdogs.org/2012/04/19/first-take-at-responsive-design/ http://webdogs.org/2012/04/19/first-take-at-responsive-design/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:59:21 +0000 Brian Lawlor http://webdogs.org/?p=2957 It is been a year since LSNC got stalled on redesigning its advocate-oriented websites, the last reporting here being about a rebuild of the Race Equity Project site. The process of rebuilding our sites got seriously sidetracked while working on the LSNC Google API Project.

So much time has since passed that we have decided to reboot the whole site rebuilding thing and work purposefully toward a new, better designed set of WordPress templates based on current responsive web design. So, out of the box, here is our initial take: LSNC’s RCFE Field Guide:

RCFE screenshot

The guide is a modest but useful online checklist, with citations, for ombudsman investigators in California who need quick reference to the regulatory requirements affecting the rights of residents of long-term care facilities for the elderly.

This site design is our first attempt to come up with a re-usable flexible grid design that scales and repositions page elements smoothly to accomodate varied viewports, from the desktop down to a 7″ form factor and down further to a typical smartphone display. The design relies on core code from the very clean, minimalist Origin WordPress theme. Lovin’ it.

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]]> http://webdogs.org/2012/04/19/first-take-at-responsive-design/feed/ 0 Integrating Gmail and Google Groups with the Pika CMS http://webdogs.org/2012/01/22/integrating-gmail-and-google-groups-with-the-pika-cms/ http://webdogs.org/2012/01/22/integrating-gmail-and-google-groups-with-the-pika-cms/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:15:19 +0000 Brian Lawlor http://webdogs.org/?p=2923 A few weeks back the project team uploaded a complete version 4 code set to the LSNC Google API Project. This latest version is inclusive of four Google Apps core app integrations — Google Calendar, Google Docs, Gmail and Google Groups with the Pika CMS. This is the same project I described during my recent presentation at the 2012 TIG Conference in Albuquerque. As I noted there, we are spending the next few weeks doing expanded beta testing with users across varied positions and office locations within Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC). We expect to deploy all four integrations throughout the organization by the end of February.

In earlier posts I have described how the Google Calendar integration and Google Docs integration work. The short version is that, by exploiting the Google Apps APIs for Google Calendar and Google Docs, we have been able to implement a seamless synchronization between the Pika CMS calendar and document posting functions with Google Calendar and Google Docs. Pika CMS users need do nothing differently than what they are already doing to have tickler calendar events show up in their Google Calendars, or have case-related files uploaded to Pika show up in a case-specific shared collection in Google Docs.

The new Gmail integration in version 4 is arguably the most important of the four integrations. The basic user problem has been this: Everyone within LSNC — like most everyone else on professional planet Earth — day-in and day-out relies on email to accomplish their work. In our case, advocates regularly communicate with clients, co-counsel, opposing counsel, public and private individuals and entities and, of course, other LSNC staffers. But how are they to get those Gmail messages into case-related case notes in Pika? At the moment, what they do is cut-n-paste, again and again and again without end. The Gmail integration is designed to simplify that process so that users, from within a Gmail message or the entire conversation, can seamlessly post the content of Gmail messages to a client-specific case record automatically, without the need to open Pika.

To accomplish this, we have embedded a new Gmail widget that displays at the bottom of every Gmail message. Below is a screenshot of a developer version of the integration, with the gadget labeled as “TKLAPP Staging Pika – Attach to Case Notes.”

The default behavior of this gadget is to automatically copy the currently viewed Gmail message to the case notes in the selected client case record. To trigger that functionality, users toggle the gadget to display a dialog with a search option to locate any currently open client case record in Pika. Two tabs are available, one to search the user’s assigned active (open) cases and the other to search more broadly all cases active (open) throughout the organization. Once users select a case record, they have two check-box options: one to save any files attached to the Gmail message, which are automatically uploaded to the Pika case record and simultaneously synchronized to the user’s Google Docs account; the other to copy the entire Gmail conversation (Google’s name for an email message thread). Users can then simply click the “Attach to Case” button to seamlessly copy the Gmail message to the case record.

