Content Hosting Project Plan



Content Migration and Hosting Project:

Tool Requirements

February 19, 2003

VERSION 1.0

Version Control

|Version |Date |Summary of Changes |Change file name |

| |Approved | | |

|1.0 |2/19 |Original Document |N/A |

1. Document Purpose and Outline 1

2. Publishing Tool Requirements 1

2.1. Single Logon 1

2.2. Workflow 1

2.3. Real-time Posting 1

2.4. Business Rule Support 1

2.5. Source field 1

2.5.1. Source Field Options 1

2.5.2. Business Rules Associated with Source Field 1

2.6. Category field: 2

2.7. Country grouping field 2

2.8. Country field 2

2.9. Related articles field (Search Related Capability) 2

2.10. SITREPS and Combat Reports 3

2.10.1. Displayed Fields 3

2.10.2. SITREP HEADLINES 3

2.11. Record Names (slugs) 3

2.12. Scheduler 3

2.13. Content "Push" (Second Tier Requirement) 3

2.14. Media Partners Support 3

2.15. Field Configuration 4

2.16. Increased Field Area 4

2.17. Key Words 5

2.18. Hyperlinks Support (Second Tier Requirement) 5

3. Site Management Tools Requirements (Webmaster Tools) 6

3.1. Promotion Support 6

3.2. Component Generation 6

4. Site Search Requirements 7

5. Appendix A: Country Groupings 8

6. Appendix B: Current Stratfor .biz Home Page Components 15

7. Appendix C: Keywords 20

Document Purpose and Outline

The purposes of this document is to establish requirements for modification of certain tools required to complete the Stratfor-ECNext Content Migration and Hosting Project (CMH Project). As part of this project, ECNext has previously developed publishing and site management tools. These tools have been dormant and no longer meet Stratfor’s needs as they are. As part of this project, these tools will be modified to meeting Stratfor’s current needs. The requirements for each tool are included in the appropriate section of this document. As appropriate, PowerPoint files will be created and maintained as appendices to these requirements.

Publishing Tool Requirements

These requirements are written from the perspective of modification to existing tools. Therefore, it is incumbent on the reader to be somewhat familiar of the current tools capabilities in order to completely interpret this document. To expedite this project and keep this document succinct, no attempt is made to fully specify the tool, but to specify changes which must be made to the tool in order to satisfy Stratfor’s current needs. If un-stated, it is assumed the tool will maintain current functionality unless a modification to that functionality is stated in these requirements.

Some requirements are considered desirable, but not required for completion of this project. A section called “second tier requirements” is included. If a second tier requirements is fulfilled as part of this requirement, they will be annotated as completed for the purposes of QA (which will be testing against these requirements).

1 Single Logon

A user will have a single logon to the Administration Tool which will grant access to the publishing tool as established by the rights of the user in the Administration Tool. No separate logon to the publishing tool will be required, and administration of the publishing tool access will be managed within the administration section of the Administration Tool.

2 Workflow

Progression of the work flow queues should be writers, editors, and copyeditors in that order. Only copyeditors will be allow to publish articles to the web.

3 Real-time Posting

The publishing tool will support “Near-time” posting, meaning the system will process the posting on a transaction basis, pushing the single article to the content site on command as activated in the publishing tool (versus posting via a “ batch” or “sweep” basis which posts to the site at pre-defined intervals). (Other articles already in the queue for loading may cause the posting to be delayed on the order of magnitude of minutes, thus the term "near-time" vice "real-time".)

4 Business Rule Support

The publishing tool will support the business rules for publishing to the content site as defined in Appendix B.

5 Source field

1 Source Field Options

Options should be Biz, Com, Info, Terrorism. Stratfor will have the ability to modify (delete or add to) the selection available in this field. This ability may be included in this tool, or a separate tool.

(TBD: Would these options be better if they described the subscription level versus the current site. I.e., Biz = Premium, Info = Basic?)

