JotSpot Professional Services Update
As you probably know, JotSpot wikis allow you to go beyond text-only pages and collaborate with rich application pages right in your wiki. You can mix and match text and application page types as needed, from web-based spreadsheets and calendars to photo galleries and email lists. All within a familiar wiki interface.
JotSpot the Platform
This is made possible because under the hood, a JotSpot wiki is actually a web-application platform, complete with a full-power API. This API provides extra “headroom” so you can evolve your wiki into an ever more powerful collaborative environment, beyond a simple set of text pages.
At it’s core, the API allows you to use forms to add structure to information in pages. Once structured, you can use the API to search, manipulate, and report on the info in any way you want. For example, our API was leveraged to customize the JotSpot powered eBay wiki.
In general, the ability to start simply and then evolve as a team is one of the key reasons wikis succeed as collaboration tools. This iterative way of working really benefits from the integration of application pages, which introduce a whole new set of options for organizing and tracking wiki information.
JotSpot Professional Services
The good news about JotSpot’s API is that you can use it to extend your wiki. The bad news about JotSpot’s API is that you may not have the time or skills to take full advantage of it.
Enter JotSpot’s Solution Partners, a network of organizations and individuals that specialize in customizing and extending JotSpot wikis. The partner program is only a handful of months old, but already includes a group of experts who bring a broad cross section of consulting and development experience to new customer projects.
Meet Some of Our Partners and Their Work
Perhaps the best way to introduce our partners and explain some of the services they provide is to take a quick look at some recent public projects. (The majority of partner projects actually involve private, password-protected wikis, which unfortunately can’t be shared.)
» One interesting public project is the Intel Software Network community wiki, which is being customized and extended by partner JotXPert. The project kicked-off by applying Intel’s style to the wiki in order to visually integrate it with other Intel web sites. This styling was handled by partner and CSS specialist Diane Soini, who has custom-branded many wikis.
After the theme work was done, custom article and category functionality was created to accommodate a large collection of migrated content. This information is tied together with other Intel content through an integration with Intel’s tagging and rating systems. The result is a single place on the web where employees and members of the Intel software community can collaborate and share ideas about the best ways to use Intel products.
» Another interesting project involves a community wiki called Ultra Rides, sponsored by Bicycling.com and Michelob Ultra. It was created by partner Knowesys and is a free bike club directory that anyone can edit. As you can see, this project included a highly-customized look and feel in order to create a purpose-built wiki experience for cycling enthusiasts. The flexibility of the JotSpot platform enables custom content communities to meet a very broad set of user experience requirements, in this case combining sponsor-related events with community contributed content.
» In addition to custom communities, partners often create new functionality to complement standard wiki features. Bob Haugen of the newly organized Rising Technologies has worked on a number of such projects, including one with Chordiant. One of Chordiant’s requirements was a custom self-registration feature to enable specific credential checks for new member registration.
Bob’s work with Chordiant also benefitted Jot’s customer community as a whole when Chordiant generously contributed a self-registration application from the project. This type of sharing is another important benefit of JotSpot’s platform approach to wikis.
» While all partners are expert Jot developers, each brings a unique background and specialty to their work. Because of this, partners often team up on projects to bring their specialty to bear, as partners Phil Kast and Diane Soini often do. Phil’s expertise in AJAX and web services and Diane’s in CSS and design have benefitted a number of customer projects.
A Note about Methodology
Our partners typically deliver their projects remotely. This distributed, team-based approach to professional services succeeds in part because JotSpot wikis are used to manage and deliver each engagement. Each engagement leverages the power of wiki and various applications like the JotSpot bug reporter and spreadsheet so all parties stay on the same page and important details don’t slip through the cracks.
The benefits of the JotSpot platform come full circle here because partners can themselves continuously refine and improve their methodology and project wikis based on new lessons learned.
Summary
As you can see I’m really excited about our growing Solution Partner program. I love seeing our customers’ diverse goals and designs become reality in short order.
Our partners play a vital role for customers looking to take advantage of JotSpot’s platform features but for various reasons prefer to engage outside specialists. If you’re interested in learning more about working with our partners or becoming a partner, please email us at partners@jot.com.