But wait… there’s more!

The gadget also offers an alternate input button allowing the user to “Edit and Attach to Case.” Clicking that button invokes a pop-up window with the Gmail message copied over to Google Docs for editing before the content is posted to Pika. The user can edit the single Gmail message or conversation as is their wont and then click on “Attach to Case” in the editing window to post the edited content to Pika. Done. Without ever having opened Pika.

The Google Groups integration works on the same premise as the Gmail integration, with the approach being to enable users to automatically copy a Groups discussion automatically to a Pika case record. The Groups solution is less elegant, however. Going into this project we made the mistaken assumption that, like the other Google Apps core applications, there was a Google API for Groups, but there is not. Google Groups has no exposed web API. So we did a workaround. The Google Groups integration with Pika requires the user add a custom bookmarklet to the browser bookmarks toolbar. Once that is set up, the user can go to a Business Groups discussion within our domain, click on the bookmarklet and trigger a set of dialogs directly analogous to how the Gmail integration works, with the ability to search for a specific client case record and then “attach” or “edit and attach” the content of the discussion message. (Google Groups no longer allows file attachments to discussion group messages, so there is no option to attach files.)

For those interested in this code set, you can anticipate there will be some minor updates to the code set over the next month or two as we fix quirks that emerge from our further beta testing. There is also an updated guide to installation coming soon.

Thanks again to everyone who attended the TIG presentation. It was encouraging to see how much interest there was within the larger legal services community in this project. My prediction is that within a few years we will all look back at this coding project as somewhat quaint, only a first step in many to come as we all increasingly rely on the Google Apps platform and work more with the Google API to take full advantage of it.

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]]> http://webdogs.org/2012/01/22/integrating-gmail-and-google-groups-with-the-pika-cms/feed/ 0 HTML5. Get some. Free. http://webdogs.org/2011/10/25/html5-get-some-free/ http://webdogs.org/2011/10/25/html5-get-some-free/#comments Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:45:21 +0000 Brian Lawlor http://webdogs.org/?p=2889 Generously, the full content of Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers has been posted online. This was the first in a series of short, readable, nutrient-dense web design and development books published by A Book Apart.

I referenced the book a year ago when the current redesign of this site was in play, which included the incorporation of several of the new HTML structural, semantic elements. The book, only a year old, remains a worthy read. And now you can do it for free.

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]]> http://webdogs.org/2011/10/25/html5-get-some-free/feed/ 0 Google and the Circle of Life http://webdogs.org/2011/10/10/google-and-the-circle-of-life/ http://webdogs.org/2011/10/10/google-and-the-circle-of-life/#comments Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:52:05 +0000 Brian Lawlor http://webdogs.org/?p=2850 A few weeks back, at a LSNC organization-wide staff meeting, I gave the type of tech presentation I am always asked to give at such events: A state-of-organizational-tech overview/update, reviewing what has changed at LSNC in the last year and what changes are coming in the next, with a few tech funsies to keep the crowd awake. We did have some real fun with the session. Among other things, the LSNC tech team attempted some Harry Potter shtick involving an audience volunteer, a wizard’s hat, an incantation of “Google nexus transportus confundum!” while automatically uploading a photo to the web clipboard in Google Docs, via a Google Nexus phone. While amused by the shtick (you had to be there), the smartphone-savvy audience was also largely unimpressed, as if to say, “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

Whew, is it ever getting harder to impress our staff with technology. The transformative Big-Bang days are long over. The technology bar has raised considerably the last few years within our organization, and while changes are appreciated they often evoke an expression akin to “Is that all you’ve got?”

