Rob Pannoni's Blog

Editor Review: eTouch SamePage

by Rob Pannoni
published on: 07/14/08 3:52:31 PM

This week I went back to “the lab” to evaluate another web application available on the Etelos Marketplace™. As always, I put the application through its paces based on a real world business scenario. The point is to give you the benefit of my hands-on experience with the application so you can determine if it’s the right tool for you.

Up this week: eTouch SamePage, a project collaboration tool built around the concept of a “wiki.” If you’re not familiar with wikis or how they might be used for business, take a quick detour to my blog entry Do You Wiki?

To set the stage for the review, I need to introduce you to a new business venture, Affiliated Sandwiches--a rising star in the sandwich shop supply business. As the founder and CEO of AS, I can assure you that collaboration is the foundation of our company culture. Or it would be, if the company actually existed. So I used SamePage to set up our company intranet. Here’s what I found.

What does it do?

eTouch SamePage is a “wiki plus.” It’s intended for knowledge sharing and collaboration among a team of people. The “plus” includes blogs, threaded message forums and even a support ticket system. The wiki includes the ability to add rich media (i.e. video) and widgets such as calendars to your wiki pages. The software has flexible security roles so it is equally suitable for internal company communication and sharing information with customers.

What do I need?

Just a browser and an internet connection. SamePage supports Internet Explorer (6.0+), Netscape (7.1+) Mozilla (1.4+) and Firefox. (0.8+).

How much does it cost?

The Personal version of eTouch is free. It is limited to 5 users, 3 projects, 15 pages, 3 blogs and 100MB of storage.

The Professional version has pricing tiers starting at $100/month for up to 20 users and going up to $400/month for up to 100 users. The pro version includes unlimited projects, pages and blogs with 10GB of storage.

eTouch is also available in an Enterprise version which can be installed on premises and integrated with your LDAP server.

What similar software should I consider?

According to my calculations there are approximately one billion wiki software applications now available, including many that are open source (in other words free—if you have your own web server and can figure out how to install them). Etelos currently offers on-demand hosting for one of the most widely used open source wikis, MediaWiki, the software used to run Wikipedia.

So why consider a commercial package such as SamePage? Three reasons: expanded features, ease-of-use and support. If you’re running your business on wiki software, these things should matter to you enough to consider paying for them.

In addition to wiki-style software, there are more proprietary approaches to team collaboration such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft SharePoint. But these expensive, document-centric solutions require significant technical expertise and infrastructure. Plus they don’t have the collaborative, “edit-in-place” gestalt of a web-based wiki. They accomplish similar tasks. But they feel very different.

Hands-on

The big picture

Here at Affiliated Sandwiches, our expertise is in bologna, not computer technology. So I was anxious to see what SamePage could do for us. I created two “projects”—an employee home page and a wiki containing info about our enemies competitors. 

SamePage is divided into two very distinct areas—one for “projects” (wikis) and one for blogs. Additional features such as forums, news articles and support tickets are associated with specific projects and can be turned on or off on a per-project basis. You don’t see links for these unless you’re actually in a project.

Blogs, on the other hand, are not attached to particular projects. They live in their own blog-iverse. In fact, they are so separate that you don’t even see the blog link if you’re in a project. You have to go back to the root project page to get to blogs, a navigation quirk that doesn’t exactly encourage users to explore your private blogsphere. But you can include links to blog posts on a wiki page to highlight them.

The root Projects page, where you select the project you want to view, cannot be edited. You will not spend a lot of time here. It’s just a place to select the project you want to view, create a new project, or change global site settings via the Domain Administration link. The interface is clearly designed to accommodate lots of projects, as evidenced by the alphabetical index and the ability to mark some projects as favorites.

Behind the Domain Administration link is a control panel that allows you to manage users and do other global system admin tasks that affect all projects. Administration of individual projects is done from a Project Administration link you see when you are viewing the project.

Getting stuff in and out

The heart of any wiki-based collaboration tool is….well, the wiki. And the heart of a wiki is the editing interface, because quick and efficient creation of content is what wikis are about.

The first thing you notice when you go to the Edit tab to edit content in SamePage is the veritable plethora of toolbar buttons—three full rows of icons.

