Featured KnowledgeTree Community Project: "iNETAutocompletion" by Pradip Patel, iNETProcess

Damien Williams's picture
by Damien Williams on Tue, 18 Aug 2009

Once again, it's time to showcase yet another awesome KnowledgeTree Community Project! Every couple of months, a KnowledgeTree community project will be featured to acknowledge the outstanding contributions made by members of the KnowledgeTree community.

This time, I interviewed Pradip Patel from iNETProcess, about their project, iNETAutocompletion.

DW: Briefly, describe this project and what it entails?
The project name is iNETAutocompletion. This plugin simplifies assigning tags to a document and gives users the freedom to select from available tags, which are suggested automatically. As a result, the user does not need to visit the ‘Dashboard’ to identify tags that have been previously used.

For example, when user begins to specify a tag, after typing two characters, a box will open suggesting existing tags that matches the tag being typed. It is extremely useful when adding or editing the document tags and it's completely Web 2.0 compliant.

DW: What inspired you to create this project?
First of all, we are developing plugins because, as KnowledgeTree partners and resellers for over two years, we enjoy working with the product, and developing additional functionality to support the KnowledgeTree ecosystem. After working with a few clients and identifying their needs, the company has decided to create this plugin that, we hope, will help simplify users' everyday tasks.

DW: What business problems were you looking at solving specifically with this project?
This plugin helps improve efficiency and productivity by reducing the time it takes to assign previously used tags to new documents. The plugin also reduces tag redundancy by creating a clean collection of tags that can be used by the entire business.

DW: What other KnowledgeTree projects have you been involved with?
iNETDOCS: The iNETDocs module, developed by iNET Process, offers the power of the KnowledgeTree Document Management System into SugarCRM. iNETDocs connects to KnowledgeTree using the user's SugarCRM account.

iNETTagsManagement: This plugin provides the functionality to edit, delete, and merge tags. It adds a new link in the administration section of KnowledgeTree to handle all document tags, display the count for each tag, and to allow you to find and delete all orphaned tags.

iNETLDAP: By default, KnowledgeTree's LDAP plugins allow administrators to add users from a directory. However, iNETLDAP overrides this plugin and adds the following features:

  1. Adding groups from LDAP
  2. Synchronize user's information (phone, email, etc …) from LDAP
  3. Restricting the login to specific LDAP groups
  4. Allowing mass import of users and groups
  5. Mapping the LDAP fields with KnowledgeTree fields

iNETThumbnail: When users add any document into KnowledgeTree, iNETThumbnail automatically creates thumbnails of the first page of the document. User can see that thumbnail image when he/she views document details. By clicking on the thumbnail, the image of the respective document can be seen in a pop up. It is also possible to see a gallery of thumbnails for a folder or from the version history of the document.

DW: What are the benefits that you experience from your involvement with KnowledgeTree?
It is a wonderful experience to develop these plugins for KnowledgeTree. The framework is powerful and we can easily extend KnowledgeTree's functionality. It also gives us an opportunity to study the application closely and to add even more features to the KnowledgeTree application.

DW: What would you say to encourage additional community participation?
As an open source community, we need to work together. If you're an expert in your field, don't be afraid to share your experiences. The open source philosophy and power is based on the involvement of its community members. We also want to thank all the community members who have helped us improve our plugins, by declaring bugs and discussing issues in the KnowledgeTree forums.

 

DW: What would you like to develop next for KnowledgeTree?
We are currently working on iNETKTReports, which offers very customizable reports with Jasper Reports.

DW: With KnowledgeTree 4.0 on the road-map, which KnowledgeTree feature would you most like to see included in the next major release?)
KnowledgeTree is a great document management system, but we are experiencing performance issues with large amounts of documents. In our experience, certain features such as search and bulk actions do not work optimally when handling masses of documents. We would also like some actions simplified. For example, when you want to delete a document, three steps are necessary. It would be great to reduce that to one step. So, we are expecting more…Ajax! DW: Pradip, a lot of these performance issues will be addressed in KnowledgeTree 3.7. Watch this space!