CoSolvent Community Server Features

CCS users can upload and share many different types of documents, audio and video files. The basic choices are listed below and you can see a detailed list in our online help.

• For video files (including SWF animations), the server will process and display them as Flash movies.

• For PDF and HTML files, the server will display them in a readable form if the user has Acrobat Reader installed.

• For all other files, the server will store them on the server so the user can later download them and view them locally.

Most of the video clips on the CCS demo site were recorded with simple, convenient and inexpensive cameras or software:

• Screen Capture Movie (Screencasting) Software - This class of software (e.g., BBFlashback and Camtasia ) records a movie of everything that occurs on the computer screen and any commentary that is spoken into a microphone. This has become the 'go to' solution for quick, easy sharing of computer howtos.
• Solid State Camcorders - A $100 camera (e.g., RCA EZ210) can record 2 to 8 hours of video and fit in a shirt pocket.
• Hard Drive Camcorders - Priced in the $500 to $1000 range, these cameras can record many hours of high quality video on their internal hard drives. With a tripod, these make excellent movies in any office or plant setting.

CCS automatically renders many types of uploaded video clips into 3 different bandwidth versions.

• The default settings can be set for each community and authorized users can change the settings as needed.

• Settings can even be varied across folders and items.

• You can apply settings for broadband users and different choices for users with dial-up or in remote areas.

For most types of movie, CCS generates a small interactive Flash preview 'thumbnail'. A user can scan a folder of movie clips and get a quick sense of each movie's contents. This can greatly reduce search time.

Click and hover the mouse on the thumbnail image to the left to see the preview.

iPOV has integrated our powerful CoSolvent Flash Video Player into the CoSolvent Community Server.

• CCS can display several types of Flash video content that sites such as YouTube™ will not allow you to display. You can see the details on our Flash Player website.

• iPOV will continue to integrate and extend the CoSolvent Flash Video Player's role in CCS. This will allow us to introduce new video handling and display features that combine the server's strengths with the rich capabilities of the player running in the user's Web browser. See our Roadmap for more details.

CCS uses a folder structure that resembles the view from Windows Explorer. It's a tried-and-true solution that is instantly familiar to both novices and experts:

• Windows-style menu system

• Windows Explorer menu tree

• List and Grid (thumbnail) views

• Tooltips from the file titles and descriptions

• Customizable file and folder thumbnails

• File meta-information

CCS provides convenient tools to help users maintain their collections of online content:

• Re-arrange the order of files and sub-folders within a folder with a simple graphical interface.

• Move files and folders anywhere on the system.

• Create 'copies' of files that share the original data file.

• Preserve descriptive information when you upload a new file to replace an existing one.

Authorized users can add text, graphics and links to any folder and page. The system supports HTML formatting, but we generally recommend that the site be limited to a smaller, safer formatting dialect (a subset of BBCode). With these tools, users can add the following items:

• Text formatting (emphasis, color, and font size)
• Paragraphs and bulleted or numbered lists
• Insert images
• Web links and linked images
• Optionally, iPOV can design custom fields into the theme. This example is on our demo site. Click on the zoom functions to see how it works.

CCS gives the site 'sponsor' a powerful system of access and permission management, The Sponsor can control any combination of the following elements:

• Allowable actions can be assigned to folders, subfolder trees and specific items within a given folder.
• Individual users can be permitted or restricted from specific actions on specific folders, folder trees or items.
• Individuals can be assigned togroups and groups can be permitted or restricted from specific actions on specific folders, subfolder trees or items.

Public folders allow open access by the 'public' in a controlled manner.

• Each item in a public folder has a unique web address (URL). Each 'public' web address only lets the viewer see that one item. The viewer cannot see other items in the public folder, nor can they see information about the other folders or items on the Community Server.

• With public folders, authorized members can share files with (invited) public viewers without having to arrange for special user accounts.

• Typically, iPOV will designate Public folders with a distinctive color or design (in this case yellow) so users will recognize the folder's significance.

Have you ever wanted to share a video or large pdf with someone outside the firewall, or someone inside another strict firewall?

Now you can.

• Every folder and item in the site has an associated link to open an email editor.

• If the user enters the recipient's email address and desired notes, an email with a correctly formatted link and display instructions is sent directly from the CCS server to the intended correspondent.

• Alternatively, a user can open a 'get page link' menu and copy and paste the address into their standard email client.

Sharing a video or pdf with a colleague takes just a few seconds.

Authorized users can subscribe to receive emails about important events:

• notification that a file was added to specific folders

• notification that files or folders were deleted

• notification that new comments were posting or replies were made to existing comments

• subscriptions can cover any set of individual files, folders, or entire folder trees

• the emails are sent automatically as soon as the event occurs

Users can add written comments and reply to other users' prior comments:

• comments can be posted in every folder and for each individual file or item.

• users can engage in conversations about specific videos or files with little chance of confusion

• users can use the commments to discuss the content of videos or files

• the comments and responses are retained in the community record.

Note: iPOV has big plans for the commenting features in future releases. Please see our roadmap and stay tuned.

• Users can add time-synchronized, XML scripts to any movie to serve assubtitles.

• This can serve as a low-cost way to add foreign language subtitles.

• iPOV plans to expand the capability of these scripts to control selected features of the movies to make them more interactive.

• Stay tuned.

• The CCS search engine can find documents and video clips based on the text in their titles, tags, comments or on the pages and folders that contain them.

Users can add tags to any content to make it easier to locate it with the search engine.

• Access help for all aspects of CCS.

• Tutorial videos are provided in the Help system for many typical tasks.

• At extra cost, the Help files can be customized and re-branded for a specific community.

CCS can be customized to display in many different languages. Currently iPOV is largely finished with several non-English deployments:

• Spanish
• Russian
• Chinese (traditional)
• Chinese (simplified)

iPOV plans to expand support to other languages as time and client interest dictate.

Language support applies only to the CCS web interface software. If you want to translate content that has been submitted to the server by users, you will have to arrange for translation or, optionally, submit it to iPOV's video translation service.

• iPOV supplies all of the source code for the CCS according to the underlying open source licenses.

• All iPOV-created code is supplied to the client on non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, perpetual license.

• iPOV is actively investigating making its own contributions open source, but has not yet settled on the best way to do that.

iPOV hosts the CCS server software at Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud. iPOV manages the setup, configuration, ongoing maintenance, and upgrades, while the Client is responsible for the community policies, participants and content (optionally with iPOV help). There is no need to assign scarce IT resources to CCS maintainance.

• CCS-specific security and management policies are described in iPOV's Hosting and Management Plan
• General server security and management policies are described in Amazon Web Services' Security Overview
• iPOV will give each client the master encrypted access key(s) to the Amazon Web Service account that hosts their site(s). This will allow client IT staff to take full control of the site at any time.