OpenMission Community News

Upgrade to Service Pack 2 Complete

2009-05-11T14:31:49Z

We’ve just completed the upgrade to Service Pack 2 for Community Server 2008.5. This upgrade contains a list of bug fixes, most important of which resolves the problem of Windows Live Writer overwriting images for blog posts. A few of the key fixes in this Service Pack include:

Posts made by the owners of the Section will no longer be process by the SPAM blocker.
Uploading media/image to forum post no longer causes server errors.
Metablog API now saves files in post-specific folders.
The user interface was simplified to support single file uploads.
LiveWriter no longer overwrites images.
Problems with broken URLs have been fixed.
Files are now stored in a specific folder and are stored with a unique filename so uploaded files are not overwritten.
The link in e-mail generated by Change Password no longer results in a "Access Denied" error.

OpenMission Upgrade Complete

2008-11-21T03:17:25Z

The upgrade of the OpenMission Community Server is complete. The upgrade allows the following new and improved features to be used by your missions site:

Wikis The Community Server wiki is an efficient tool for teams to capture, create, and collaborate on information. With built-in workflow and easy, rich text editing, anyone in the enterprise can create content that is visible to team members and available for editing and collaborative contributions. Our wiki also includes permissions and moderation tools, structured or unstructured content, and user voting to visibly rank the value of wiki pages.
Blogs From public to private Web logs, our enterprise blogging application is multi-faceted, easily supporting thousands of blogs and growing according to your needs.
Forums Our forums enable interactive collaboration between individuals and the community. The enhanced user interface includes additional question and answer features that bring verified answers to the top of the thread, providing visibility of valuable information to the reader.
Rich Media & Video Community Server media galleries are a core application that displays multiple types of files, images and videos in a more meaningful way. You can effortlessly integrate video from third-party services such as Flickr and YouTube, and with ratings and tagging functionality, users can express their opinions and sort media for relevancy.
Robust User Profiles Community Server provides full-featured user profiles that include activity lists, a ‘wall’ where other users can post notes to you, and an announcements ‘blog.’ The new functionality makes the user profile a focal point of the community experience.
Groups Now you can create micro-communities within your site! These groups become your own social circle and allow the members of that circle to have exclusive access to group-specific media galleries, blogs and messaging.
Messaging & Social Streams Send an instant message to a friend, an individual in the community, or to the entire group. You can even “micro-blog”! The private messaging feature is its own application in Community Server, making it easy for users to communicate with individuals and with the community at large (including their friends).
Integrated Ratings & Comments Allows users to comment on group posts and encourages collaboration across the organization.
Discoverability of Content (RSS, Tags)Leverage the accessibility of your content with this extensive search capability. With the help of tag clouds, this application helps to bring the most relevant content to your community.
Optimized Control Panel The control panel gives the community managers the tools necessary to easily manage each application. The Community Server control panel is streamlined to simplify common tasks with a new user interface, more efficient workflow, and task isolation.
Ease of Content Creation Community Server offers easy-to-use content management tools that allow you to organize content easily and reduce your management costs. With a WYSIWYG editor, neither technical skills nor developers are required to publish content or to make edits.
Extensibility with Web Services In this release, this full-feature Web services (REST) API gives remote access to all Community Server data (i.e., posts, users, settings), which allows for easier extension of the platform and interoperability with external applications.
Flexible UI Easily integrate your brand across your community with our flexible user interface. Engage users with a consistent look and feel, or even localize your content!
Localization of Content The Community Server architecture is international friendly and gives you the option to publish sites in languages other than English.
Rich Security & Permissions Model Our powerful permissions model allows you to manage the role vs. the user, and our security application empowers you to determine how visitors will access your content.

Check out our list of the OpenMission Technology Stack to see the core technologies used in creating the OpenMission platform.

Microsoft Live Writer Integration

2008-03-25T22:40:39Z

Windows Live Writer is a brand new blogging tool from Microsoft. It's easily configured for use with a number of blog applications, including OpenMission Community Server. Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose blog posts and its compatible with OpenMission. It has some great features, including:

WYSIWIG Authoring - You can now author your post and know exactly what it will look like before you publish it. Writer knows the styles of your blog such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, paragraph spacing, margins and block quotes and enables you to edit your post using these styles.
Photo Publishing - You can insert a photo into your post by browsing image thumbnails through the “Insert Picture” dialog or by copying and pasting from a web page.
Ease of Use - Insert photos and videos, maps, tags, and lots of other cool content, all in a snap. Powerful editing features include tables, spell checker, and quick hyperlinks.
Preview your Posts - Writer can show you what your blog entry will look like before you post it, using your blog's templates and formatting. It automatically detects this with the OpenMission Community Server upon installation and discovery.
Work Offline - Compose your entries offline, then publish them later when you get back online.

This post was created with Live Writer. Windows Live Writer is now available for download.

OpenMission Community Server is Live!

2007-12-25T16:44:00Z

We're pleased to announce the first release of OpenMission Community Server!

The OpenMission Community Server offers a comprehensive suite of leading missionware and community-focused transactional web applications that will support missionaries of the Christian faith in fulfilling the Great Commission.

The OpenMission Community Server features an integrated application suite that offers functionality that would be difficult to build with multiple vendor platforms. This integrated system offers missions a number of benefits, namely the ability to turn on features as they are needed.

OpenMission was designed to be secure "out of the box", but also to offer a platform upon which missions can confidently share secure and private information. With innovative functionality such as single sign‐on, private user content, secure syndication, private files, and private messages, OpenMission community Server allows you to confidently support both public and private aspects of the community.

Included in this release are some awesome features such as:

Tags – ability to add free form tags to content and then use tag clouds and other tools to filter content.
Content Mirroring – ability to configure a blog to be subscribed to one or more external RSS sources bringing that content into the site for visitors and making the content searchable.
Post Relevance sorting – allows site owners to use new post relevance algorithm (optional) for blog aggregation page. This feature allows popular content to stay “above the fold” longer.
Invitations – ability to configure site so that only invited users can join the community.
Badges – members of the site each receive a community badge that can easily be displayed in a variety of locations, such as external blogs.
Feedburner / external RSS support – easily use tools, such as Feedburner, for sharing your RSS feeds on blogs.

OpenMission runs on a unique combination of technologies. We use best-of-breed commercial and open source technologies integrated together to form an enterprise platform to provide the best solution possible for fulfilling missions needs.

The OpenMission platform is constantly being innovated and improved. It is build upon the Community Server offering of Telligent Systems, who are committed to continuously building and innovating on their software platform. The Telligent team works with its customers and OpenMission to constantly refine existing features and try new features. OpenMission Community Server is a platform that will provide you with value‐‐often times before you need it.

Check out our list of the OpenMission Technology Stack to see the core technologies used in creating the OpenMission platform.

OpenMission Testing and Integration Completed

2007-07-11T18:30:00Z

Testing and integration of the OpenMission platform for .NET 2.0 is complete. Integration of security, web services, and mission blogs has been a success and staging rollout is scheduled to begin in mid September 2007.

After production rollout is complete and the alpha missions content has been ported to the new platform, OpenMission will begin seeking new missions sites to expand its mission base.

Once new missions sites are added, OpenMission will be seeking talented individuals to assist in expanding the community and growing its missions software platform.

Once staging rollout has been finalized in mid September, final publish is slated to be completed on or before January 1, 2008.

Please contact OpenMission Support to find out more information.