2 Business Rules Associated with Source Field

The publishing tool shall support the current business rules associated with the use of Source Field.

The business rules currently in place mandate that premium subscribers (.biz site) gets everything published, the .com site mimics appearance of Biz in real-time but links navigate to special "buy" pages, and the Basic Service (.info site) gets only content specifically designated for Basic service (either in tandem with or following publication to Biz).

6 Category field:

Options for this field shall be General Analysis, Geopolitical Diary, Global Market Brief, Strategic Markets, Sitrep, Combat Report (which would behave like Sitrep), Quarterly Forecast, Annual Forecast, Decade Forecast, Intelligence Guidance, Special Report, Net Assessment, Stratfor Weekly. This should be a multi-select field.

Stratfor shall have the ability to add to this field with the provision that other categories shall behave exactly as these current categories behave. This ability may be included in this tool, or a separate tool.

7 Country grouping field

At launch, ECNext will support Stratfor in adding country groups and the countries within the groups. These groups and the countries within these groups are maintained in Appendix A.

Second Tier Requirements

Stratfor will have the ability to add groups and manage countries within the group. The tool to perform this may be within the tool, or in a separate tool.

8 Country field

Ensure it reflects "Serbia and Montenegro" as opposed to "Yugoslavia".

9 Related articles field (Search Related Capability)

To efficiently use this field, Stratfor requires the ability to search all articles previously published. This capability will be readily available from within the tool. The search capability will also be included on the content site (for the end user) and will include the following functionality:

• Analysis wants to search mainly by:

Boolean

Country

Region

Date

• IT requirements for search engine are:

Full-text searches

Case-sensitive searches

“regular expressions” – technical sense

date ranges

• To support the site search, the following fields must be added to category

Add “politics”, “economics” and “security”.

TBD: Other metadata may be needed based upon the final selected search screen designs.

TBD: Mockups for the Search Screens implied here are needed.

Second Tier Requirements

Search within quotes

10 SITREPS and Combat Reports

1 Displayed Fields

For SITREPS and Combat Reports, all fields will not appear within the tool except the following:

• Source

• Headline

• Body

• Country groupings/country

• Publishing date and time

2 SITREP HEADLINES

The tool will include a visual indicator to aid the determination of character-count. This visual indicator may be a static visual cue on the tool.

11 Record Names (slugs)

Each article must have a unique identifier. These are called record names (or "slugs). The publishing tool will facilitate the automatic system generation of slug.

TBD - The Slugs will be logical and sequential (e.g., ARTICLETYPE_YYMMDD####, or some other pattern to be defined).

12 Scheduler

Default setting for publication time should be current time and date. Stratfor will have the ability to change this for pieces that need to post at a pre-set, future time or date. There will be no 15-minute posting sweeps on the scheduler. Instead, the system will use "real-time" posting at the designated time in the schedule (i.e., same functionality as presented in paragraph 2.3.

13 Content "Push" (Second Tier Requirement)

Stratfor has removed one option from the "category" field, the option for Free Intelligence Brief, as this relates to reuse of existing content rather than a specific product set in its own right. With their new site design, Stratfor now has some other "content push" options as well -- specifically, "Suggested Readings" and hopefully, in the near future, "a la carte" options they could promo on the dot-info site (these may be linked together). They desire a tool that tracks their choices for "suggested readings," FIBs, etc., but this may or may not be part of the publishing tool proper.

(TBD: Stratfor and ECNext should explore in more depth these requirements and options for satisfying them.)

14 Media Partners Support

Currently, Stratfor shares 2 pieces/day with the Economist Intelligence Unit and 3 per week with Fox News. The sharing process is automated under the current publishing system. These pieces are tagged with the appropriate metadata during the posting process, which ports them to a separate Web page. For example, anything tagged eiu shows up on this page . The media partners go to their appropriate page ("outlet"), and using a secure log on, down load the appropriate articles that have been published to their outlet.

