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HomeHomeOur CommunityOur CommunityGeneral Discuss...General Discuss...Best way to store/represent company policies?Best way to store/represent company policies?
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10/9/2007 12:35 AM
 

Hi all,

I am developing an intranet using DotNetNuke that, among many other functions, must house all of the company's policies, procedures & forms.

The forms, that's easy. I'll convert all of the current forms from various sources (html, PDF, DOC, RTF) into PDF files and then upload them using a documents module (unless anyone else can suggest a better way... the only limitation of this is you can't really create sections and subsections without using lots of different modules and categories...).

The policies & procedures is a little more tricky. Again, they come from a wide variety of sources, but I'm happy to go through and manually convert them to simple, clean HTML. This will mean they can all take on a uniform look (i.e. using <h1>, <h2>, <h3> etc tags). I've already begun this and it doesn't take me long at all. I thought about just having a page for policies and creating a Text/HTML module for each policy, but it is not easy to arrange them on the page, and you cannot create sections or subsections. I also considered creating a separate page for each of the policies, with just a Text/HTML module, and then have a main policies page that links to each one. This would be a major PITA having to manually create and maintain the links though.

The reason I don't want to just create PDF's and upload them is that you cannot search through the content of the document. Also, the 'Documents' module is not the nicest thing to work with if you want to create sections and subsections.

 

Can anyone suggest a better way to do this? If I was able to use at least single-level sections on the page, I could just use Text/HTML modules and set them to be Minimized by default, but as far as I can tell even single levels is not possible. I guess what I would ideally like would be a tree-structure, and each policy is placed on the tree somewhere. Clicking on the tree would open up that policy, be it in a new window or the current contentpane.

 

 

 
New Post
10/9/2007 7:56 PM
 

Wiki?

 
New Post
10/9/2007 8:19 PM
 

Sorry all, I've already solved my own problem. I'm using a Repository module with the 'articles' skin... this allows me to simply paste in the HTML, assign categories, and search through policies perfectly.

 
New Post
10/10/2007 12:09 PM
 

The Wiki module might work as the person above mentioned.

Otherwise I would recommend the following.

1.) Build a custom module that has categories for grouping your forms. (If you need some consultation on this, send me an e-mail, I have built similar items before)
2.) Build sub pages for each of your policies, then on the main landing page use the "Child Links" module from Ventrian (http://www.ventrian.com/Products/Modules/ChildLinks.aspx) or a similar module.  This will automatically build that landing page for you!

Now, you have deeper needs it might be worthy of looking at other options, and possibly a custom solution for the second item as well.


-Mitchel Sellers
Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, DNN MVP
CEO/Director of Development - IowaComputerGurus Inc.
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Visit mitchelsellers.com for my mostly DNN Blog and support forum.

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New Post
10/10/2007 2:26 PM
 

I know at some level it sounds appealing to have them all converted, but this is not exactly scalable, especially if someone else is doing the document creation.  Also, a PDF, in my industry, is a lot more secure as you can lock it down quite a bit.

My experience in our corporate Intranet environment taught me that the Repository module is a great way to go for this.  People will have to click a link and download/open the files, but you maintain the original document created by the document owner, you can use any file type, etc.  Now, clearly this does not permit full text searching, but the descriptions of each document ARE searchable.

Plus, all of the categories >> sub-categories features functionality in the Repository module is just awesome, along with being fully templateable.  HA!  A new word, templateable!


Chad Voller -- MCP, DNN Aficionado
Leapwise Media
View my View Chad Voller's profile on LinkedIn
 
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