In 2015, MPI took the SilverStripe Document Management System (DMS) and extended it to better suit their needs. With thousands of documents to manage and varying permission structures to factor in, it was important for them to have additional document management functionality.
With many other government agencies facing the same document management challenges it became clear that there was an opportunity to make use of co-funded development to share these features across CWP users.
Co-funded development pool
As a member of the Common Web Platform, MPI requested that SilverStripe take their code, merge it back into the core DMS module and open source their cart module via the co-funded development pool.
The development pool exists to improve CWP for all government users. Co-funded development ensures that when features and modules are added, there is a net benefit across all agencies that are part of CWP.
We liked how we could add to the original DMS, building it out to handle our specific needs. We knew our additions could help other agencies manage their documents too. Having our bespoke approach turned into a CWP supported module reduced our own maintenance burden too. We’re big supporters of the Common Web Platform and the Co-funded development process, so it made sense to bring what we had built back into the core SilverStripe platform.
As government websites play an important informational role for the country and affect a large number of New Zealanders, SilverStripe takes pride in facilitating how to best support and maintain this big task. Working together to share code, steer innovation and redistribute resources so everyone wins is why the Common Web Platform exists.
Updates to the module
The enhanced DMS module is made up of MPI's bespoke document management extension and a document cart module. The updated DMS module is designed to better hold documents and other files as well as provide extra metadata with the ability to apply security permissions to documents, tagging and dynamic ways to group documents together into sets. The document cart module allows website users to add documents and files to a cart to then print.
If you’d like to learn more about the updated DMS module, visit the SilverStripe blog.