The pub tool will replicate this functionality, and the appropriate site(s) will be built to enable the partners to access the appropriate articles.

(TBD: Details of this requirement, to include information pertaining the media partners, etc., are required for set up.)

Second Tier Requirement

The ECNext tool will provide Stratfor a means to manage (add, delete, and modify) media partner information and media partners.

15 Field Configuration

Certain fields should be reordered to align with those categories (i.e., things the analysts should be concerned about populating should go at the top of the publishing tool site). The field configuration in the tool shall reflect the following organizational structure:

Field for analysts at the top:

• region

• country (ies)

• country groups

• headline

• summary

• body

• related articles

Fields for the editors go in the middle:

• Source

• Category

• Rank

Fields for copyeditors should go at the bottom, the last areas to be filled in prior to posting:

• Publishing date

• Image file (this is how we attach display art to a piece)

Visual delimiters (i.e., separating lines and different-colored backgrounds) between these three sections will be included.

16 Increased Field Area

In general, the space allotted on-screen within the current tool for some fields is too small considering the intended use of the fields. The following fields will be increased in size so as to allow more content to be displayed within the field, thus reducing the amount of scrolling required. This applies to the following fields:

• Summary

• Related articles

• Countries

17 Key Words

The Key Words section will include three selection boxes: one each for Geopolitics, Geosecurity, Geoeconomics. The Key Words area will also allow for free form text.

NOTE: A Key Words section is included in these requirements under Appendix C.

18 Hyperlinks Support (Second Tier Requirement)

Stratfor makes heavy use of hyperlinked text and coding for in-piece graphics. With the current system, the coding either must be input through an interface after publishing to the site or – if input prior to publishing in the Filemaker system – they must go in through the ADMIN interface and “activate” the codes (hitting “edit” and “save” so the HTML code isn’t apparent to readers on the site). ECNext will automate the codes for us without this extra step.

Site Management Tools Requirements (Webmaster Tools)

The tools must support the current Premium site (".biz" site) components. These are defined in Appendix B. The requirements below reflect the required changes to the current ECNext Site Management tools.

1 Promotion Support

The tools must support a method to post links into the "Suggested Readings" section of the Website and any future promotional boxes on the templates.

2 Component Generation

The tool must support the generation of like components based upon behavior. Stratfor will have the capability to generate additional products listed on the left Nav bar (e.g., Strategic Markets, Forecasts, Geopolitical Diary, Global Market Brief, etc.). The additional products will have the same behavior, look, and feel as the current products listed on the left Nav bar (see Appendix B for a description of the left Nav bar).

Site Search Requirements

Search engine for site should look more like Google. The search engine must be able to search by proper names (people, organizations and regions or countries), dates and "category" and/or record name (for instance, can't figure out our nav buttons on dot-biz? Type in "weekly" and have all of George's stuff appear!)

See paragraph 2.8 for other related search requirements.

NOTE: This specification should be modified if there is additional functionality required beyond the current ECNext search engine functionality. Please see the tutorial at the following URL, which defines current ECNext search engine functionality.

TBD: The site search screen(s) require a mock-up.

Second Tier Requirement

The search engine should have the ability to recognize NEAR matches on keyword terms (e.g., “Gadhafi” or “Qadhafi” or “Khaddafi”)

For searching on the site (Production), options that require adding are:

Need to add options “politics”, “economics” and “security” to “category” or other metadata

Appendix A: Country Groupings

European Union

• Germany

• Britain

• France

• Italy

• Spain

• Netherlands

• Greece

• Belgium

• Portugal

• Sweden

• Austria

• Denmark

• Finland

• Ireland

• Luxembourg

• Poland (May 2004)

• Czech Republic (May 2004)

• Hungary (May 2004)

• Slovakia (May 2004)

• Lithuania (May 2004)

• Latvia (May 2004)

• Slovenia (May 2004)

• Estonia (May 2004)

• Cyprus (May 2004)

• Malta (May 2004)

