EUEDOS Repository Module is essentially an IP-based electronic document management system, optimized for use via Internet as a Service. The anticipated use for this Repository is to offer a document and general info databank for the entire material exchanged among the employees of an enterprise as well as among them and the various partners and affiliates. The term extranet implies that the system's architecture has considered a security and privacy framework that surrounds the system's functionality. The purpose of EUEDOS Repository Module is to offer a ubiquitous access to all data required by partners as to conduct their research, presentations and demos without the constrains on the information implementation infrastructure, required for such an endeavor. The EUEDOS Repository Module also anticipates accessing several other general problems of communication and management of massive context, that are not possible to be resolved by other conventional Internet based services and protocols, neither via e-mail. Despite the extensive range of offered features and services, added to an inherently open architecture allowing for future expansion, as per incurring requirements, the EUEDOS Repository Module offers a readily usable and simple interface, suitable for use by any non-expert user, proving an immediate gain in productivity, user friendliness and quality of service.
The EUEDOS Repository Module is a system that implements the expedient environment where a group of extranet tools and utilities can safely operate. The current version provides a structured repository where the files (documents and others) that have been produced, exchanged or studied by an organization's members and partners, as well as to support the coordination and briefing of them. The system is designed to work in a extranet environment, hence it has to fulfil all the security requirements of such a task. The security of the system is accomplished by a strict authentication service that is supported by a persistent robust access control mechanism.
Fig. 1 The system's login screen
The first screen the user meets is the login page (Fig.1). We have three kind of users: The simple Users, the System administrators and the Repository administrators. All users of the system need to be authenticated as registered and legitimate users. The administrators are responsible for creating user accounts and grouping them into appropriate user groups. Each user is provided with a username and a password, responsible for remembering their personal passwords. He/she can change their own passwords and they can ask the administrators to change their username. The administrator must first be able to login as a normal user and afterwards as an administrator.
Fig. 2 The system's main screen
Fig. 3 The User interface
Regarding the user interface (Fig.3), it is designed to provide functionality and user friendliness and to be as intuitive as possible. To this direction the presentation of repository's structure has a form that resembles to the known file system explorers. More to the simple file management tasks as reading (downloading from the server) and writing (uploading to the server), special consideration has been taken to the more sophisticated issues as file updating and versioning, as well as to the system maintenance including editing, modification and deleting, regarding either the repository structure or the other critical entities as user groups and users. The system supports the users' coordination and briefing by the provision of two similar tools: The document notification tool and the messages tools, that provide a communication platform correlated to the repository's contents.
The user actions are: Messaging the system, Adding documents to the repository, Searching and retrieving documents from the repository, The search result grid, Document actions, Interdomain, Document revision process, User Permissions, Document locking with passwords, Changing one's password.
Fig. 4 Collaborative document editor
An important feature fills the need for online collaborative document authoring (Fig.4) by many individual authors where each one edits a different section of the document. The system makes sure that the many sections of the document are correctly allocated to the corresponding authors and that their attempts are properly synchronized with each other. A new collaborative document may be created from the "Create Collaborative Document" option of the "Directory Options". In order to edit an existing collaborative document a user must be in the list of the appointed collaborative document's authors. One accesses the page for administering and authoring a collaborative document by hitting the "Edit Collaborative Document" button in the corresponding row of the search result grid.
Fig. 5 Login as administrator
The whole system is managed and maintained by its administrators after they login as administrator (Fig.5). For the system to work smoothly the administrators are required to carry out a number of tasks. For instance they are responsible for creating the structure of the repository. This structure should be built with the particular needs of the groups of people that will use it. It is up to the administrators to decide whether the repository structure will be as simple as a tree of a depth of up to 2 directories or as complicated as a deep tree with many directories where many documents are required to be present in more than one of the directories. There is simple rule of thumb there. However, the simpler the structure is is then the simpler the task of maintaining it is and the easier it gets for the users to browse through it. Also, the administrators are responsible to oversee the way the users use the systems and intervene whenever necessary. They are responsible for creating users and user groups and for assigning permissions to them as well. Also they are able to create other administrators like themselves. We have already mentioned that there are two kinds of administrators.
