Enterprise blogging and beyond
Traction Software’s Version 3.1 of TeamPage and Communicator includes a host of new features, including ease of use, interface flexibility, internationalization and user administration capabilities. Traction has also introduced Instant Publisher Release 2.1, which adds additional style controls and improved HTML capture. Those expanded capabilities, claims Traction, deliver the enterprise integration and stable base required for ongoing product enhancements, further establishing the Traction platform as the backbone for enterprise working communication.
Key new features of Traction V 3.1 include:
Extensible authentication--The new release facilitates managing groups and user permissions. Authentication now includes support for Access Control Lists and Microsoft Active Directory with NTLM. Access Control Lists make it simple to create and manage permissions for groups of users. Effective user permissions cascade based on the union of an individual's group memberships and specific personal permissions. Authentication using Active Directory with or without NTLM provides single sign-on support with Microsoft's standard authentication system. User names, e-mail addresses and permissions can be gathered from existing enterprise Active Directory profiles and memberships.
W3C common log format--The new version adds logging support for the W3C Extended Logfile Format (ExLF), which allows administrators to analyze traffic to the Traction server using popular log file analysis software such as NetTracker, WebTrends and Urchin. W3C log files can provide information about page views and unique visitors, as well as deeper analysis to identify popular sections or articles.
Internationalization and localization--V 3.1 ships with English, Japanese and German locales pre-installed. Customers or partners can easily override specific terms for any locale so that the Traction Web page interface can use terms that are familiar to specific organizations. Customers with global operations can use any combination of locales simultaneously--with different locale choices served simultaneously for different users. Traction partners or customers can add new locales. Traction TeamPage server administration as well as Weblog interfaces are fully internationalized.
RSS support--The release adds support for inline images referenced within password-protected RSS feeds (using realm authentication). Traction previously introduced RSS 2.0 support for password protected/encrypted RSS feeds with selectable content, comments and file attachments.
Usability--Traction labels (used to categorize, prioritize or mark items for follow-up) can now be numeric. The Context Menu has been extended to allow users to easily comment on nested comments. Traction's integrated search capability now includes calendar feedback, allowing results to be navigated by day, week, month, quarter, year or any selected time slice.
Interface customization--Traction's Skin Definition Language (SDL) allows a remap file to provide site-specific selective overrides to existing skins, rather than requiring previously installed skins to be copied for customization. SDL Front Page and Project Newspage sections now support results sorted in reverse or forward chronological order and click-through navigation to the content of time-independent sections. The Simple skin (built for mobile devices) now supports customizable sections.
Notification--An improved Notifier allows broadcast IM to be sent to many Jabber clients in response to any incoming event, such as an article posted with an alarm label. The Notifier interface is plug-in-extensible for use with other messaging and notification systems.
New in Publisher Release 2.1 are style controls that include common HTML elements (such as Heading 1 to Heading 4), as well as text color and text background color. Screen capture supports faded borders on screen capture. Traction's previous TIP release introduced Outlook-like visual editing support for bold, italic and underlined text styles; inline images; bulleted or numbered lists; indents; file attachments and hyperlinks.