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• Introduction - Overview
• The Incubator
• The Repository
• The Archive
• Frequently Asked Questions
• about ELEDIA Project Manager

For missing information, comments, tips or misspelling, please feel free to contact the author. introduction Web-based remote project management technology is a solution for effective offshore project management that we employ in all remote projects.
Using a simple Internet browser, project coordinators obtain on-line access to all project details. This approach gives both parties the opportunity to rapidly coordinate all orders, carry out change control and monitor project status on a daily basis. ELEDIA Project Manager is a web-based tool that lets you manage and track projects (or simply ideas) and quickly create a diary tracking.
ELEDIA prjMAN is all about getting projects done. All project descriptor/diaries are stored and regularly updated on a dedicated Intranet Web-site with restricted access. The following sections will explain the scope of each tool/page in detail, here is a simple chart showing the life cycle of a project, from the proposal to the archive:

This information applies to all system, it's always possible for all users to view/download a full report of a proposal/project and also to email it as PDF attachment. You will find the shortcuts on the top-right of the page (listing or project's view), just choose the output format displayed by the common icons:

There is also a very simple search engine, you may also select context (incubator, repository, archive, and this help document) and the target fields.

This great tool is the bridge between ELEDIA Project Manager and the world, you can easily send emails and attach the PDF report of any project/list, the sender email (ReplyTo field) will be set to your current email address (this is nice because they may reply directly to you making the messaging easier).

This is a very simple script which analyse the projects' database and gather the most important information, it could be useful when you are looking for last updates or last authors.

ELEDIA Project Manager is controlled by a role-based permission system, there are three groups of users with different rights:

• users
• power users
• administrators

Management processes and not-undoable actions are restricted to Administrators and in some cases to Power Users. Even a classic user will have special rights on diary (update) when he one of the Tutor of the project (this was selected on StartUp)

Please refer to last section of this tutorial for detailed and technical information about this software and its engine, probably administrators and developers only are interested in that description, if you are an end-user you may skip it :)

incubator The Incubator directory is the entry path into ELEDIA for projects and codebases wishing to become an active project.

This is the starting point of any idea: when you compile the form, the proposal will be saved in the Incubator directory. After this first step the proposal will have to be approved (and you can send the request as mail), then the proposal will be moved to the Repository only when allowed users will complete the StartUp process.
Any user may create new proposals.

This is an optional process, you may create a new proposal and approve by yourself, but the Startup process requires that the proposal has been approved (draft=false).

When a proposal is approved, you can make it an "active project" compiling the StartUp form, so the project will be moved to the Repository. When a proposal is started some users will be set as Tutors of the active project.
Any tutor of the project and all Administrators/Power Users will still be allowed to edit the descriptor and the StartUp data through the Project's Editor of the Repository.
These users will also maintain the diary. The Proposer, Administrators and Power Users only are allowed to startup a proposal. Technical Note:
The startup process will copy the XML descriptor file to the repository (ID.xml), then will create a new XML data file for the diary (ID.diary.xml), the diary will be initialised with the StartUp information. When the project will be updated or finalized, only the diary will be modified.

repository This directory (Repository) is the sandbox of all active projects of ELEDIA. Administrators, Power Users and any Tutors of an active project are allowed to perform following operations:

Projects' Editor of the Repository can modify the project's descriptor and the startup information both, the diary itself and the shutdown information are not editable from this section, you can modify them from their own pages. (see next paragraph)

This section allow granted users (Tutors, Administrators, Power Users) to add/edit entries in the project's diary.
'Interested Users' are allowed to add entries.
Administrators only are allowed to remove (erase) diary entries.

When an active project is completed it may be "finalized", this means that you must compile a simple form (date, conclusions, completed, result) and then the project will be moved to the Archive. You may also add a single file as attachment, this file will be (uploaded and) stored into a separated folder, only Administrators are allowed to remove/overwrite a file. Tutors of the project, Administrators and Power Users only are allowed to finalize an active project. Technical Note:
The finalize process will join the two XML data files (ID.xml and ID.diary.xml) to an unique data file ID.xml, this file will be created in the archive folder, the old files will be removed. However if any error occurs files in the Repository won't be erased.

archive This directory contains the archived projects, there are few operations that can be applied to archived projects, any registered user is allowed to list, view and export projects (same as incubator or repository), but Administrators only are allowed to rollback or remove a record.

