Architectural Design Firm Integrates Plone

Site	Architectural Design Firm Integrates Plone
Industry	Construction and Maintenance
Location	United States
Case study written by	TAKA DESIGNS
Contact	Mike Takahashi

McCall Design Group, based in San Franciso, CA, is an architectural design firm that has done flagship projects with national and international retail and hospitality giants such as Limited Brands, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Gap, and Williams-Sonoma as well as smaller, specialized prototype stores and boutiques for clients such as Kate Spade, Gazoontite, Gymboree, and cultural institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and The San Francisco Symphony.

Summary

Development for McCall's extranet using Plone was done to meet the demanding needs of the firm's daily operations. The firm operates on both a national and international level where communication, time and content management is critical.  Plone’s ease of use allowed content to be updated and managed easily through the web anywhere in the world. Plone’s user permissions and group management also played a key part in defining content access on a project by project basis.  Shop drawing logs, email correspondences, and external file system storage were some of the many features that were integrated and developed.

Moving Content to the Web

Previously, items such as shop drawing logs and updates were written by hand on paper, and then mailed or faxed. Remember those days?

The "Old way"

With Plone, all content is created, managed, and updated through the web.

The Plone Way

Email Integration

Each project consists of email correspondences on daily tasks and issues. Project managers needed to record and track these correspondences. A custom application was developed that allowed Plone to connect to McCall’s email server and create copies of each email within Plone.

Database Integration

When project managers create new projects, Plone automatically generates a project folder with information from a relational database about location, contact info, project status, etc. based on the project id entered.

File System Storage

As an architectural firm, you can image the massive amounts of photos and files that are needed for each project. The solution was to store all files externally using FileSystemStorage instead of within the ZODB to avoid unnecessary growth. This also allowed for easier and quicker maintenance since it kept the Data.fs file small and manageable.

For More Information

Visit TAKA DESIGNS at  http://www.takadesigns.com