• Romania (2007/2008)

• Bulgaria (2007/2008)

NATO

• Belgium

• Canada

• Czech Republic

• Denmark

• France

• Germany

• Greece

• Hungary

• Iceland

• Italy

• Luxembourg

• Netherlands

• Norway

• Poland

• Portugal

• Spain

• Turkey

• United Kingdom

• United States

• Bulgaria (2004)

• Estonia (2004)

• Latvia (2004)

• Lithuania (2004)

• Romania (2004)

• Slovakia (2004)

• Slovenia (2004)

ASEAN

• Brunei Darussalam

• Cambodia

• Indonesia

• Laos

• Malaysia

• Myanmar

• Philippines

• Singapore

• Thailand

• Vietnam

NAFTA

• Canada

• Mexico

• United States

APEC

• Australia

• Brunei

• Canada

• Chile

• China

• Hong Kong, China

• Indonesia

• Japan

• Malaysia

• Mexico

• New Zealand

• Papua New Guinea

• Peru

• Philippines

• Russia

• Singapore

• South Korea

• Chinese Taipei

• Thailand

• United States

• Vietnam

FTAA

• Antigua and Barbuda

• Argentina

• Bahamas

• Barbados

• Belize

• Bolivia

• Brazil

• Canada

• Chile

• Colombia

• Costa Rica

• Dominica

• Dominican Republic

• Ecuador

• El Salvador

• Grenada

• Guatemala

• Guyana

• Haiti

• Honduras

• Jamaica

• Mexico

• Nicaragua

• Panama

• Paraguay

• Peru

• St. Kitts and Nevis

• St. Lucia

• St. Vincent and the Grenadines

• Suriname

• Trinidad and Tobago

• United States

• Uruguay

• Venezuela

African Union

• Algeria

• Angola

• Benin

• Botswana

• Burkina Faso

• Burundi

• Cameroon

• Cape Verde

• Central African Republic

• Chad

• Comoros

• Congo

• Congo, Dem. Repub.

• Cote d’Ivoire

• Djibouti

• Egypt

• Equatoriale Guinea

• Eritrea

• Ethiopia

• Gabon

• Gambia

• Ghana

• Guinea Bissau

• Guinea Conakry

• Kenya

• Lesotho, Kingdom of

• Liberia

• Libya

• Madagascar

• Malawi

• Mail

• Mauritania

• Mauritius

• Mozambique

• Namibia

• Niger

• Nigeria

• Rwanda

• Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic

• Sao Tome & Principe

• Senegal

• Seychelles

• Sierra Leone

• Somalia

• South Africa

• Sudan

• Swaziland, Kingdom of

• Tanzania

• Togo

• Tunisia

• Uganda

• Zambia

• Zimbabwe

Arab League

• Jordan

• United Arab Emirates

• Bahrain

• Tunisia

• Algeria

• Djibouti

• Saudi Arabia

• Sudan

• Syria

• Somalia

• Iraq

• Oman

• Palestine

• Qatar

• Federal Islamic Republic of Comoros

• Kuwait

• Lebanon

• Libya

• Egypt

• Morocco

• Mauritania

• Yemen

Mercosur

• Argentina

• Brazil

• Paraguay

• Uruguay

• Bolivia (associate member)

• Chile (associate member)

CIS

• Azerbaijan

• Armenia

• Belarus

• Georgia

• Kazakhstan

• Kyrgyzstan

• Moldova

• Russia

• Tajikistan

• Turkmenistan

• Uzbekistan

• Ukraine

Appendix B: Current Stratfor .biz Home Page Components

Stratfor Website – Business Logic for Publishing Tool

- Home page “components”

Masthead

- Stratfor logo, also displays current GMT and date

- Upper nav bar (in yellow) with links to corporate pages and info

- Scrolling tickers (headlines) for five most recent sitreps (clickable – takes you to page displaying full body of chosen sitrep – one at a time)

Top nav bar:

- Recent Analysis (takes you from any subpages back to home page)

- Strategic Markets

- Situation Reports

- Reports/Forecasts

- Hotspots

- Countries

All of these buttons, except for “recent analysis” (described above) link to “sub-pages” or archives with logic described below.