Fig. 6 System Administration
The system administrators (Fig.6) are responsible for the following tasks:
- Adding, editing and removing users of system
- Adding, editing and removing user groups of the system
- Adding, editing and removing other system administrators
- Editing system settings
- Viewing the system log.
Fig. 7 Repository Administration
The repository administrators (Fig.7) are responsible for the following tasks:
- Editing the repository directory structure
- Editing the permissions
- Adding, editing and removing other repository administrators
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The EUEDOS Repository Module is a system that implements the expedient environment where a group of extranet tools and utilities can safely operate. The current version provides a structured repository where the files (documents and others) that have been produced, exchanged or studied by an organization's members and partners, as well as to support the coordination and briefing of them. The system is designed to work in a extranet environment, hence it has to fulfil all the security requirements of such a task. The security of the system is accomplished by a strict authentication service that is supported by a persistent robust access control mechanism.
Fig. 1 The system's login screen
The first screen the user meets is the login page (Fig.1). We have three kind of users: The simple Users, the System administrators and the Repository administrators. All users of the system need to be authenticated as registered and legitimate users. The administrators are responsible for creating user accounts and grouping them into appropriate user groups. Each user is provided with a username and a password, responsible for remembering their personal passwords. He/she can change their own passwords and they can ask the administrators to change their username. The administrator must first be able to login as a normal user and afterwards as an administrator.
Fig. 2 The system's main screen
Fig. 3 The User interface
Regarding the user interface (Fig.3), it is designed to provide functionality and user friendliness and to be as intuitive as possible. To this direction the presentation of repository's structure has a form that resembles to the known file system explorers. More to the simple file management tasks as reading (downloading from the server) and writing (uploading to the server), special consideration has been taken to the more sophisticated issues as file updating and versioning, as well as to the system maintenance including editing, modification and deleting, regarding either the repository structure or the other critical entities as user groups and users. The system supports the users' coordination and briefing by the provision of two similar tools: The document notification tool and the messages tools, that provide a communication platform correlated to the repository's contents.
The user actions are: Messaging the system, Adding documents to the repository, Searching and retrieving documents from the repository, The search result grid, Document actions, Interdomain, Document revision process, User Permissions, Document locking with passwords, Changing one's password.
Fig. 4 Collaborative document editor
An important feature fills the need for online collaborative document authoring (Fig.4) by many individual authors where each one edits a different section of the document. The system makes sure that the many sections of the document are correctly allocated to the corresponding authors and that their attempts are properly synchronized with each other. A new collaborative document may be created from the "Create Collaborative Document" option of the "Directory Options". In order to edit an existing collaborative document a user must be in the list of the appointed collaborative document's authors. One accesses the page for administering and authoring a collaborative document by hitting the "Edit Collaborative Document" button in the corresponding row of the search result grid.
Fig. 5 Login as administrator
The whole system is managed and maintained by its administrators after they login as administrator (Fig.5). For the system to work smoothly the administrators are required to carry out a number of tasks. For instance they are responsible for creating the structure of the repository. This structure should be built with the particular needs of the groups of people that will use it. It is up to the administrators to decide whether the repository structure will be as simple as a tree of a depth of up to 2 directories or as complicated as a deep tree with many directories where many documents are required to be present in more than one of the directories. There is simple rule of thumb there. However, the simpler the structure is is then the simpler the task of maintaining it is and the easier it gets for the users to browse through it. Also, the administrators are responsible to oversee the way the users use the systems and intervene whenever necessary. They are responsible for creating users and user groups and for assigning permissions to them as well. Also they are able to create other administrators like themselves. We have already mentioned that there are two kinds of administrators.
Fig. 6 System Administration
The system administrators (Fig.6) are responsible for the following tasks:
- Adding, editing and removing users of system
- Adding, editing and removing user groups of the system
- Adding, editing and removing other system administrators
- Editing system settings
- Viewing the system log.
Fig. 7 Repository Administration
The repository administrators (Fig.7) are responsible for the following tasks:
- Editing the repository directory structure
- Editing the permissions
- Adding, editing and removing other repository administrators