As our content is locked behind a login, we need to be sure that only people who are logged in can access it. This is achieved by a couple of simple checks.

1. When the Knowledge Centre is loaded, a script runs that checks it has been loaded within the correct iFrame within our website. If it’s not, the user is redirected to the login page.

The javascript for this is added to the webhelp.js file (around line 106):

//———– init function ————
Kbase.init = function() {

//OUR redirect
if(window.top.location==window.location) {
window.top.location = ‘URLTOYOURIFRAME’;
}

2. If the Knowledge Centre has been loaded in the correct iFrame (in other words the above javascript is happy), the website checks for a cookie (checking for login) and then either loads the Knowledge Centre, or, again, redirects the user to the login page. The javascript for this is standard cookie checking stuff (google will find you a zillion solutions).

And that’s it. Nothing particularly clever, but a useful way to (lightly) protect the content of our Knowledge Centre.

And I’m not the only person that thinks Google Wave is best suited to this kind of collaboration.

I’ve realised that what Google have done is take the best bits from a couple of different communication channels, combine them and add a couple of improvements.

Those channels are email and Wiki, with a hint of instant messaging thrown in for good measure.

The easiest comparison is to email, with threaded conversations the main thrust of a Wave, but as you can edit and ‘interrupt’ any part of an existing message, with that edit viewable to everyone else on the wave, soon you begin to realise that it’s more like a message based Wiki.

The ability to see new messages in real-time adds in a type of instant messaging but I think the value stands in the staggered, traceable, timelined edits of messages. For a collaborative, group project workspace this is wonderful.

I’m still learning Google Wave and as it’s still being developed there are a few quirks and annoyances to be overcome but despite those, so far, they are far outweighed by the benefits.

There are other use cases of Google Wave in action, and if you are interested, I do have a small number of invites left.

Some background first.

We have a developer community website which hosts downloads of our software and all the documentation in PDF format. To make it easier for people to find information in the product documentation, we also host a Webhelp version of each and every document in one master Webhelp system so you can search across the entire thing. It works really well.

To track how the other areas of the website are used, we have a Google Analytics account and the necessary code has been added. For the Webhelp, the code is in both the index.htm and topic.htm files.

But, and this is where the story begins, it doesn’t work properly.

Google Analytics will happily track every visit to the WebHelp system, but it stops there. Any click made within the system is recorded as a click but there is no detail on WHAT topic was viewed. We had hoped to get stats on this to allow us to better focus on the areas of the product people were enquiring about but we are, essentially, blind.

It’s very annoying.

Why is this so? Well I think it’s to do with the way WebHelp is created. It uses a Javascript library called Ext JS which, amongst other things, means that every time you open a topic in the Webhelp, it’s loaded through a Javascript call so Google Analytics never ’sees’ a new HTML page (a new topic) being loaded so doesn’t know what you are viewing.

I think. I’m not 100% sure to be honest.

I’ve logged a somewhat vague Support call with Author-it, and have enlisted the help of our own webmaster. Next step will be to beg and plead with some of the developers for some of their brain power (most of them have a fair bit to spare).

It’s hugely annoying, being so close to what we want but not able to fix it myself, but sometimes you just have to admit defeat.

Of the battle, that is. I WILL win the war!

Despite all the advances of modern technology, I don’t see this changing. In fact I’m such a slave to this way of thinking that I’ll often print off an email if it contains important information that I’ll need at some point in the next day or so.

As such I walk around with a notebook (A4 size, hard bound, company branded) stuffed with ‘important’ sheets of information, with said sheets usually adorn with numerous, equally important, scribbles and notes.

And of course there in lies the problem. As of yet computers cannot match the speed nor convenience of pen/pencil and paper.

It is then a short leap and a step to full on stationery porn. Lusting over Moleskin notepads, gushing over the smooth flow of ink from a Mont Blanc. I’m not quite there yet. Yet.

But what of paper in our profession? The last time I was involved with a print house was over 10 years ago (blimey), and these days whilst we still produce user manuals, they are in the now ubiquitous PDF format. Information these days is largely thought of in electronic terms, yet everyone I know prefers reading novels in ‘old fashioned’ print format.

And I guess that is the problem, whilst the main thing we consume and produce is electronically focussed, many of us are still looking to paper as the medium. Which, if you are a paper junkie like me, is a good and a bad thing.

But mostly bad.

The problem we have is that, whilst the bulk of the work is scheduled against a project plan, there are a myriad of smaller tasks and documentation changes that we need to track. These come in through various channels, our Support team, our ‘Core’ team (who maintain the latest stream of the product), and through our team inbox.

Previously we mirrored the development teams approach and used index cards and a BIG whiteboard but it wasn’t really working for us for a variety of reasons. So I spent a couple of days downloading task tracking applications, and hunting for a web-based application that might meet our needs.

There are many out there and the first thing I realised is that most of the are aimed at the project management set and are very date driven. Most of the tasks we wanted to track aren’t heavily date driven, and so are picked up as and when the team has a some spare time in the project plan.

One of the first applications I found was TeamWorkPM which seemed to fit our needs and then some. However it was still quite over-spec’d for what we had in mind so when I stumbled over No Kahuna it was soon apparent that I’d found a good match.

Importantly, No Kahuna is a task tracking application. Dates do not feature. You simply create a project, add project members, then start creating tasks. You can assign a task to a specific project member (or take it for yourself) and when it’s done, it’s marked as completed.

You can add comments to tasks, which is useful when some tasks may sit in the list for a while so you can build out a level of information for when they are finally actioned.

All very simple, it worked well enough in our short trial that I’m happy to shell out $7 a month to get a private project (not visible to the public). If you are looking for an online, lightweight task tracker, check out No Kahuna.