MobiS - Personalized Mobility Services for energy efficiency and security
through advanced Artificial Intelligence techniques – FP7 ICT- 318452Deliverable D8.1 -MobiS Web Site and discussion platform
Seventh Framework Programme
Theme 3:
Information And Communication Technologies
Challenge 6:
ICT for Safety and Energy Efficiency in Mobility
Grant Agreement Number 318452
Deliverable D8.1MobiS Web Site and discussion platform
Workpackage 8
Dissemination and exploitation
Leading Partner: INSIEL
Security Restriction: PU (Public)
01/03/2013
Version 0.3
Versioning
Version / Description / Author / Date / Comments0.1 / First circulating version / Paola Lupieri / 28/02/2013
0.2 / Updates and corrections / Paola Lupieri / 01/03/2013
0.3 / Final / Margherita Forcolin / 01/03/2013
Contributors
Name / Organization / NotesAnnexes
No / File name / Title1
2
Table Of Contents
1Terms and conventions used in the document
2Introduction
2.1Objectives of the document
2.2Results documented in the Deliverable
3The MobiS website
3.1Structure and content of the MobiS website
3.1.1MobiS public section
3.1.2MobiS private section
3.2User management
3.3Software environment
3.4MobiS on a mobile device
4MobiS discussion platform
4.1Rationale for a discussion platform
4.2MobiS group on LinkedIn
Table Of Figures
Figure 1MobiS website Home page
Figure 2The News & Events page on the MobiS website
Figure 3User login in the Partners Area
Figure 4User profile in the Partners Area
Figure 5File browser
Figure 6MobiS website Home page on a Samsung Galaxy S2
Executive summary
This documents describes the structure and content of the MobiS website that constitutes the D8.1 deliverables. In particular this document contains:
- Chapter 1 refers to Therms and convension used in the document;
- Chapter 2 contains the introduction and objectives of the deliverable
- Chapter 3 contains the description of the website
- Chapter 4 reports on the Linked-in group
1Terms and conventions used in the document
The following acronyms and abbreviations are used in the present document:
TERM / DEFINITIONCMS / Content Management System - a software to handle the relation among structure, content and graphical appearance of a website
2Introduction
2.1Objectives of the document
Deliverable 8.1 describes the activities performed within the Workpackage 8 “Impact creation” in task 8.1 “Dissemination activities”. This is the first document released within the task and describes the initial efforts towards dissemination, principally focused around the realization of the MobiS website, hosting information on the project and on the related events.
2.2Results documented in the Deliverable
This Deliverable describes the structure and content of the MobiS website.
In particular, it will present:
- The structure and content of the MobiS website
- The users management
- The software environment beneath the development and functioning of the website
- The accessibility of the website on a mobile device
Moreover, it will introduce MobiS discussion group on Linked-in social network.
3The MobiS website
The MobiS website is accessible at and has been developed with a dual role:
- Public, as a dissemination tool: to provide visibility to the MobiS objectives and achievements and to advertise the project-related events.
- Private, as a discussion platform: to provide the Consortium partners with an instrument to gather, exchange and organize documents of strategic importance for the project activities, events and discussions.
This dual nature is reflected in the structure of the website, including both public and private, Consortium-restricted sections.
The following subchapters describe these sections and their content, supporting the description with snapshots of how they are visible on a computer screen.
The chapter continues with an overview of the website users definition and management as well as of the software environment underlying the development of the website.
Eventually, given the always more common use of mobile devices to access websites, a few snapshots are provided to show how the MobiS website can be seen on a smartphone.
3.1Structure and content of the MobiS website
As mentioned above, the structure of the MobiSwebsite can be divided into a public and a private section. We will now see them separately.
3.1.1MobiS public section
The public section includes the content visible to everyone who accesses the MobiS website online. It includes the following pages:
- Home
- The project
- Public documents
- News & events
- Contacts
3.1.1.1Home
The Home page of the MobiS website provides a brief overview of the project goals and an excerpt of the three most recent news and events involving the Consortium. Moreover, a clickable image collects the logos of the Consortium partners and links back to their own websites.
Figure 1MobiS website Home page
The green horizontal bar below the website title hosts the main menu, with links to the other public sections. By clicking on “Partners Area”, a user is asked to insert username and password to authenticate and enter in the private section of the website.
The feed icon (in the Figure above, just over the Recent news box on the right) links to the RSS code for feed aggregators such as Google Reader. In this way readers can receive alerts of new content published in the MobiS website (the public section).
3.1.1.2The project
This page provides an overview of the project objectives and tasks, more extended than the abstract accessible on the Home page.
3.1.1.3 Public documents
This page will collect project documents of public nature classified on the basis of the document type (flyer, deliverable, presentation or poster) and date. Interested users can download the listed documents by clicking on their name. Public deliverables will be uploaded here upon approval by the Reviewers.
3.1.1.4News & Events
This page collects and archives all the news and events related to MobiS, including the organization and participation to conferences and to internal technical meetings.
Interested readers can subscribe only to this page of the website through the dedicated RSS feed.
Figure 2The News & Events page on the MobiS website
3.1.1.5Contacts
This page provides the reader with contact information about the project Coordinator, including address and email).
Also the webmaster email is provided, in case a user had troubles surfing the website.
3.1.2MobiS private section
A member of the Consortium, the EC Officer and the project Reviewers can access the private section of the MobiS website by inserting their credentials (username and password) in the login area (“Partners Area” in the main menu).
