Traction TeamPage

Traction TeamPage

File:Tractionsoftware.png Traction Software logo
Developer(s)	Traction Software
Stable release	4.2 / November 2, 2009
Written in	Java
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Blog Wiki
License	proprietary
Website	http://www.tractionsoftware.com

Traction TeamPage is a proprietary enterprise 2.0 social software product developed by Traction Software Inc of Providence Rhode Island.

TeamPage is one of the first products in the enterprise blog and wiki market, with Traction release 1.0 shipped in 1999.

Traction TeamPage is a collaborative hypertext platform built to support working communication within and between groups and is modeled on Douglas Engelbart's On-Line System (the first hypertext journaling system) and influenced by the work of other hypertext pioneers including Andy van Dam's HES and Ted Nelson's Xanadu.

Releases and Features

The initial 1.0 Release of Traction TeamPage shipped in December 1999 and included features for web based journaling, collaborative editing and permission based project workspaces.

Traction TeamPage is known for features including permission filtered bi-directional linking, paragraph level addressability and inline comment threads, and a journaling model which records time stamped label changes as well as wiki style content history. The platform includes a sophisticated permission model that aggregates multiple weblog/wiki spaces into Front Page, e-mail newsletter, and search views.

With TeamPage Release 3.5 in March 2005, it became the first blog/wiki type product with integrated WebDAV.

Traction TeamPage Release 3.7.2 shipped in December 2006 with support for widgets, export to PDF or WordML briefing books, mobile skins, and a wiki-style edit history views with a roll-back option, and an optional FAST Search module providing automatic entity extraction and drill-down navigation as well as integrated attachment search.

Traction TeamPage Release 4.0 shipped in June 2008 with support for moderation, page name history and management and user profile pages. Moderation allows for typical publish and reject operations for comments, but also makes it possible for authorized users to work in and fully experience the Draft version of the wiki or flip to the Published version to compare. Page Name management is the first to introduce page name history, the ability to alias page names across wiki projects, and the concept of a global page name space from which names can be applied to any wiki project space.

Traction Software's Live Blog Micro-Messaging plug-in , announced November 2008, is the first implementation of micro-blogging on an enterprise social software product. The Live Blog interface can be deployed as an interface to a single workspace or across the server. It leverages all the linking, tagging, threading and permission controls available throughout the rest of the product.

Analyst and Reviewer Statements

In July 2002, in an InfoWorld test center review of Traction TeamPage Release 2.8, Jon Udell of InfoWorld wrote "(Traction) can be best described as an enterprise Weblog system." This is the first use of the term "Enterprise Weblog" in the press.

Traction TeamPage has been recognized as InfoWorld's 2007 Technology of the Year award winner: Best Enterprise Wiki (see review ), as well as a KMWorld magazine trend setting product in 2005 and 2006. TeamPage is one of seven social software products reviewed by Clay Shirky in Esther Dyson's May 2003 edition of Release 1.0 (TeamPage subtitle "Weblogs Grow Up") and one of nine blogging platforms evaluated in depth by Forrester Research's 2006 Blogging Wave report. Traction TeamPage is also reviewed in Fuld & Company's 2006 Competitive Intelligence Software Report

In a March 2005 report titled "Blogs Wikis & Beyond," Burton Group Analyst Peter O'Kelly wrote: "Although Traction's products are marketed as 'enterprise weblog' offerings, they are in fact powerful hypertext systems that exploit blog- and wiki-related advances to maximize simplicity but also do so on a scale that addresses elaborate hypertext application scenarios that would overwhelm wiki alternatives."

In an October 2008 Intranet Journal Review, in reference to the challenge of balancing unstructured collaboration with the need for moderation and audit controls, Paula Gregorowicz claims "TeamPage 4.0 offers some breakthroughs to this challenge via its moderation model which is likely to impact the face of enterprise intranet architecture."

Funding and Customers

In June 2002, a public In-Q-Tel customer agreement represents the first significant enterprise site license of a blogging platform. In-Q-Tel (the venture arm of the US Central Intelligence Agency) invested in Traction Software starting in May 2000. .

In 2003, the US Department of Defense CIO office funded a Rapid Acquisition Incentive-Net Centricity (RAI-NC) pilot program, titled the "Liberty Project," to study the business case for using weblogs for net-centric project communication and information management. The study involved funding to add the WebDAV extension to the Traction platform and to support the following Liberty Project participants: Traction Software, The Office of Naval Research, the Army Night Vision Lab, Defense Acquisition University, Naval Underwater Warfare Center, Marine Corps, Ford Motor Company, and the New York City Police.

In 2005, Corante published the first detailed case study of an enterprise blog deployment. The case study, Dark Blogs Case Study 01 - A European Pharmaceutical Group, describes a CIO led effort to deploy Traction TeamPage for a Competitive Intelligence function which spanned the organization.

Other public Traction TeamPage customers include: Enel (energy), Ipsen Pharmaceutical , Lucent , SITA, the Western States Information Network, a law enforcement agency funded by the US Department of Justice and the State of California, US Air Force.

External links

• Traction Software product website and blog