Document Repository management

Document management is difficult, and past strategies (de facto, not well-thought-out) have not worked for more than about 3 years at a time.

To avoid future problems:

• Use PDF files only when:
  • the document is intended to be printed, and the printed version needs to be in the same layout format as the original document,
  • or, the document is historical in nature and some reasonable assurance of originality is needed.^[1]
• As much as possible, convert documents into WordPress pages (copy/paste)
• Make certain the "print" version of the theme/template prints cleanly.^[1a]
• Convert PowerPoint presentations to web pages - not all visitors can view PPTs!

We have documents that need to be password protected. The University WP does not have viable password protection.

Features (advantages over the media library):

• Documents in the Repository can be sorted/categorized/subsetted
• Automatically created links/listings that update when another document is added to the category
• Revised version uploaded "over" the previous documents replace old documents at the same address, even if the document has a different file name.
• Previous versions of documents are retained (but not too easily accessible!)

How to

Document Repository - "Working it out" documentation

Instructions for general documents that need to be limited to general groups (students/faculty/etc). For more specific access restrictions and higher security, see "Special Cases" further down in this document.

Examples of content:

• Exam Archive
• Faculty Meeting Minutes
• Registrar info - bulletins, draft schedules
• Faculty CVs ??

Taxonomy

• Business Processes - only "College of Law" for now
• Division = office or department owning or using the document
• Audience = who is intended to read (faculty, students, staff, public) < not access restriction!

NOTE: this plugin requires all three taxa to be set, otherwise the document will be placed into "draft" status.

Also, Upload *first*, then enter other info. Uploading a document resets the form, wiping out any unsaved meta data already entered.

Editing/Posting instructions

Exam Archive

• https://insidelaw.gsu.edu/wp-admin/ - log in
• Select "Documents/Add New" from admin left nav
• Upload file via  icon above content block*
• Access restriction = "student_read"
• set Title = Law xxxx - Prof - Semester
• set Content Block = Class  - Desc (keep it short!)
• Set Tags = "exam archive"(select existing tag) (?more? each class?)
• Set Taxonomy:
  • Business Process = College of Law
  • Division = Law Library
  • Audience = Students
• Publish - check at https://insidelaw.gsu.edu/exam-archive/

Faculty Meeting Minutes

• https://insidelaw.gsu.edu/wp-admin/ - log in
• Select "Documents/Add New" from admin left nav
• Upload file via icon above content block*
• Access restriction = "faculty_read"
• set Title = YYYY-MM-DD  (for sorting!!)
• set Content Block = summary / keywords - Attendees
• Set Tags = "faculty meeting minutes" (select existing tag)
• Set Taxonomy:
  • Business Process = College of Law
  • Division = College of Law
  • Audience = Faculty
• Publish - check at https://insidelaw.gsu.edu/faculty-meeting-minutes/

* Note: the button is only a non-intuitive "star" by default, have swapped in a button reading "Add Document" via a rewrite in the nginx config file

Special Cases

Group File Access plugin

For short-term, higher security documents, such as for hiring committees, etc., we will be using the "Groups File Access" plugin. This is found under the "Groups" admin menu entry. The "Help" tab of this admin screen has more instructions and a link to the full documentation.

Note that these files can be accessed by outside parties (i.e. not logged in) via an access key. Note also that this plugin allows bulk import of files and can place limits on the number of times a file can be accessed by each user.

BuddyPress Documents

We are currently evaluating BuddyPress and will likely use it to distribute documents to individual classes and other small groups.

Further notes

Considerations and Solutions under evaluation:

• Groups File Access - on CoL insidelaw Intranet
• No one Document management plugin does all we need - especially how to list out a sub-set/category of documents in a linked list. - *Finally* realized this would perhaps take two different plugins - one to manage the documents and another to display the lists.
• Document managers - Document Repository (or WP Document Revisions? need further testing - no categories or tags!) for the docs and  Advanced Post List (APL) for showing links to documents. APL can even show posts of different types mixed into one list! I don’t think Groups File Access creates a post for listing with APL, but still may be useful for other purposes.
• Other resources repositories, such as exam and PantherPrint software. Do not want to allow .exe and Mac executables to be uploaded to insidelaw, since there may be multiple, possibly inexperienced editors with access (allowed upload file types are set globally)

Not intuitive, but possible solutions:

• Groups File Access for class materials, faculty meeting minutes and other documents that need to be restricted to already-defined groups
• Document Repository (or WP Document Revisions?) for collaborative work and files that need more customized restrictions AND for files that will be periodically updated, so versioning is important.

Document / video / image storage

• lawmedia.gsu.edu was intended to be a Content Delivery Network (CDN) - it does not have "Single Sign On" (SSO) - i.e. when logegd in to insidelaw, you rare not also signed in to lawmedia - however, I have set up lawmedia with a simple form of (easily defeated^[2]) security - documents and videos are only availabe if linked from a "...law.gsu.edu" web site.
• Later WP versions have better support for embedded videos - see https://lawmaint.gsu.edu/test-2/ for examples