Companionable d11-1.6 Project Website Report

Grant Agreement Number 216487

Integrated Cognitive Assistive & Domotic Companion Robotic Systems for Ability & Security

Collaborative Project

ICT-2007.7.1 ICT and ageing

D11.6 Project Web Site Report

published by the CompanionAble Consortium

Version: 1.0 Date: 02/09/2008

Project Start Date: 1st January 2008 Project Duration: 48 Month

Project Coordinator: Prof. Atta Badii (University of Reading)

Project Co-Funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme

Dissemination Level: Public

Workpackage/ Task: WP11/ T11.4

Document Owner: UoR

Contributors: UoR

Status: Final

CompanionAble D11.6 Project Web Site Report

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Abstract:

D11.6 Project Website Report introduces the website of the CompanionAble project, http://www.CompanionAble.net, which serves three major purposes: i) Dissemination of the project results to the external public ii) Collaborative working within the Consortium, iii) Exclusive area for Partner only access to internal project information. The report describes the information available in the publicly accessible sections as well as the features of the section accessible only by project partners.

Document History:

Version Author(s) (Affiliation) Date Changes

0.1 Atta Badii, Daniel Thiemert (UoR) 16-06-2008 Initial Version

0.5 Atta Badii, Daniel Thiemert (UoR) 14.07.2008 Final Version for internal review

1.0 Atta Badii, Daniel Thiemert (UoR) 02.09.2008 Final Version for submission

Internal Review History

Internal Reviewers Date Comments

Andreas Hochgatterer (ARC) 14.07.2008 Minor Typos, approved with comments

Carmen Pastor (TECNALIA-RBTK( 17.07.2008 Approved with comments

INDEX

1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...................................................................................................................................... 4 2 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................................... 5

2.1 BACKGROUND.................................................................................................................................................... 5 2.2 SCOPE OF THIS DELIVERABLE............................................................................................................................. 5

3 WEBSITE CONTENT ............................................................................................................................................ 6 3.1 GENERAL DESCRIPTION ..................................................................................................................................... 6 3.2 MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT SERVER..................................................................................................................... 6 3.3 STRUCTURE OF THE COMPANIONABLE WEBSITE ............................................................................................... 6

3.3.1 Public section of the CompanionAble Website ............................................................................................. 6 3.3.2 Private section of the CompanionAble Website ............................................................................................ 8

4 WEB SITE ADMINISTRATION......................................................................................................................... 15 5 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................................... 16


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1 Executive Summary This document deliverable D11.6, as the Project Website report describes the website, http://www.CompanionAble.net, that is the web presence of the EU project CompanionAble as well as an effective tool for publicity, disseminations and collaborative working across the Consortium. This document sets out the functions and features offered by the website design to cater for i) Dissemination of the project results to the external public ii) Collaborative working within the Consortium, iii) Exclusive area for Partner only access to internal project information.


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2 Introduction

2.1 Background CompanionAble is an Integrated Research Programme within the 7th Framework. It is focussed on Research Technology Development and Innovation (RTDI) to support Ambient Assisted Living (AAL); in particular to push forward to frontiers of research in integrated assistive robotics within Smart Home Environments. An important facility in raising awareness of the results and outcomes of the CompanionAble project is the project website. It is a major dissemination channels and has been operational since the beginning of the project.

2.2 Scope of this deliverable This document is the accompanying report for the CompanionAble project website. It describes the structure and content of the website and the services it offers.

Naturally the website is under continuous development and updating, in the sense that new content is being added, e.g. news and publications, and its features are adapted to meet the evolving needs for the users. Therefore this deliverable should be regarded as a snapshot of the website at the point of release of this report.


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3 Website Content

3.1 General Description The CompanionAble Project Website is hosted by the University of Reading and is reachable through the URLs http://www.companionable.net and http://www.companionable.org; both have a redirection to the University’s server. The website is based on a Microsoft SharePoint Server technology.

3.2 Microsoft SharePoint Server The Microsoft SharePoint Server technology offers several services that the CompanionAble website benefits from. These services include: Events, Contacts, Discussions, Announcements, Document Libraries, and others. They will be described in detail in chapter 3.3.2.

3.3 Structure of the CompanionAble Website The website is divided into a public and a private section, the latter one being restricted for access by Consortium members only.

3.3.1 Public section of the CompanionAble Website This section comprises of the main or starting page “home”, the overview page “project overview”, the “news & pictures” page, a “public documents” page, a “Partners” page, and a “contacts” page. Figure 1 presents the start page.

The “home” page is, as already said, the starting point and contains an introducing abstract about the project. Furthermore the page contains a summary of the latest news. From the “home” page each of the above mentioned pages and the private section is reachable via hyperlinks, as it is true for all pages, private and public.


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Figure 1: CompanionAble Website Start Page

The “project overview” presents key facts and figures about the project, such as duration or funding. Thus, this page has more of a static nature as the content will hardly change.

The “news & pictures” page contains the complete version of the news summarised on the “home” page. This news is not only concerned with project events, but are also meant to inform about advances in technologies related to the CompanionAble project or the Partners involved. Only current or recent news is displayed on this page. To access old news and pictures (see Figure 2) of events two further hyperlinks are provided on the “news & pictures” page.


