Eureka!

contribute,adobe,cs3,contribute publishing server

Well, here is the promised follow-up on my evaluation of Contribute and its buddy CPS.

I had some initial trouble getting it configured so that it would tie in to our ActiveDirectory server (that way we don’t need to manage users aside from in ActiveDirectory). The problem was that I couldn’t establish a connection between CPS and AD.

My assumption at this point was that CPS as actually seeing AD, but I was providing incorrect credentials. Well, the CPS documentation states that you need to enter your user DN as follows: uid=username, ou=group, dn=server, dn=com. This never worked for connection to AD using Windows Authentication Method, eventhough I customized it to use our schema (meaning instead of uid I used samAuthentication).

Making a call to Adobe Support also proved fruitless, as they will not support unregistered (speak trial) versions of their software. When I mentioned that I was evaluating the software for a company with the possibility of a future purpose, it didn’t even phase them; *Indian accent* “I’m sorry sir, we can only support registered versions of your software.”

Back to the drawing board. Luckily (after hours of searching) I stumbled accross a post that mentioned that the user was connecting using the folliwng user DN: user@server.com. This worked like a charm!

Now that I was up and running, I ran contribute and began administering the users (I could now search active directory) and was able to establish a writer > publisher > admin workflow process. Exactly what we are looking for.

Contribute really is the optimal solution if you want to give your content writers as little or as much leeway as they need, while not sacrificing versatility (which is often lacking in CRMs with admin modules). Our users can now create whatever content they wish withing the parameters we allow them, without fear of them breaking site funcitonality; all the appropriate checks and balances are in place.

The downside is, that is is divorced from your Microsoft development path that comes with using Visual Studio. In our case that is not a real big deal, as we will simply use Adobe line of software for our public company site, and continue using Microsoft line of software for our intranet. This is a clean division of applications that corresponds to the division of responsibility (meaning that the users creating content for the public site aren’t the users managing the intranet).

What CPS provides is a tie-in to AD (user management), change control (versioning up to 99 changes per page), and mist importantly process workflow.

The installation procedure of SBS2003 has not been going as smooth as I had planned. Every time I attempt to install it (must be about 5 times now) there are some issues with the Server Tools or the Server Monitoring Tools not installing correctly. No matter what I seem to do, these always fail. I’m about to give up on it, thinking that it must be my hardware.

Oh, on another note, I ordered a copy of the French localization of SBS2003. Unfortunately, I can’t use it, and if anyone want to purchase it from me, or trade it for an english version, please contact me.

As a complete small business package, Windows Small Business Server 2003 has the following benefits to offer:

• Centralized Storage
• Simple Backup and Recovery
• Simple and Effective Security
• Reliability
• Remote Connectivity
• Colaborative Environment
• Support for Line-of-Business Applications
• Streamlined Configuration Process
• Streamlined Upgrade Process

As our business has employees across the united states, we are a very decentralized environment. This posed very specific problems for communication, delegation, and team management. Centralized storage is an absolute must in our environment. We must have all documents, resources, and information available on demand to any of our team members, so that we can do our job effectively. in our current Linux system that is not the case. We have planned to develop and impliment an online web-based file sharing system where we can upload and store our documents and other resources. Immediate drawbacks are appearent: the system isn’t developed yet, will take time and resources to create, and it isn’t easily integratable into other software and has very limited and specific functionality. Over the next week or two I will evaluate how this feature of SBS2003 works. On paper it sounds like a great solution to our dilema.

More to come …

Well, our company is and a turning point. We are currently faced with the decision to either move to a non-Microsoft environment where we would set up our desktops, servers, and what-not on Linux, or, move to a complete Microsoft environment, where our desktops run on Windows XP, our servers on Windows Server 2003, and our websites are in ASP.NET, etc.

Until now we were trudging along with the goal of running our business in a non-Mocrosoft, say, Linux, environment for the following reasons:

• Cost savings - Linux software is for the most part free and OpenSource.
• Secure server and network environments (less virus’, spyware, etc.).
• Product flexibility.

However, we are comming to realize, much to our dismay, that as much as we dispise what Microsoft stands for (Monopoly, exclusion of competition, market control, etc.), they do make things very easy for businesses. Only as long as you use Microsoft software across the board of course. Here are the drawbacks we are currently facing in our non-Microsoft environment, which let us to our current fork-in-the-road situation:

• Maintenance, development, custom content creation, etc. is all very time-consuming and tedious.
• We would have to create our own team-system for collaboration, file-sharing, etc. that fits our specific needs.
• All our focus and effort spent on creating our internal business infrastructure would dramatically decrease our productivity and not let us accomplish what we started the business for in the first place.

There we now have the pros and cons of the non-Microsoft environment. I am currently evaluating a total Microsoft-oriented environment to see how well it stacks up against the other scenario (Linux), as well as to see if it can provide a all-encompasing package, so that we don’t have to go out and purchase 3rd-party software. This includes the following:

• Windows Small Business Server 2003
• Live Communications Server 2005
• * Windows XP
• * Office Profesional Enterprise 2003
• * Office OneNote 2003
• * Visual Studio 2005

* denotes items installed on users’ desktops, unmarked items are installed on the server.

Over the next couple of posts I will evaluate each of these in comparison to a Linux equivalent that we are currently using. I would also be eager to hear your thoughts and experiences on this subject: please do comment!