00-3 The Information Flow
managed by a new Internet site
The need ...
As most organisations, the DLMS User Association has the need to distribute a big amount of new information to its present and potential members efficiently and timely. Of course, there were solutions to the problem, as a conventional Internet site and e-mails. The site became quite clumsy as more and more pieces of information were added, and less and less respond came back on e-mails carrying heavy attachments.
The DLMS User Association has its role in supporting meter data exchange, it helps to optimise investments by guaranteeing the interoperability of the equipment from different manufacturers. The definition and supervision of amendments of technical specifications in co-operation with national and international standards organisations requires to have many documents at hand, and available at any place, too. Further, there should be a set of pictures available, to replace demo slides. Operating in a multi language environment and having members from all around the world, it is certainly a "nice to have" to be able to make presentations in different languages.
The solution ...
The new homepage www.dlms.com is solving the needs neatly. First aim was to have a very simple access to the available data. The main structuring elements are "Information", "Organisation" and "Documentation". Additionally, links (e.g. to members and standard bodies) and a jump back to the opening page are available, allowing restart in another language. The news list finally provides the reader with a chronological concise update list. Hyperlinks allow direct access to new features.
The DLMS UA is a non-profit organisation, but members pay their contribution and have therefore a right for exclusive access to password protected pages. A typical example are the COSEM (Companion Specification for Energy Metering) documents. Excerpts are generally available, the full documents are password protected. The latter allow a very comfortable use of hyperlinks (table of contents, references, footnotes etc.) and can readily be used by developers world-wide without carrying heavy documents.
Other protected pages are reserved for the management of the DLMS UA in order to keep track of the meetings and decisions taken. Members of a working group have also their protected page. They are under the control of the working group convenor, who as a rule uses this tool to structure his field, to describe the content of the elements and to present documents for downloading or viewing.
The present state of the project
The site is up and running. The simplification of the graphical layout of the homepage raised its usefulness considerably. The present state fulfils the actual needs, but there is still room for enhancements. It is planned to build in interactive possibilities to even better serve the members of the DLMS UA.