Because of archived projects are not editable, but you may need to apply changes or update data, it was born the Rollback tool. This operation brings the project back to the Repository. . Then you may edit, update and finalize again the project. Technical Note:
The engine will split the descriptor and the diary in two different files (ID.xml and ID.diary.xml), it's just the reverse operation of the finalize process. Technical Note 2:
The engine won't remove the project's attachment (if exists), when you finalize again the project, leave the attachment field blank to restore link.

The export tool is just a shortcut, it is possible to perform the same action from other areas of the site (for example from the project view).

technical

A content management system is a computer software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content. A content management system is often a web application used for creating and managing websites and web content. Alternatively, content management systems (CMS) can also be used for storing and publishing documentation such as operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, etc. There are many open-source and proprietary CMS solutions available, which is in fact true for most systems of any kind.

Relational database systems cannot meet all the demands of electronic business because they process data independently of its context. Traditional databases may be well suited for data that fits into rows and columns, but cannot adequately handle rich data such as audio, video, nested data structures or complex documents, which are characteristic of typical Web content. To deal with XML, traditional databases are typically retrofitted with external conversion layers that mimic XML storage by translating it between XML and some other data format. This conversion is error-prone and results in a great deal of overhead, particularly with increasing transaction rates and document complexity. XML databases, on the other hand, store XML data natively in its structured, hierarchical form. Queries can be resolved much faster because there is no need to map the XML data tree structure to tables. This preserves the hierarchy of the data and increases performance. XML is the endorsed industry standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is supported by all leading software providers. Furthermore, XML is also the standard today in an increasing number of other industries, for example health care.

The purpose of an XML Schema is to define the legal building blocks of an XML document, just like a DTD.
An XML Schema:

• defines elements that can appear in a document
• defines attributes that can appear in a document
• defines which elements are child elements
• defines the order of child elements
• defines the number of child elements
• defines whether an element is empty or can include text
• defines data types for elements and attributes
• defines default and fixed values for elements and attributes

We think that very soon XML Schemas will be used in most Web applications as a replacement for DTDs.

XSL describes how the XML document should be displayed!
XSL consists of three parts:

• XSLT - a language for transforming XML documents
• XPath - a language for navigating in XML documents
• XSL-FO - a language for formatting XML documents

XSLT is used to transform an XML document into another XML document, or another type of document that is recognized by a browser, like HTML and XHTML. Normally XSLT does this by transforming each XML element into an (X)HTML element.
With XSLT you can add/remove elements and attributes to or from the output file. You can also rearrange and sort elements, perform tests and make decisions about which elements to hide and display, and a lot more.
A common way to describe the transformation process is to say that XSLT transforms an XML source-tree into an XML result-tree. XSLT uses XPath to find information in an XML document. XPath is used to navigate through elements and attributes in XML documents. When a match is found, XSLT will transform the matching part of the source document into the result document. XSL-FO is an XML-based markup language describing the formatting of XML data for output to screen, paper or other media, the most common output format is PDF.

Following items are required to run ELEDIA Project Manager.

• Apache 1.3 or greater [suggested: 2.x]
• PHP 5.0.4* or greater [suggested: 5.2.x or greater]
   * required also php-xml, php-dom.
• PHP PEAR: Archive_Tar (1.3.x), Net_SMTP (1.2.x)
• Optional: Apache FOP [suggested: 0.20.5] - Required for PDF outputs

faqs Get some answers to the most asked questions about ELEDIA Project Manager.

Data Inputs (any text field) are encoded to UTF-8, UTF-8 is a standard mechanism used by Unicode for encoding wide character values into a byte stream. UTF-8 is transparent to plain ASCII characters.
You are not allowed to insert HTML tags, or better: they won't have the effects of HTML tags, but they will be treated as common characters. You may enter new lines, tabs and any special character.