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Figure 2: Pictures Page

The “public documents” page will provide information about all publicly available project deliverables as well as scientific publications from Partners, and project dissemination material such as flyers, presentations, etc. The documents will be made available as soon as they become available.

The “Partners” page lists the organisations involved in the CompanionAble project and provides links to sub-pages of the website describing each Partner and their role in the project in a more detailed way.

Finally, the “contacts” page contains the contact details of the Coordinator of the CompanionAble Project, Atta Badii from the University of Reading. This is to enable potentially interested persons to gather more information about the project and its results.

3.3.2 Private section of the CompanionAble Website The private section of the CompanionAble website is only accessible by Consortium members. Figure 3 shows a screen shot of the private section’s start page.


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Figure 3: CompanionAble Web Site Private Section

The private section provides services for collaboration and management of the project which are facilitated through the MS SharePoint characteristics.

3.3.2.1 Document Library One of the most important features for collaborative work is the Document Library “Shared CompanionAble Documents”, as depicted in Figure 4 which has the following facilities:

• Document library of WSS (windows share point service) provides feature of shared documents.

• Upload and download of documents within the document library of WSS (windows share point service)

• Versioning of Documents

At the moment there is one section for each work package, as well as a section for meeting (-preparation), Document Templates, Administrative Material and final deliverables which have been submitted to the EC.


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Figure 4: Shared CompanionAble Documents

3.3.2.2 Contacts In order to achieve optimal collaboration between the Partners a contact list is provided where each Partner can enter the coordinates of their staff. The Contact feature (see Figure 5) provides the following facilities:

• Adding contact information using the editor page.

• The Editor page provides the following edit boxes to make user profile

o First name

o Last name

o Full name

o Email address

o Company

o Job title

o Business phone


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o Home phone

o Mobile number

o Fax number

o Address

o City

o State

o Post code

o Country

o Webpage

o Notes

• Filtering of the contact list using sort by location, sort by title, sort by attachment, sort by recurrence and sort by work space.

• Import and export functionality.

• Change of layout of the list

Figure 5: Contacts


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3.3.2.3 Discussion Experience shows that forums are an excellent tool for discussing technical matters and exchanging opinions and knowledge on topics of limited scope. Therefore the CompanionAble web site private section provides a discussion forum (as shown in Figure 6). Each registered user can post new topics and reply to open issues.

Figure 6: Discussion Forum

3.3.2.4 Events A calendar gives information about upcoming meetings, deadlines and other important events in the private section. Features such as starting date, end date, starting time, ending time, description of the event, location and recurrence can be specified. The events can also be displayed as a list to give a conclusive overview. Of course filtering features such as filtering by location, title etc. is available too. The events section is shown in Figure 7 and Figure 8.


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Figure 7: Events


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Figure 8: Calendar

3.3.2.5 Links and Announcements As can be seen in Figure 3 the starting page of the private section provides the features announcements and links. In the announcements section Partners can for example notify Partners of important events, calls for papers or contributions etc.

In the Links sections Partners can post links to relevant websites. This provides an easy library of links for example to related European projects, conferences, research organisations, etc.

3.3.2.6 Alerts For each of the items above Alerts can be enabled that send a notification by email if changes have been made, e.g. a new document has been uploaded, or a new event has been added. The alerts can be either on a level of immediate, daily, or weekly notification. Especially for discussions and shared documents the alerts have proven useful for Partners to stay informed and updated, thus reducing the delay in the collaborative work.


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4 Web Site Administration As already stated before, the team of the University of Reading is responsible for updating and administrating the CompanionAble project web site.

Microsoft SharePoint provides four different user roles to be assigned by the site administrator:

1. Administrator has full access to all parts of the website.

2. Web Designer can create lists and can change the design and layout of the web site

3. Contributor can add content to existing document libraries and lists.

4. Reader has read-only access to the web site.

Currently there is one Administrator/Web Designer, the rest of the users are Readers/Contributors. The user groups are only accessible in the private section, whereas for the public section any part can be accessed but only the Administrator/Web Designer has the right to change anything.

To add a new user, Partners send a request to the University of Reading contact point. The user data, i.e. login name and password, will then be transmitted to the new user for him to be able to access the private sections.

The back-up procedures for the SharePoint server at the University of Reading where the web site is being hosted implements a daily incremental backup, as well as a weekly full backup and snap shot.


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5 Conclusion This document, D11.6 Project Website Report, has introduced the website representing the CompanionAble project i.e.http://www.CompanionAble.net. It has described the information contained in the publicly accessible section as well as the functionalities and features of the sections accessible only to the project Partners. Accordingly the report has set out the functions and features offered by the website design to cater for i) Dissemination of the project results to the external public ii) Collaborative working within the Consortium, iii) Exclusive area for Partner only access to internal project information.

The website is one of the main communication platforms to disseminate the results of the project and to promote the research carried out by the Consortium members. Therefore the website is under continuous development, meaning that content is constantly updated, and, the design is adjusted to the needs and requirements of the users.