Apparently, eTouch has developed an entire lexicon of editing function icons. Someone worked overtime on this. I admit that I am not a big fan of icons. I was daunted at first by facing rows of tiny pictures I couldn’t easily interpret. Fortunately, tool tips tell you the name of each button as you move your mouse over them. Plus, if it’s too much, you can collapse the three rows to hide all but the basic tools.

Once you get over the complexity of the toolbar, the SamePage WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor turns out to be quite flexible and robust. It has more features than you can shake a stick at. Certainly more than similar products I’ve looked at. You even get context sensitive menus when you right click on an element, a very helpful usability feature that isn’t always standard in web-based applications. The table editing features, which take up the entire bottom row of the toolbar, are particularly strong.

A named template feature lets you save a page as a pattern that can be used when creating future pages. Once I created a competitive information page for Affiliated Sandwiches’ biggest competitor and arch rival, Meat Meisters, I could easily duplicate the form to create similar pages for our other competitors.

In addition to the full-featured editor, SamePage really shines at getting content in and out. You can import content directly from MS Word and MS Excel files. You can also include other wiki pages or even external web pages within a window on a wiki page. You even get to set the size and other parameters of the window. I must say, this is very cool.

Also cool is the ability to insert various widgets such as Google calendars and YouTube videos

Adding a plug-in inserts a box containing an editable code. When you save the document and go back to View mode, the box is replaced by the actual widget.

Getting content out of SamePage is equally flexible. There are buttons to create a printable view of a page or to view it in MS Word or PDF format. Good stuff. Interoperability is important to businesses and SamePage does it well.

How well does it wiki?

The wiki functionality in SamePage is pretty much what you would expect from full-featured wiki software. There are the standard tabs for viewing, discussing, editing and attaching files to the page. Links to content that doesn’t exist yet are created as “wanted page” stubs and the link is shown in red to indicate its wanted status.

Icons at the top right allow you to mark a page as a favorite or add it to your watch list so that you get an email notification when the page changes.

A header summarizes the number of comments and file attachments for the page and shows you a version number. Clicking the version number gets you an interface that allows you to view previous versions, compare versions, and set an earlier version as the current version.

Comments, which appear under the discussion tab, are displayed in a threaded format. Adding comments to a page is easy and intuitive.

All in all, SamePage provides the powerful and polished wiki functionality you would expect from a commercial wiki application.

Beyond the wiki

SamePage bills itself as a complete collaboration environment. Additional tools offered include blogs, news items, support tickets and forums. All except blogs are built around the familiar SamePage wiki interface.

The blog section of SamePage feels completely separate from the rest of the product. And while the feature set includes such niceties as photo albums and themes, the navigation and user interface make it all a bit confusing.

When you first click the blog link, you are show a list called “my blogs,” which are blogs you have created. To view blogs written by others, you must search for them or choose them from a list of recent posts on the right.

If you click on your blog, you are now in author mode. You will see lots of tabs.

To see what a viewer will see, you select the “view site” tab. That makes the last three tabs go away, leaving you with just tabs for blogs, projects, posts and photos.

I found myself getting a bit confused between author and viewer mode, maybe because “My Blogs” could logically mean blogs I’ve written or blogs I’ve subscribed to. Tabs seemed to come and go at random until I figured out the navigation scheme. I was also surprised not to see a list of blogs that I might want to read or subscribe to. Instead, the interface is oriented toward finding individual posts.

Once I got used to the navigation, I found using the blog section of the site tolerable, if not intuitive. However, when I stumbled on the section for administering blog users, I realized I still didn’t have the big picture of the SamePage blog architecture.

There are, apparently, “members” and “non-members” of your blog. Also “restricted members” and “administrators”. I know this because the dropdown list in the "administer blog users" part of the application says so. I have no idea how these categories impact the blog functionality. Can non-members see my blog? I have no idea. What restrictions are there for a restricted member? Again, not a clue. I’m sure somewhere on the well stocked eTouch support page this information exists. But blogging doesn’t seem like it should be that complicated. If you need fine grained security over who sees or comments on particular blogs, I guess this is a good thing. Here at Affiliated Sandwiches, we have no secrets. I found it all a little overwhelming.

