Welcome to the Voodoo toolkit for SharePoint, the goal of this project is to develop and distribute tools for users of SharePoint Foundation (currently in Beta) that provide an educational “flavor” to SharePoint. This project is a byproduct of a commercial cloud technology application developed by CSI Technology Outfitters, Inc. that CSI has decided to release to the public domain. You can find information about the CSI@K12 project here
http://www.csioutfitters.com/. We hope this will foster relationships and participation with other similarly inclined companies and institutions. The internal codename for the CSI project is “voodoo@edu” and that is where this project gets its name.
The first component of the toolkit is an upgrade of a previous Codeplex project (by the same author) that provides content read marking for SharePoint list items and document libraries. The solution addresses a fundamental usability problem faced by our customers which are mostly educational institutions, the majority of which are US K-12 public schools. The problem is that large SharePoint repositories are difficult for novice IT users to navigate and it is sometimes impossible to find the content you are looking for. Of course SharePoint provides search and “New” flags and subscription information, but these don’t work well for novice IT users. Think of a 6th grader trying to find his new homework assignment in a document library with a year’s worth of assignments and classroom notes; too much data, and all of it will hit the same search criteria. What this project does is provide visual clues for items that you have read or not read, so things you need to read can call attention to themselves. The clues can be simple CSS styles (e.g. bold, or color change or both) or icons, or interactive menus that let users mark items and folders. The system is designed to work with both list items and document libraries. Of course it is as beta as the platform it runs on, and has a few hacks built in to handle, so use with care. Deployment and usage instructions are in the solution.
We have lots of ideas for additions to this project and encourage anyone who wishes to participate or donate to this project to do so. We invite our customers, partners and competitors to jump in with your ideas, feedback and technical contributions.