What Is Eskimo?

My Senior Project, Eskimo, is an online collaborative tool that attempts to recreate the office environment in an online state.

So What The Heck Does That Mean?

My goal is to make working from home just as productive as working from the office. I think that the traditional work model is changing drastically as more companies go national and even global, and the tools we use for communication must evolve also. With a team working on common files together, it is important to foster communication between them.

What Is The Current Project Status?

The application is currently in Beta 2, or the first stage of functionality for testing. Beta 1 was an interactive wireframe, basically a clickable proof of concept. Here in Beta 2 many of the components work, and have been iterated from the recommendations made in Beta 1.

What Can't I Do With Beta 2?

Hush, we'll get to that in a minute!

What Is Eskimo Built On, And Why?

Eskimo Beta 2 is built using Adobe Flex, compiled into Actionscript 3 for the Flash 9 Player. It runs on a ColdFusion Server with the Unity Applet, and stores preferences into xml files.

Secure information is sent via the RMI communication between Flex and ColdFusion, and allows the enabling of SSL with a passworded keystore. The central reason that ColdFusion is being used for development at this time is because currently, it is the most supported server platform for effective Flex 2 deployment. The Unity Applet is being run to allow the simple Socket Connections that are required for online chatting.

Eskimo is built in Flex 2 for many reasons. As a student project, I thought it would be very valuable to research the next generation of technology being implemented when there are no financial risks involved. Flex is a much more robust application development tool than Flash, and using Flex in this project has given me great exposure to the program.

What Can't You Do Right Now In Eskimo?

I have to stress again that this application is in BETA. And no, we're not talking Google-ish Beta either! There are currently only two users in the system, and three clients. There are several bugs that you'll probably encounter while using the application, but some known problems are:

What Eskimo CAN Do!

I'm a poor student. Jorsh.eat = Math.random(). I couldn't find a reasonable ColdFusion host who would give me shell access and let me install my own Java applications onto their machine, and open up random ports on their server?! So, I had to run all of the Eskimo backend on my local machine, and consequently, there's nothing you can play with online right now. I have taken screenshots of the process I'm going to show off in my Project Presentation, so this is just to satisfy your Eski-cravings!

On the login screen the first change you might notice visually is that Eskimo is now liquid, and expands to fill the browser window. Most elements are left or right justified to the browser window. This was one of the many benefits of using Flex 2, this liquid layout was very easy to implement.

The main screen hasn't change too much from Beta 1, but their are some new evolutions. The accordian pane is now the beginning of most of the interface actions of Eskimo. In the bottom right are still the two dropdowns for changing the current working customer, and the top right is still the home of the project folders. The screen that has been removed is the select project screen, the program now opens to a default overview mode.

The accordian pane is a quick view of all of the data that users would need at a quick glance. Upon clicking one of the items in the datagrids, a more detailed window opens with further information on the selected subject.

If a user wishes to see even further details of the selected accordian window, all they have do is click on the details button at the top of the accordian pane. This automatically detects which category the user was reviewing, and opens the detailed view of the "Eski-Hub". The Eski-Hub is a more in-depth window for sorting and viewing.

Another option in the "Eski-Hub" tab is the Team Member tab, which shows detailed information about each member of the projects that the logged in user is a part of. This tab also shows which users are currently logged in to Eskimo, and provides quick ways to jump into a chat or view their personal calendar.

The next tab in the "Eski-Hub" is the chat screen, which connects the user to the global Eskimo chat. Before a user has selected a project to on, the chat contains all of the people currently logged in to Eskimo. When the user selects a project, this list is sorted to show only those who are a part of the project (if they are online).

To view files in the project folders, the user must first click on one of the folder icons, and Eskimo will open a quick view of the folder's contents. If a user wants a more detailed view, they can double click on the file to open a preview pane with more information.

To upload a file to this folder, the user clicks the upload button, and is then presented with the upload screen. Users can add files to their queue and remove or change them, uploading the batch when they are ready. To view the updated folder files, it is best practice to click the "refresh folder" button to the upper right.

One of the central goals of Eskimo is to allow the program to be skinned to match the project being worked on. There are several reasons to do so. For one, it helps the user know which project they are working on easily, and reflects the future implementation of the client portal to the application. Most of the folders and windows of Eskimo have transparent elements, to allow the application to quickly look customized.

Next Steps

Currently i'm preparing for another round of testing based on a similiar protocol used on the Beta 1 prototype. I plan on sharing my results during my presentation and presenting the updated project calendar based on the breadth of changes resulting from the user feedback. Very soon, it will be time to Go Eskimo!