Traction Software, Inc., the leader in Enterprise Weblog software,
today announced the release of Traction(R) TeamPage(TM) Release 3.0.
Release 3.0 extends Traction’s ease-of-use, simple deployment and a
unique permissioned access model with new capabilities, which deliver
enhanced productivity, knowledge sharing, communication and
collaboration, making Traction the enterprise platform of choice for
commercial and government applications. New features include:
internationalization, enterprise authentication, a new extensible
framework for user interface customization and branding, enterprise
search engine compatibility, and enhanced support for standards. The
new release of Traction’s Instant Publisher(TM) Client adds round-trip
WYSIWYG editing as well as integrated one-click publishing from
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer using a new .NET architecture.
“The demand for proven enterprise Weblog solutions for working
communication and knowledge sharing within the enterprise is growing
rapidly in the U.S and around the world,” said Greg Lloyd, President
of Traction Software. “Traction 3.0 is designed to give companies and
government organizations such as the Department of Defense the ability
to easily integrate TeamPage into their enterprise and quickly
leverage the benefits it brings to the table.”
Traction 3.0 introduces new features all designed to make it the
enterprise platform of choice for commercial and government users.
These features include:
— Internationalization: The Traction 3.0 platform builds on
previous support for capture, search, editing, browsing,
automatic email and newsfeed syndication of content that can
be encoded using the Unicode (UTF-8) standard, including all
Western European, Slavic, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew
and other languages. With 3.0, Traction adds; Unicode project
names, user names, labels and file names; an Internationalized
User Interface, which simultaneously permits forms, buttons
and message text to be shown using different locales selected
by multiple users; localization that can be performed by
Traction, its partners, or customers using Sun Microsystems
Java standard resource packaging; Japanese language
localization provided by Traction partner Applied Knowledge
Systems, Inc.; Western and non-Western language word boundary
segmentation using Java’s internationalization capabilities to
create content indices for mixed as well as single language
articles and comments.
— Extensible Authentication: Enterprise customers frequently
maintain directories of account names, passwords and
role-based permissions using LDAP or Microsoft Active
Directory servers. Traction 3.0 introduces an extensible
plug-in authentication mechanism that allows external
administration of user account names, passwords and role-based
permissions. Traction provides executable and Java language
source code for LDAP and Active Directory plug-ins, as well as
a run-time extensible interface that can be used to interface
with micropayment and single sign-on solutions. Support for
TLS/SSL encryption and optional X.509 certificate based
authentication was introduced with Traction Release 2.5.
— Extensible User Interface (Skins): Traction’s new Skin
Definition Language (SDL) makes it possible to create a new
Traction look and feel using only HTML editing tools. SDL is
valuable for customers looking to make Traction work as part
of their internal (or external) portal, seamlessly extending
the look and feel of existing sites with Traction generated
content, links and controls. Traction can serve all skins
simultaneously, allowing customers to choose one based on
personal preference, or have it chosen automatically based on
the browser and device being used. Traction provides five
skins with the product, including one that is optimized for
Palm OS, Microsoft PocketPC or Blackberry handheld devices.
Traction 3.0 introduces a new family of CSS driven skins that
provide a simple Web interface that is easily extensible using
style sheet control.
— Enterprise Search Engine Compatibility: Enterprise customers
frequently want to expose the content of key internal data
sources for enterprise wide search and content analysis.
Traction 3.0 articles, comments and file attachments can be
completely or selectively exposed to spidering by search and
data mining engines such as Verity Ultraseek, Google, Tacit
Knowledge Systems, Autonomy and Clear Forrest. Each Traction
article is independently indexed, making it simple for
enterprise search and mining applications to show the title
and content of the search hits, and link back to the correct
article in Traction. Enterprise search engines work in
parallel with the continuously updated international language
search engine built into Traction.
— Support for Syndication and Weblog Standards: Traction 3.0
extends interoperability with best of class support for
publishing and syndication protocols. Traction supports RSS
2.0 for content syndication, as well as Blogger and MetaWeblog
XML-RPC API’s for publishing and editing of Traction content
using popular blogging and RSS aggregator programs such as
NewsGator (Windows), NewsMonster (Mozilla/Firebird – all
platforms) and NetNewsWire (MacOS X). Traction provides a
plug-in extension to make Traction Instant Publisher V2 work
as a publishing extension for the popular NewsGator news
aggregator that runs within Microsoft Outlook. Traction makes
it easy for readers to create a custom RSS feed from
combinations of projects, topic labels, authors and search
expressions. Traction 3.0 supports password-protected RSS feed
for aggregators that support Basic http: (realm) protection.
— Web Services Standards: Traction supports SOAP bindings (in
addition to email and http interfaces) that permit external
applications to post automatically generated messages to the
Traction server. The SOAP interface includes the ability to
post MIME encoded file attachments (graphics, office
documents, data files) as well as HTML text. Automatically
generated content can include live links to the precise source
of business information, geographic location, or any other
content that augments the time, author and context information
that Traction automatically logs for each article or comment.
Traction’s wrapper kit can be used to easily create SOAP
wrappers for any Journal database, relationship or other
function exposed as part of Traction’s Java Software
Developers Kit (SDK). The wrapper kit and SDK are provided to
Traction customers without additional charge.
— Traction Instant Publisher V 2.0: Version 2.0 of the Traction
Instant Publisher (TIP V2) is a new .NET implementation of
Traction’s clip and collect client for Microsoft Windows
environments. TIP V2 adds round-trip WYSIWYG editing for
Traction articles and comments. Formatting tools include
bullet and numbered lists; indented blocks; as bold, italic
and underscore styled text; inline graphics and a drag and
drop or browse and select file attachment window. TIP V2
includes built-in screen capture that you can use to select
and publish any rectangular region of your computer screen,
allowing capture of graphics from any Windows application.
Users can publish any selected block of text and graphics
directly from Microsoft Internet explorer, with automatic HTML
cleanup, relative link conversion, and automatic creation of a
back-link to the original source. You can copy and paste or
drag and drop text from any Windows application.
Pricing & Availability
A preview edition of Traction 3.0 is immediately available, with
delivery of a final edition in December 2003. Traction TeamPage 3.0
workgroup pricing starts at $4,995 per server. A personal edition –
Traction Communicator(TM) sells for $249. Traction 3.0 is free to all
Traction Customers entitled to receive software updates.