Unless words are used, the only unambiguous unqualified formats for writing the Gregorian date are those using the order YYYY-MM-DD. The best format for writing the time is 24-hour HH:MM[:SS], and it must follow the date, after that we can write also a time offset indication if appropriate. These are among the ISO 8601 standard formats. So a valid date is 2006-11-22 (17:54:12). Currently, Time information is disabled.

The Engine backups montly all projects' databases, you may ask Administrators to recover the project.

The Reporting Engine is quite fast for HTML and TXT output formats, the XTML format is native so it's like  real-time . But the PDF output is harder to generate, the transformation is based on Apache FOP XSL:FO processor which is written in java and may take some time.
However the Reporting Engine caches the output to speed up the response and to minimize server's usage, when the source data (descriptor or diary) is updated, the cached report will be overwritten.
The cache is cleared daily.

about This website have been designed to be as accessible as possible. By separating the content from the presentation using CSS and XHTML it will enable a wide range of computing platforms to access the site and ultimately be device independent. The pages validate to W3C published CSS and XHTML 1.0 guidelines and passes Level Double-A of the W3C-WAI Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Any CSS standards compliant browser will display the site as intended. The site should render in older browsers but results - whilst still remaining usable - may vary. The site has been tested on PC and Macintosh platforms using the following browsers:

• PC - Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, 6; Netscape 7; Opera 6, 7; Mozilla; Lynx;
• Macintosh - Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2; Mozilla 1.3, Safari; Camino;

Users of older computers may wish to consider Opera as a standards compliant browser requiring minimal resources, supporting a wide range of platforms. Compatble with:         Standard:         Powered by:         ELEDIA Project Manager has been developed by Alessandro Polo for ELEDIA Group.

2007/03/10 - 2.6.0 - Redesigned the Approving procedure. 2007/03/09 - 2.5.1 - Fixed icon bug, delete command was not available. 2007/03/03 - 2.5.0 - Policy Upgrade: Owner may remove his project (from incubator); Projects are approved by powersuers (and admin) only. 2007/01/25 - 2.3.0 - Updated Project's Startup: 'Decision' and 'Listeners' fields. 2007/01/25 - 2.2.2 - Fixed internal XML formatting. 2007/01/24 - 2.2.0 - Updated Project's Descriptor: 'Topic' and 'Goal' fields. 2007/01/19 - 2.1.0 - Added 'Sort and Order' memory to project lists while browsing. 2007/01/18 - 2.0.9 - Fixed some secondary bugs, graphics, sorting. 2007/01/18 - 2.0.8 - Updated: Finalize Tool (+'completed' field, +'attachment file'). 2007/01/17 - 2.0.6 - Added: Student Manager. 2007/01/15 - 2.0.5 - Extended compatibility to Firefox 1.0.4 and old browsers. 2007/01/13 - 2.0.2 - Fixed: Editing POST relfesh (reflesh editing page). 2006/12/21 - 1.9.9 - Fixed some PHP notices, some JS functions have been updated. 2006/12/19 - 1.9.7 - Installed on ELEDIA server, adapted to PHP 5.0.4. 2006/12/10 - 1.9.3 - Updated: PDF Report, Help (Engine and Contents), Layout for low screen resolutions. 2006/12/10 - 1.9.2 - Updated: Reports and Listing (Sorting, Filtering); Optimised: Report generation 2006/12/08 - 1.8.2 - Added: Administrator's File Manager, Users' Statistics, Inline Links; Updated: Recovery Engine. 2006/12/07 - 1.4.8 - Added: Search Engine; many bugs were fixed. 2006/12/06 - 1.3.7 - Updated Security System. 2006/11/05 - 1.3.2 - Many bugs were fixed: Engine/Layout for IE. 2006/11/02 - 1.0.9 - Updated all Editors. 2006/11/30 - 1.0.0 - First Official Release [Beta].

ELEDIA Project Manager is licensed as open source for ELEDIA Group.
All Rights Reserved. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

ELEDIA Project Manager has been developed by Alessandro Polo for ELEDIA Group.