I did eventually succeed in creating a blog and adding some posts to it. I even created a staff photo album (just kidding Steve and Bill).

The SamePage blogs get the job done. But the blogging interface is neither intuitive nor well-integrated into the projects part of the application. If you’re serious about blogging, there are better tools. If you’re at the stage where you just want to try out this whole blogging thing, SamePage will let you do that.

The other extended functions are usable, but very basic. To get to news items, you click the “News” tab. There is a simple list of news items, plus a calendar. The calendar is not interactive. It just sits there in case you forget the date.

Behind the “Support” tab is a simple issue tracking system. At Affiliated Sandwiches, we have no issues. But if you have issues, you can certainly track them here. You can assign issues to individuals and filter the list to see only issues assigned to a particular person. But you can’t edit the severity or status categories. The issue tracking in SamePage is a nice addition for businesses that don’t need a full blown trouble ticketing system.

Similarly, the forums are functional, but basic. They’re easy to use and should suffice for most business scenarios.

In sum, the additional tools provided by SamePage are fine for light use. It's convenient to have all of this functionality together in one place. Just don't expect any of these accessories to be in the "killer app" category. SamePage is at its best as a very capable wiki tool. Consider the rest gravy and use these features if it makes sense for your situation.

Ease of use

Other than the blog section, It’s pretty easy to get the hang of SamePage from a user or author perspective. It helps to have a basic familiarity with wiki concepts. But the folks at eTouch have done a good job creating a relatively polished application that’s suitable for business users who are not technical experts. Thankfully, even CEOs of fictional up-and-coming sandwich supply companies can use this tool with little difficulty.

The weak link in ease of use is the domain administration area. I found many of the concepts unfamiliar or confusing. What does it mean to “transfer ownership” of a user on the User List screen? What’s the difference between “re-indexing” and “republishing” and when do you need to do these things?

I found the group management function a bit baffling. I created a group and added users to it, but I didn’t see anywhere to set permissions for the group either from the domain administration or project administration interfaces. For both projects and blogs, the security model in SamePage is not obvious. Fortunately, once your users are added and configured, you shouldn’t have to mess with administrative functions very often.

Perhaps the best news is that SamePage system performance is downright snappy for a web app. This software feels solid and responsive. Help is just a click away. The help topics are well structured and the explanations are straightforward, if not extensive. Even better, the support section of the eTouch web site has a rich selection of tutorials, forums, documentation and an excellent “how to” FAQ. And to their credit, the folks at eTouch use their own support ticket functionality to manage support tickets. That always inspires confidence in the tool.

Overall, there are more positives than negatives. Ease of use is good, but not great. The support resources provided by eTouch, however, are great.

Limitations

SamePage isn’t a team portal tool in the traditional sense. For instance, there is no built-in functionality to manage contacts or employee phone lists. There is no group calendaring functionality to speak of (although you can integrate Google calendars into pages). No email list functions. No cross-project dashboards to show a user everything that applies to them in a single view.

Of course most wiki applications don’t have these things either. But SamePage brands itself as a complete team collaboration environment. So lack of traditional portal features is noticeable, particularly since SamePage is toward the high-end of the price range for wiki-style tools.

The most obvious gap in SamePage relative to other collaboration tools is the lack of project management features. The lack of to-do lists and project tracking features means SamePage isn’t ideal for development teams or other complex activities that require day-to-day management. If you need features like these, you would be better served by a broader tool such as CentralDesktop or a dedicated project management tool in addition to SamePage.

The verdict

SamePage has a lot going for it. A full-featured WYSIWIG editor, excellent import/export tools, a substantial list of widgets that allow you to incorporate external content, snappy performance, and great learning and support resources. It deserves the label of a business class wiki tool. You will certainly find it easier to work with than most open source wiki software. And its additional features, while basic, can add real value if your needs in these areas are modest.

SamePage is not a Microsoft Sharepoint killer, a project management tool or a full-fledged team portal builder. However it's a solid performer that deserves a look if you’re considering using a wiki to enhance the performance of your teams

Relevent Tags: app   review   content management   enterprise   collaboration   wiki