MC+A

The LSNC Google API Project is driven by a practical dilemma: The need to overcome the lack of integration between LSNC’s cloud-based case managment system and the core set of Google Apps they rely upon everyday to get work done.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) April 26, 2011
Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) had a need to overcome the integration gap between their cloud-based case management system and the core set of Google Apps products they rely upon to get their work done. LSNC was awarded funding from the LSC Technology Initiative Grants Program to develop a solution that would solve some common integration issues facing many legal service groups.

The LSNC Google API Project is a national demonstration project, released under the GNU General Public License is being developed in partnership with MC+A. The project’s goal is to demonstrate how open source Google APIs can be used for practical integration of the Google Apps platform with open source case management systems used by legal service programs. Once development is complete the project will be maintained by LSNC.

As part of an iterative approach MC+A developed a release schedule that address LSNC issues by priority. The first priority for the project was integration of the case management system with Google Apps Calendar

“Integration of Google Calendar with our CMS illustrates what we need to accomplish,” says Brian Lawlor, Regional Counsel at LSNC. “Instead of the two platforms having separate, essentially duplicate calendaring systems, we are replacing the calendaring system native to the CMS with the more flexible, powerful Google Calendar functions. Doing so, our users can create and edit one set, not two, of case-related calendar events, and can do so from either the Google Calendar or the CMS. One calendaring system to rule them all!”

MC+A will be developing three addition integration components (Gmail, Google Docs and Google Groups) for the API project with additional iterations scheduled for release before the end of Q2.
“This is a great first step toward integrating these two systems,” Michael Cizmar, MC+A’s Managing Partner stated when asked about the project. “It really shows just a small part of what can be done using the Google Apps API to integrate into an existing system. We are looking forward to the community’s involvement in the coming months.”
The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License and is maintained at:
http://code.google.com/p/lsnc-google-api/

About MC+A
MC+A is dedicated to solving business challenges by enabling organizations to derive maximum value from their business intelligence assets. They provide solutions focused on managing business intelligence and help their clients build, find and share those assets securely. MC+A was the first Google Enterprise Partner and is also on the Board of Advisors to Open Pipeline.

http://www.mcplusa.com

About Legal Services of Northern California
LSNC, a ten-office legal aid program serving low-income clients in 23 counties in the upper third of California, has long been recognized as one of the finest and most effective legal services programs in the country.

http://www.lsnc.net/

gsa-faceted-search helps you build a faceted search experience.  The filters are static but provide a very rich ability to filter without a hole lot of XSLT modifications.  There is a simple 3 step process documented here on adding it to your search interface.

For Immediate Release

Today, MC+A announces that Michael Cizmar, president of MC+A, will be serving on the advisory board of Dieselpoint’s OpenPipeline.

Currently, search, text analytics and connector vendors find themselves constantly reengineering their software to integrate with closed, proprietary systems. OpenPipeline works out-of-the-box with Dieselpoint Search, but can be used with any search engine.

“Since 2002, we have been working with our clients to implement search technologies. We see a tremendous potential for our clients because OpenPipeline simplifies many of the complexities of the UIMA. We are very excited to be working with another great Chicago technology company like Dieselpoint”, said Michael Cizmar, President of MC+A.

Both broader and simpler than IBM’s UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture), OpenPipeline provides a common architecture for connectors to data sources, file filters, text analyzers and modules to distribute documents across a network. It is fully functional out of the box and includes an installer, a job scheduler, file scanner and crawlers, doc filters, and point and click interface with drag and drop module installation.

Document processing can be centralized or parallelized as needed. The transport mechanism is simple, web-services XML over HTTP. Atom feeds are also possible.

The development philosophy behind OpenPipeline stresses simple, elegant design, and massive scalability. Minimal external dependencies and straightforward plug-in implementation ensure that the learning curve is low.

OpenPipeline Beta is available for free download via the Apache License 2.0. Current Advisory Board members include individuals from enterprise search, text analytics and connector firms and consultancies. More information can be found at http://www.openpipeline.org/.

MC+A is dedicated to solving business challenges by enabling organizations to derive maximum value from their business intelligence assets. With expertise in areas of portal development, management and architecture, and supporting technologies – MC+A builds applications, defines processes and leads implementations which help our clients leverage processes and information as a strategic business asset. More information can be found at: http://www.mcplusa.com/

Contact:
Jeff Gilleland
MC+A
773-239-7019 x333
Jeff.gilleland@mcplusa.com

Last year, Google Enterprise published a custom Keymatch OneBox project written in Java. We ported it to C# for those .NET inclined.

Project Description

This OneBox module mimics the Google Search Appliance’s built-in KeyMatch functionality. By using this instead of the built-in KeyMatch feature, you can customize the C# Service implementation to provide alternative behavior that better suits your needs.

Check it out.

Thanks to Adam Jenkin for reporting an issue with the GSALib. We now have released an update that moves the configuration from a seperate file to the appSettings of the configuration file.

There is also the simplest of demonstrations of how to use the library in an ASP.Net VB application.

Please goto: http://www.codeplex.com/GSALib to download the updates.

There has been many requests for a .NET library that accesses the Google Search Appliance. We are happy to release to the community a open source C# version based on the work Inxight did previously.

Check out the project at:
http://www.codeplex.com/GSALib

Will love to hear any feedback!

There are two quietly release open source projects for the Google Appliances. The first allows for some javascript parameteric filter (aka facetted navigation) and the second implements search as you type (i.e. Google suggest).

Take a look at them here:

Parametric
http://code.google.com/p/parametric/

Search as you type
http://code.google.com/p/search-as-you-type/

Both these will be now included in our JumpStart services to be implemented during the jumpstart.