Question

We have a number of other corporate systems (CRM, Project Management) which we are planning to use to "insert" key data into Topics to be used as part of a Knowledge system. We are wondering if there is a plug in/addon which can be used to allow an external system to overwrite a topic from time to time.

Here is an example - Lets say there are topics for each of your primary clients. Each topic has the summary of all knowledge about a client company - past history, etc - nicely formatted with the TWiki styles. The idea would be that the CRM system would periodically create the formatted text field and update (replace) the Topic with new information either directly or via email. The benefit to the users is that they would have this client Topic available to them at anytime - without requiring any CRM access, etc.

Environment

-- AndrePellet - 10 May 2005

Answer

There are several ways to do that.

1. Server side include: If your CRM is web-enabled you can %INCLUDE{}% the customer data into a TWiki topic. See TWikiVariables

2. Include file as URL: If your CRM can generate files into the filesystem you can IncludeFilesAsURL.

3. Generate TWiki topic: If your CRM can generate files into the filesystem you could create TWiki topics directly on the server. That assumes that the filesystem where twiki/data is located is available to the CRM (via NFS mount etc)

4. Database Plugin: If your CRM can be queried via SQL you can use the DatabasePlugin.

5. Custom TWiki Plugin: You could write a custom CrmPlugin that expands %CRM{ action="query" table="foo" query="bar" }% into a report. This Plugin could be based on the DatabasePlugin. See details in TWikiPlugins.

6. Update TWiki topic via e-mail: There is code available to do that. Search the Plugins web.

-- PeterThoeny - 11 May 2005

This is very helpful...Can you expand on #3 - If another application creates a Twiki topic file - will the Twiki system automatically pick this up? Where is there information about accessing Twiki files directly?

Also the solutions in #2 and #4 are dynamic - and there is no static topic - correct?

-- AndrePellet - 11 May 2005

On #3: If you place a SomeTopicName.txt file in a web directory, TWiki will pick it up. You will not get revision history. Generate the file in the usual TWiki markup as described in TextFormattingRules. One catch: Write a tab char instead of three spaces for leading whitespace.

On #2 and #4: The topic text is static, content is delivered dynamically. You could introduce filters to make this dynamic. See TWikiInstallations example.

-- PeterThoeny - 12 May 2005

This sounds a lot like what we need in our company. I have read some topics on offline TWiki content being merged with an online (central) TWiki.

I am an author of technical documentation. We use an XML editor for authoring together and a CMS for storing, etc. We are in the process of moving to topic-based-authoring, which fits in nicely with the Wiki concept. New topics will preferably be created in TWiki for easy collaboration. When mature enough, the topic will be moved to local machine for advanced editing.

When reaching the point of having to publish a topic for review, the topic should be converted from XML to TWiki format and sent to the TWiki server. A new TWiki topic should then be created if needed, or update already existing. Making sure topic history is preserved.

How do we automate the process of updating or creating new topics online, based on TWiki content saved locally?

I appreciate any feedback

-- PalWerdenhoff - 31 May 2006