More in ACT

Ok, so the transition to ACT 2008 has gone fairly well, but there’s more to do – specifically, I need to figure out the weird and wacky world of multiple email addresses.

Old ACT let you put multiple emails into an email field.  New ACT does not.  So I had to create additional email fields, but now I need to go back and find all the records that used multiple emails and get a report or something so the extra emails can be easily added to the new ACT records.

Hopefully not a big hassle, but it’s on the list.

Ongoing monthly chores

Some things that I have to do every month (Just did them this month).

- WEP’s “Get It Started!” newsletter.  This is usually a several-piece thing:

1. Shoot, [edit, encode, get feedback]+, post the video content.

2. Receive the copy for the stories (usually 2 a month) and enter them into the GIS admin interface (which accepts GeeWiki wiki encoding, which is basically a complete ripoff of Wikimedia’s tags)

3. Make the pictures for feature items and the thumbnails and add those

4. Get the whole thing approved and then pop it onto the live server so the admin site there can generate email code and whatsnot.

The other task is the WGFA Newswire newsletter, which is easier.

1. Receive the word document.

2. Create any necessary images  (I use an image for the callout box quote, because it looks better).  Usually for any other images, the most expedient way is to do screen capture and paste into Photoshop and trim down.

3. Make an email version (all links and images full URLs, not relative, no archive links, and an added link at the top to the web version) and a web version (keep the absolute URLs, but add the archive list at the bottom and remove the link at the top.

4. Send for approval.

5. Once you have a final version, put it up on the wgfa\newswire\newswire.html file, and as newswire_mmyyyy.html (for the archive purposes).

WEP-Media

WEP-Media is a server that was originally a hand-me-down from the FNCE department. It’s never been an ideal box, and has been used for a few years since then as a Windows Media Server, serving various WMVs for WEP websites. Now those videos are mostly FLVs being served by IIS boxes, and we’re down to a handful of media things left, after which the server will be decommissioned. Most of the work here is being done by workstudy (transcoding the few needed old movies over to flv).

Update: It’s shut down.  I’ll find a new purpose for the hardware, or will stack it somewhere for next recycling day.

Application list

A note here that I should create a more detailed application list for Beverley that better captures the extent of what I do than “three programs” (WEP, WGFA, BPC). No more clever condensed brevity/humility.

Let’s try some of the start of this list here.

WEP Web Server

• Content Management System for WEP web pages
• WEP Blog aggregator/RSS.
• Get It Started newsletter – CMS, RSS, and newsletter emailing system, plus user interface to signup for email copies or opt out.
• Entrepreneur-in-Residence application: administrative interface to set up appointment signups, student interface for the actual signing up, printable schedules, resume submission, confirmation and reminder emails.
• Venture Initiation Program application: apply to the VIP. Administrative interface for setting up admissions cycles, multiple-document upload of attachments.
• WEP Resume Book and Career Posts – student upload of resume, administrative approval of students signups/download of resumes for “book” creation, creation of “opportunity” posting.
• WEP Working Paper library – simple interface for upload, search, cross-referencing of working papers by WEP faculty and visiting scholars
• WEP Video -WEP-branded Flash Video player, database of Alumni Impact videos – integrated into Content management system for embedding into WEP website pages, and into Get It Started for multimedia content.
• WEP Pressroom – database of appearances of WEP programs, alums, students, faculty, and staff in the media, plus posting of press releases. Integrated into CMS to allow easy direct embedding of subject-specific press appearance lists (i.e. Venture Initiation Program in the News) in pages.
• VIP Alumni list- simple interface for entering and viewing past student members of VIP program, with current company they’re at and a logo.
• Venture a Guess -Online Trivia contest that runs in the Fall for Penn Undergrads. PennName login, running leaderboard point tally, weekly updates with new questions and content.

BPC Website

• “GeeWiki” content management – Wiki-style page editing, with easy tag-based embedding of links, images, video content, or full RSS feeds from blogs. Administrative interface with permission controls, account management, reserved URLs, etc.
• BPC submission and judging interface – a very big application for the management of a multi-phase Business Plan Competition – administrative interface for setting parameters (deadlines, etc.), a student interface for registering and submitting PDFs (and viewing feedback) and generating status reports and general reports about student participation, a complex random algorithm for assigning judges to submissions blindly while also giving weight to having judges judging plans that match their areas of expertise, judging interface for viewing submissions, rating, and providing feedback.

WGFA Website

• Main site (HTML content)
• Press room (same code as WEP press room – database driven record of press mentions)
• Newswire (monthly newsletter)
• Single Family Office Survey – six-page survey for family offices, with measures to mask identity from collected survey data. Available online in English, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese, displaying monetary amounts in dollars, Euros, Yen, and Yuan. Heavy data validation upon entry to ensure data is usable in analysis. Basic adminstrative interface to track responses and download data as a CSV.

Other applications adminsitrated/managed

* ACT! – contact database

* WEP-AV antivirus server (Symantec AV Corporate Edition 10)

* WEP-ISPACE – development server for research programmers working for MacMillan

* SIZATOLA – ten desktops working in tandem (low-key distributed computing) to do data analysis on patent library information and google

* WEP-MEDIA – Hosts WMV files used on BPC site (we’re moving to FLV, but still have some windows media stuff)