Figure 3User login in the Partners Area
If the user forgets his/her password, he/she can click on “Request new password” and will receive via email a link valid for a one-time login, upon which he/she will be asked to re-set the password.
Once he/she is authenticated, he/she will see the own profile page (see Figure below) and access the links to modify it.
The user is now entered in the private section of the website and while still seeing all the pages of the public section, he/she now has many more functionalities, among which:
- Access the File browser
- Add content to the website
- Download the Contact Sheet: an excel file containing the contact details of the project partners
- Log Out: close the session as authenticated user
Figure 4User profile in the Partners Area
3.1.2.1File browser
A direct link on the user profile section opens the file browser page, a repository of project documents shared among the project partners to support their activities and facilitate the exchange of material of common interest. Specific folders for collecting deliverables under review are also shared with the Officer and the Reviewers, who can download these files.
Project partners can search, upload, rename or remove documents in the repository, create and edit new directories.
Figure 5File browser
The documents hosted in the repository are not visible to non-authenticated (and non-authorized) users. Even if they learn the path to the file in the repository, an error message would warn them that they lack the permission to access the file.
3.1.2.2Add content to the website
From the Navigation menu (see Figure 4 above), a project partner can add two types of content to the public section of the website: a news or a public document, that will be accessible to the public in the respective pages.
3.2User management
Five types of users are considered for the MobiS website and they access different levels of content and functionalities on the basis of the permissions assigned to their role:
- Anonymous user
- Project partner
- Officer
- Reviewer
- Administrator
An anonymous user is anyone who accesses the website without authentication. This user can only access the public section of the website.
The project partner can access both the private and public section of the website and can add or modify content as news and public documents.
Officers and reviewers can access a subset of the file browser documents and download them (Deliverables).
The Administrator has all the permissions in terms of content, users, layout and structure creation and management and is in charge of the maintenance operations.
3.3Software environment
The MobiSwebsite has been developed with the Drupal CMS ( version 7.17 (now updated to version 7.20), based on a MySql 5.1.52 database, PHP 5.3.3, a Webserver Apache 2.2.15 and running on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.2 hosted at the Insiel premises.
The choice was motivated by both performance and quality factors.
Drupal is a highly used open source CMS, actively developed and maintained, which ensures the presence of constant improvements and the quick discovery and resolution of bugs. Drupal is highly configurable, flexible and scalable, which supports the realization of complex, dynamic websites. It is built around the concept of modularity and provides a set of tools to organize and structure content, administer users and adapt the look&feel of the website both on desktop and on mobile devices.
3.4MobiS on a mobile device
The graphical layout of the website has been developed by keeping an eye on the accessibility of the website on mobile devices. These devices are characterized by reduced screen dimensions and the use of fingers to tap (click) on icons, scroll the page etc.
For this reason the layout of a website is normally re-organized for mobile devices in order to offer a good reading and browsing experience to the mobile user. This regards in particular the disposition of text and images in the page, typically put in a single column, and the size and shape of menus, that must allow a user to select a voice of the menu with a finger.
The following figure aggregates three screenshots showing how the website is rendered on a smartphone Samsung Galaxy S2.
Figure 6MobiS website Home page on a Samsung Galaxy S2
4MobiS discussion platform
4.1Rationale for a discussion platform
A discussion platform is a virtual place for gathering or sharing people opinions, questions&answers and possibly reach a consensus on issues under debatement. As such, it constitutes an extremely useful tool for projects development, especially when the partners are in different, far away locations. In fact, they do not impose any constraint in terms of geographical or temporal participation to the discussion – besides those of a deadline for reaching a conclusion - and they only require an Internet connection and a computer or mobile device, something we probably all consider essential for our job routine.
For MobiS, a discussion platform will be mostly needed during the validation activities, rather than during the initial planning and development phases, where a large number of stakeholders both inside and outside of the Consortium will be called on providing their viewpoint and feedback on the realised platform and services. This means, although we are now dealing with the establishment of a MobiS discussion platform, it will be probably used mostly in later phases of the project life.
In the web2.0 era, there is a plethora of online environments for discussing, chatting, videoconferencing, most of which are free: social networks such as Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn and VoiP communication systems such as Skype are possibly the most common ones.
At the moment we have defined a group onLinkedIn as this social network seems the most suitable to satisfy MobiS needs, in fact:
- LinkedIn is free and allows creating groups of discussions among its members. Groups can be either open (anyone can join) or closed (LinkedIn members who receive an invitation can join)
- It supports creating surveys and expressing the own agreement or interest to a conversation with flags and like
- Anyone in the group has access to the discussion. If part of the discussion is specifically dedicated to some members of the group, a subgroup with those members can be created and the conversation can be shared only among them.
- Members of the group can be nominated as moderators and as such they can intervene and block undesired or inappropriate comments. This is important in open groups only, where it is possible that some participants abuse of the discussion environment for the own interests or other reasons disconnected with the MobiS objectives.
In the future possibly also FB and twitter accounts will be generated for dissemination purposes.
4.2MobiS group on LinkedIn
We have established a MobiS group on LinkedIn, accessible at
The group is currently closed and only the Consortium members have been invited. The group is owned by the Coordinator, Insiel SpA.
The stated mission of the group, as visible on the group description, is as follows:
“This groups collects the partners and stakeholders involved in the planning and development of the MobiS project activities (
Aim of this group is to provide its members with a discussion platform to collect feedback and validate the project results.”
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