To be fair, we were able to show our staffers a few things that were new for them, most notably a preview of the Google Apps + Pika integrations everyone at LSNC have been hearing about but most had not seen before. Folks were attentive as we showed them the Google Calendar and Google Docs integrations, their silent nods saying, “Good, good.” When we showed them how the Gmail integration works, the reaction was anything but silent. All we did was show a Gmail message and drew attention to a new button at the bottom of the message. When the presenter Mark Sawyer said, “… and when you click on this button the message is automatically copied over to your Pika case notes,” the room exploded with applause.

Was the applause a measure of their being impressed by the technology? Not really, in my view. I think it was a measure of how users of very familiar technologies — in this case the Pika case management system and Gmail — now think or expect the technologies to work… together. It was not an “Oh My God” moment. It was a “Thank God” moment. The applause was a shared expression of technological redemption from the tedium of having, for so long, to copy-n-paste email messages from Gmail over to Pika. The audience was not so much amazed as relieved.

Such sentiment is a shift in what are practical, reasonable expectations among our users about now common technologies working the way they need them to work. In our organization’s case, the adoption of the Google Apps platform is not about what is cool or even “the Google” itself. What it is really about is the shift in a larger, overarching work paradigm. The desktop, the cloud and mobile devices are not separate work paradigms. They are simply tools that we can reasonably anticipate our users need or will need soon enough to do their work, to be productive. To be Google-specific about it, that is the thinking behind our efforts at exploiting the Google API to integrate or share, as seamlessly as possible, select content within Pika with Google Calendar and Google Docs, or within Gmail and Google Groups with Pika.

Although there are pockets of differences within our organization, it is fair to say that most here have settled into the new work paradigm: the networked desktop is just another device connected to the web, which is the cloud, which is accessible most everywhere via any number of mobile devices. Hakuna matata, my friends. It’s the circle of life.

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]]> http://webdogs.org/2011/10/10/google-and-the-circle-of-life/feed/ 0 How the Google Docs integration with Pika works http://webdogs.org/2011/08/17/how-the-google-docs-intergration-with-pika-works/ http://webdogs.org/2011/08/17/how-the-google-docs-intergration-with-pika-works/#comments Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:48:00 +0000 Brian Lawlor http://webdogs.org/?p=2817 The second version of the LSNC Google API Project includes an integration of Google Docs with the PHP-based Pika CMS. Implementation of this integration results in a totally seamless synchronization of Google Docs with any files added to a client-specific case record. Add a file to the case-record “documents” page in Pika, and that same file, in its original file format, is automatically synced to the Google Docs folder of all advocates associated with that particular case record.

Here are some screenshots to give you a feel for how it works: First, you upload the files to Pika, which natively stores the files in its database. This shows how the uploaded files display within the Pika user interface:

Second, well, that’s it. You’re done. Really.

Without any further user interaction required, Google Docs synchronizes with Pika and adds those same files to the individual Google Docs accounts of all the users associated with the client case record. The synchronization process adds the files to a client-specific subfolder, with the client’s last name and case number, residing below an upper level folder called “My Cases,” which is itself a special folder within the Google Docs “Collections shared with me.” For example, here are the same files synchronized to Google Docs to the folder labeled “Collections shared with me > My Cases > Forcast – 10-11-00004″ (to state the obvious, this is not a real client):

Once the Pika case-related documents are synchronized to Google Docs, the users can use the documents from within Google Docs as they would any other: navigate to it, search for it, view it, share it, download it, whatever. For example, here is how a Word file orginally uploaded to Pika and then synced to Google Docs looks in the view mode from within Google Docs:

So, imagine you get a Gmail or Google Chat message from another advocate, asking if you have a good example of a motion to quash a subpoena, and you know you have one in the “Forcast” case. Hey, you’re already in your Google Apps, so you just go to Google Docs, navigate or search for the case or document, and there it is. You go ahead and do a Google Docs share to the person who made the request. Done. Without ever having to even open up Pika.

That’s the name of that tune.

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