Tera’s CMSA Advantages for the System User
Letter to the Editor
A letter to the editor is at once a simple item and one that is madly frustrating. It is merely a letter with specific, verifiable data. The parts of a letter to the editor are: The name and contact information of the sender, the body of the letter, and generally a subject. The subject might be a limited number of subjects such as national, international, the economy, etc. Of the subject might be free form, or perhaps both. The writer might be invited to reference a previously published article.
One might envision a web-based platform to accept a letter to the editor and validate that the person sending it has given real information about himself or herself. If the information checks out, then route the letter to correct editor for review, editing and inclusion in the publication
To implement the web-based letter-to-the-editor, system management personnel describe the information that comprises the letter (subject, name, contact info, reference) using a coding language or a utility. Tera's CMSA-based application, GNPortal will automatically construct a web form from that description and automatically validate the letter's subject information.
An application could automatically be called as part of a workflow to validate the writer's name and address against one of the many public databases and indicate, when the letter is reviewed for editing, that the name and address pass auto-validation.
The letter can then be edited as part of the normal production cycle and published. Further automated processing can format the letter into multiple formats for different pubs, the web, and other presentation formats.
Tera's CMSA allows all of the content that will be published to reside in the same place. So, the letter to the editor, even though it came via web, can be stored along with keyboard-generated content produced by reporters, content that is generated by data collection programs, wire stories, graphics, video, and content formats that were not yet in use when this document was written.
In this example, GNPortal, which was written using Tera's CMSA, allows system support professionals to describe the Letter-to-the-Editor. Using that description, GNPortal created a form for web users to enter the letter. A Tera's CMSA application, which might have been written by a third party, read the definition and then validated the name and address from public databases. The editorial page editor then knew the writer was authentic and concentrated on the worthiness of the content.