PW_Tools

DNV - 04/19/23 - 1

Web based “Project Management”

using

Peter Wielandpeter.wieland@dnv.com

PW_Tools

DNV - 04/19/23 - 2

What is PW_Tools?

Number of scripts to support Project management via the WWW

Automated creation and maintenance of project web sites

• Support for: Keeping address lists (profiles)

up to date

Maintaining action lists in various granularities

Sending to-do lists via email to specific project members

Archiving and extracting documents

Sharing bookmarks (links)

Publishing Web site

Publishing exploitations information(conferences and publications)

Web statistics

• Use all functionality or parts of it.

PW_Tools

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Contents

• Motivation & Background

• Basic objectives

• Overview & Concepts PWA (Action lists & Profiles)

PWD (Document archive)

PWU (Update sites (mirror))

PWB (Bookmarks)

PWE (Exploitation)

PWL (Log of access)

PWR (Root generator)

PWC (Clean up links)

PWS (Send emails automatically)

• Benefits and problems

• Current state & availability

• Directory structure

PW_Tools

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Motivation and Background

• Committed to the coordination of a global project

• One part of this role was web site maintenance forInternal information

Public information

• Web information used for reporting

• Available recommended tools failed (e.g. Frontpage)

PW_Tools

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Project constellation

• 10 partners with various background

• About 30 project members

• 4 countries Portugal (3)

Germany (2)

Greece (2)

Norway (3)

• 8 work entities 5 Work packages

Project Steering Group (PSG)

Technical Committee (TC)

Telephone Conferences

Challenge: Provide 30+ updated detailed and

dynamic information views on » Project members (30)» Work entities (8+)» Partners (10)

Provide mailing lists for those views

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PWA: Web pages to visualise profiles

• Single csv-file as information source for members with fields for: Personal abbreviation key (PWi)

Name, Address, Phone, Fax, Email, etc.

Personal partner key

• Work entity membership text files Free definable

Individual members

All members of a partner

• Partner list text file Partner key

Partner information

• Script generates Profiles (html)

» One per project member (28)» One per project partner (10)» One per work entity (8)» Table of contents for those 46 pages

Overall partner page

Gallery

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PWA: Profile view examples

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PWA: Profile related views

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PWA: Work entity memberships

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Project work load

• 8 work entities 5 Work packages

Project Steering Group (PSG)

Technical Committee (TC)

• Meeting with various frequenciesWP: quarterly (total: ca. 12)

PSG: yearly (total: 3)

TC: twice a year (total: 6)

Phone: twice a month (total: ca. 50)

In total: ~ 70 meetings

Challenge: Collect actions during various meetings

Make actions visible to individuals

Make actions visible to responsible managers (WP, Site, PM, etc.)

Support project managers action follow-up

PW_Tools

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PWA: Web pages to visualise actions

• Single ASCII text file with a specific formatAct-Code:Active-Flag:Date:Resp.-

List:Text:Comment

Active-Flag: “Closed” or “Active”

• Resp.List: Pairs of ID,State ID references a project memeber

State: “done” or “not done”

• Same format as in the Minutes of Meeting

• Information identical to MoM (documentation and reference)

• Script generates

Action information pages » One per action (currently 251 after

12 month project duration)

Action lists» One per project member (28)» One per project partner (10)

Overview table» All open actions» All closed actions» All overdue actions» All to-do actions

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PWA: Action information overview

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PWA: Member and Partner Lists

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PWD: Document archiveChallenge:

Quality Assurance Programme » PM has responsibility for filing

documentation» Document reference

Various document types» Deliverables» Minutes» Progress reports» Cost statements, etc.

Various document formats » Word-files» Zip-files» PDF-files» Presentations (PPT)» others

Project members need approved versions with easy access

Solution: Web based archiveDirectory name = Document reference

Directory contains all available formats

Different views » Sorted by Reference No» Sorted by Author, Type, Title, Date» Sorted by Meetings, etc. » New views definable

Integrated fetch mechanism (ftp)

Search engine

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PWD: Document archive views

PW_Tools

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PWB: Bookmark information

•Microsoft “Favorites” input format•Generates single bookmark file (share “Favorites”)

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PWE: Exploitation information

Conferences

• Location & date

• Different options Paper

Presentation

Exhibition

• Different states and responsibles for each option

• Input: single text file with information

• Generates short- and long-format html-page

• Links to profiles and document archive (no redundancy)

PW_Tools

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PWE: Exploitation information

Publications

• Different items books

papers

proceedings

etc

• Input: “Standard” reference database format Bibtex (ASCII based, free)

Usable as reference database for input in papers etc.

• Output: Publication html-page

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Directory structure

• One root directory (e.g. Web)

• PW_Tools as subdir of the root

• Bin, Input (global)

• One subdir for each script (PWA, PWB, etc.)

• All overview html-pages under this subdir

• One “Input” subdir under each script-subdir

• Non-overview information located in subdirs under script-subdir (for PWA & PWD)

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PWR: Root generator

• Few pages are not generated automatically

• Same header at each level

• Solution: Put all hand-made pages in a directory

Consistent header to all of those pages is attached automatically

Each other page generating script uses same header information

All generated files are stored under root directory.

PW_Tools

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PWU: Site mirror (update site)

• One “master web” Generated locally (e.g. project directory)

Usable as master

Usable for back-up

• Different information required on different mirror web sitesAll information on internal internet site

(password protected)

All reviewers specific info on reviewers internet site (password protected)

All public information on public accessible internet site

Solution:

• Text files with mirror information onWhere to publish to (copy)

Single files (optional rename)

Directories (recursive with subdirectories)

Check timestamp information before copying

PW_Tools

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PWU:Site mirror (example)

i:/marvin_int############################### FILESPWD_search.html;actions.htm;archive.html;default.htm;deliverables.html;dissemination.html;docref.html;links.html;news.html;summary.html;partners.html;meeting_gallery.html;################################# DIRSPW_Tools/PWAPW_Tools/PWBPW_Tools/PWDPW_Tools/PWEPW_Tools/PWRPW_Tools/PWUPW_Tools/BINPW_Tools/InputPW_Tools/DocPictures

Destination: http://research.dnv.com/marvin_int(after mapping wwwroot on research.dnv.com to i:)

Other destinations

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Benefits and Problems

+ Technical: Single (non-redundant) data source

Automated generation of html-pages using Perl (free and platform independent)

Only relative links (transferable, pick-and-go e.g. for meetings)

Project independent (except PWD which depends on the reference system)

Not (!) mouse-oriented (drag-and-drop)

Generates standard W3C HTML (4.0)

Different web sites share consistent source

+ Project related: Save time

» MoM (action) follow-up easy» No paper archive required (pure Web)» Information source for reporting to CEC» Automatically send to-do lists to members

Increase quality by providing reliable information» Good state overview for responsible persons » People can view others states (recognise locks) » All members have updated and identical archives» Helps avoiding “Didn’t know” situations

- People have to use the information

- Not COTS

- Some html-knowledge (for root pages)recommended

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Current state & Availability

State (April 2001):

• Published with copyleft: PW_Tools is free software; you can redistribute it

and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

PW_Tools is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the

GNU General Public License for more details.

• under the terms ofGNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

Available at:

• http://research.dnv.com/pwtools

• Documentation & “How-to-get-started”

Other requirements:

• Any machine running Perl

• Perl, which is free (http://www.perl.org)(Use ActivePerl on NT)

• Any ASCII text editor