Left rail:

- Search function

- Nav buttons for

o Strategic Markets

o Forecasts

o Geopolitical Diary

o Global Market Brief

o Intelligence Guidance

o Net Assessment

o Stratfor Weekly

o U.S.-Iraq War Coverage

o Travel Security

All of these buttons link to “sub-pages” or archives, with logic described below.

- Media Appearances (periodically change out link to external source)

- Stratfor Resources

o AskStratfor

o Email Services

o Stratfor for PDA

o My Account (soon to be added)

Second column:

- “Featured Analysis” – shows headline, summary and link to 2 recent analyses (selections map with posting times) and manually manipulated “top” story, which can carry a display graphic or photo.

o Order of Appearance:

▪ “Featured Analysis” overline

▪ Headline of top story

▪ Date of top story

▪ Display cell (populated if any images attached to story file)

▪ Summary of top story

▪ Headline, date, summary and link - next two most recent stories

All links for analyses open to pages showing the following:

• Left and right rails unchanged

• Article headline

• Article date and GMT

• Summary and full text of analysis

- Latest Situation Report – overline in red

o Headline of most recent sitrep

o Date and posting time (GMT) of sitrep

o Body of sitrep

Link: Click here to read all of today’s situation reports (links to Sitrep subpage)

Third column: “More Analysis”

- Links to 10 most recent analyses in reverse chronological order (picking up from analysis at bottom of “featured analysis” column – posting dates and GMTs displayed

- Links to “Next 10 Analyses” – subpages ad infinitum, scrolling chronologically 10 results at a time

Right rail:

- Suggested Reading:

o Displays links to two selected, previously published stories (links changed weekly)

- Situation Reports:

o Clickable headlines for five most recent sitreps, posting date and GMT shown

SUB-PAGES:

Linking from top nav bar:

- Strategic Markets:

o Left and right rails unchanged from home page

o Second and third columns similar in appearance and navigation to home page but display only analysis tagged as “Strategic Markets” in posting

o Top story on subpage can be manually manipulated

- Situation Reports:

o Left and right rails unchanged in appearance from home page, second column expands in width (so only 3 columns on this subpage)

o Second column – Situation Reports overline, hyperlinks to:

▪ Iraq situation reports

▪ “previous situation reports” – needs discussion

▪ previous month’s situation reports (“January 2004”)

-

o Displays all sitreps in reverse chronological order

▪ Overline: Situation Reports – February 13, 2004 (or current date)

▪ GMT (bold face) – body of sitrep (no headlines displayed on sitreps here)

▪ Special request on navigation change (unscheduled): would like the displayed sitreps on this subpage to run only from 0000 to 2359 GMT, not scroll all the way through an entire months’ worth of sitreps. At 0000 daily, sitreps should be rolled up into a new hyperlink (by date) – this could be displayed elsewhere on the page for easy navigation. Would like to incorporate this change into ECNext cutover if possible.

- Reports/Forecasts:

o Left and right rails unchanged in appearance from home page

o Second column – displays results for Special Reports (10 most recent, reverse chronology, links to “Next 10”)

▪ Navigation similar to home page, but each result has a clickable headline, plus date and summary shown

Third column – displays results for Forecasts (annual, quarterlies, decade) in reverse chronological order

▪ Appearance currently mimics third column on home page (clickable headlines and posting date only)

▪ Currently displays 33 results in this column (going back several years into archives) – would like to revisit and have a standard 10 results displayed and links to “next 10”

- Hotspots: this requires a separate discussion, each hotspot can be treated as a “mini-site” in its own right – emphasis on “editable includes” – Dan can explain during dummy site refurbish, several options on programming for these pages.

