Business Problem: Combining CML and LitCrit

As with any company, the business needs and corresponding software requirements of the Fitch & Mather Corporation (F & M) evolve over time. Many things can cause this evolution — including changes in government fiscal policy, shifting factors in the global marketplace, and the tide of technological advancement.

In the case of Scenario 2, change was caused by a book club.

Employees at Fitch & Mather started a book club before the Information Technology (IT) department was formed. Book club members met in person and discussed what they had read. As the corporate culture of F & M evolved to include sharing information through networking and e-mail, book club members kept pace. They formed their own e-mail distribution lists and discussed the merits and faults of the latest bestsellers (and revered classics) electronically, as a group.

Although their literary tastes were eclectic, they welcomed the introduction of the Corporate Media Library application, which gave easy access to Fitch & Mather's collection of job-related library materials.

Public Folders Are Introduced

After Fitch & Mather's IT department installed Microsoft® Exchange Server as the company's messaging and collaboration infrastructure, the department began to use public folders as a secure way for posting information to be shared companywide. It chose this technology for the following reasons:

• Microsoft Exchange Server public folders can store any kind of data — including e-mail messages, document files, executable files, graphics, and audio/video files. Importantly for this scenario, public folders can also store custom forms.
• When strategic or technological points need to be discussed on a general basis, public folders provide a natural forum.
• Administrators can set permissions on public folders to control access to their contents.
• Employees can manipulate this stored data using the familiar hierarchical interface provided by Microsoft Outlook® and — before it — the Microsoft Exchange client. Folder contents can be easily sorted and grouped, and employees can use predefined "views" of folder contents or create their own custom views.
• Public folders can be replicated companywide, placing copies ("replicas") of folders and their contents on servers close to the clients who need them. This reduces network bandwidth requirements. Folder replication is made easy and efficient through straightforward scheduling of folder synchronization.

Book club members discovered they could use a public folder to house a forum on books. This marked a turning point in the book club's history. Previously, any one club member's comments were sent to all club members on the book club e-mail distribution list. This was not a problem at first when the club was small. However, as the club grew, members who weren't interested in a particular discussion began to wish for a less intrusive (though equally interactive) way to share their love of books. Public folders filled this need.

A Custom Form Is Created

Eventually a book club member developed a form called "LitCrit" using Microsoft Outlook's form-authoring capabilities. Book club members used this form to submit book reviews (called "critiques") for all to see. Because critiques resided in the public folder, other book club members could respond to them, and lively discussions ensued. The design of the LitCrit Outlook form is presented in Designing the Outlook Form and Enhancing the LitCrit Outlook Application.

An Opportunity Appears

It became apparent to F & M book club members who also worked in IT that the LitCrit and CML applications could work together to serve library users, who could benefit from information in critiques written by others.

When this was recognized, a business problem appeared, and was seen to be not so much a problem as an opportunity:

We have two applications. How do we leverage information already being provided (by book reviewers), and the technology used to capture it (the LitCrit application), to make the library experience as presented by the CML application more beneficial to F & M employees?

After the business problem was stated this way, F & M's application designers began to work toward a coherent answer. To read about their next steps, see Proposed Solution.