| Several internal departments
at Macromedia participated in the Contribute beta. One of these
departments creates detailed reports every other week which provide
an exhaustive list of their internal activities. Prior to Macromedia
Contribute, the reports were created using Macromedia Dreamweaver,
but only using Dreamweaver as a means of text entry. None of the
team had access to post to the intranet, and files were sent around
as e-mail attachments from team member to team member.
Once the files were finished, they would be e-mailed to the one
person on the team with web authoring experience to post. The
problem with the files, though, was that every other week, more
and more time was spent troubleshooting what happened to the files
instead of basic formatting and posting them online. The e-mail
system made every link in the document contain long, relative
paths mapped to end user's systems when opened from within the
e-mail applications. Tables were also inadvertently stretched
to three screen widths or made too narrow by the inexperienced
users.
With each report, the previous version was used as a "template"
to start the next one, so the code was undergoing continual degradation.
Each time, the report would take more troubleshooting before it
could be posted. Every so often, a new "template" would
be created from the initial report that was made, but everything
within the HTML page was editable as it was not a formal Dreamweaver
template with editable regions.
When the beta version of Contribute was first available internally,
the team was one of the first teams to sign up and take advantage
of this new product. The goals of the product were in perfect
sync with the problems the team was having with its reports. The
driving force for using the beta, as one might expect, was the
person on the team who had to clean up the reports and post them
every two weeks.
Macromedia Contribute was immediately intuitive to the more experienced
user, who created group permissions, an editable report template
with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, and rolled the product out to
a baker's dozen of co-workers. The users were able to download
the product from a beta site and, by clicking a connection file
attached to an e-mail, the product was set-up with all of their
default settings for posting to the intranet site.
Most of the troubleshooting that occurred with the team confirmed
the Contribute usability team had done their job well. The team
didn't attempt to learn the product in advance of their next report,
instead everyone just installed it and expected it to be intuitive
and ready when they went to use it live and on deadline. This
resulted in many quick support calls.
"How do you make a link in this thing?"
By clicking the prominent button in the user interface entitled
"Link."
"And how can I create a new page?"
By clicking the "Create Page" button.
If anything, the fact that nearly every word used in the frenzy
of putting out the report is the actual wording used for the buttons
in the product user interface was a good sign that, had the team
spent more than five minutes using the product before trying to
finish something on deadline, it would have been very intuitive.
Since rolling out Contribute, every user on the team adds their
information on their own timeframe. The reports are still only
published bi-weekly, so some team members add information throughout
the two-week staging period, and others still like the frenzy
of the deadline. The built-in check-in/check-out functionality
of Contribute enables team members to yell across the cubes at
whomever is currently editing a page (which, in more civilized
office settings, can be accomplished through e-mail). As soon
as the reports are published on a Friday, a team member has already
created the new pages for the next reports and the cycle continues.
Since rolling out Contribute, the reports have been more standard
than ever before. Table widths have never changed. The cascading
style sheet used company-wide ensures proper fonts and spacing
is upheld. And no weird, relative links to non-existent files
on end user desktops has appeared lately.
Splinter groups within the team have really taken Contribute
and ran with it. As part of one group's role tracking external
resources related to Macromedia products, Excel spreadsheets that
used to be shuttled via e-mail attachment are constantly updated
on the site, which has made their workflow easier, not to mention
eliminating requests for the most up-to-date version of their
spreadsheets.
There really isn't a more technical story to tell here. Users
familiar with Word and Excel seem to gravitate to Macromedia Contribute,
and begin posting new content and editing existing content immediately.
The product doesn't require any skills that office workers don't
already have. Browse the web, edit the content, publish the new
content.
Since creating the initial templates and permission groups, the
person who used to spend hours cleaning and debugging the HTML
files so they could be posted live doesn't even have to look at
the finished files anymore, because they always look the same.
The product has really just been absorbed as part of the productivity
palette of office applications that are regularly used to accomplish
tasks. The simplicity and power of Macromedia Contribute are key
to its success. Any under-the-hood complexity within the product
is never shown to the end user, and anyone who can author a web
site can't easily storm through the administration features and
roll the product out.
Macromedia Contribute has forever changed the way the team works
for the better. |