o Standing logic: correlation between “country” field on articles or sitreps and a selected hotspot, such as “Afghanistan” or “Colombia” (not all countries are considered hotspots, only a few)

- Countries:

o Left and right rails unchanged in appearance from home page

o Second column expanded width, so only 3 columns total

o Two sub-navigation systems display on this page:

▪ Regional nav bar – links to page showing flags and names of countries in region corresponding to “region” metadata, country list pulldown menu and a few headlines and summaries for corresponding articles, reverse chronology (3 results shown)

▪ Country list pulldown menu – Links to pages showing flag, link to country profile, and several results (10 would be standard number) for corresponding articles.

• Headline, date/GMT, display cell and teaser for most recent corresponding article

• Clickable headlines and dates for other returns

• “Next 10”

- Rest of “country” page returns results for “Afghanistan” (default setting/alphabetical)

o 10 results would be standard

• Headline, date/GMT, display cell and teaser for most recent corresponding article

• Clickable headlines and dates for others

Linking from left nav bar:

- Strategic Markets: redundant from above

- Forecasts: redundant from above (links to Special Reports/Forecasts page)

- Geopolitical Diary: Opens to page with full text of most recent diary and a link to “Geopolitical Diary Archive.”

o Archive link: opens to page including links to 10 most recent diaries, option for “more”. (Note: This should be changed to something that behaves more like sitreps will in future. Archive should be expanded to include all “Iraq War Diary” listings, begun in October 2002, roll up links by month.)

- Global Market Brief: Opens to page with full text of most recent market brief and a link to “Global Market Brief Archive.”

o Archive link: Opens to page including links to 10 most recent market briefs, option for “more”. Note: This should be changed to something that behaves more like sitreps will in future. Archive should be expanded to include all “Iraq War Diary” listings, begun in October 2002, roll up links by month.)

- Intelligence Guidance: Opens to page showing full text of most recent intel guide and link to “Intelligence Guidance Archive.”

o Archive link: Opens to page including links to 10 most recent market briefs, option for “more”.

- Net Assessments: Opens to page showing full text of most recent net assessment and link to “Net Assessment Archive.”

o Archive link: Returns results for 10 most recent, option for “more”.

- Stratfor Weekly: Opens to page showing full text of most recent weekly and link to “Net Assessment Archive.”

o Archive link: Opens to page including links to 10 most recent weeklies, option for “more.”Archive should be expanded to include all “Worldview” features. (old product set)

- U.S.-Iraq War Coverage: Opens to page with full text of most recent Iraq piece (tied to “country” field) and several sub-links:

o Situation Reports (only those with “Iraq” tied to “country” field)

o Latest Guerrilla Activity (links to map of attacks, updated daily)

o Latest Analysis (links to country/region page, default setting “Iraq”)

o War Site Archive (links to us-)

- Travel Security: links to a Flash-based graphical product featuring security ratings for cities around the world

Explanation of “Category” Logic in Publishing Tool:

“General Analysis” – We use this tag anytime we want something to post in the “Featured” or “Recent” Analysis columns on the home page. This usually is combined with another category listing, i.e:

- Strategic Markets

- Special Report

- Annual Forecast

- Decade Forecast

- Quarterly Forecast

- Net Assessment

- Geopolitical Diary

- Global Market Brief

- Stratfor Weekly

Secondary tags map to subpages as described above

Intelligence Guidance: this does not post to the “featured” analysis column, would like a 24-hour “updated!” tag to appear on appropriate nav button each time a new intelligence guidance is posted.

Appendix C: Keywords

Generic keywords for Stratfor articles

Analysis

Economics

Diplomacy

Forecast

Geoeconomics

Geography

Geopolitics

Geosecurity

Intelligence

Politics

Predict

risk

Strategic Forecasting

Strategy

Stratfor

Potential keywords (dual meanings or frequent subjects)

Security

Resources

Relations

Terrorism

Behavior

Trade

Ties

Decisions

Energy

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