Hands-on testing update

It's been a busy month with the WCM evaluation!

Over the last few weeks, three products have been selected for hands-on testing of the product:

• Hannon Hill Cascade Server
• OmniUpdate OU Campus
• TerminalFour Site Manager

Each of the selected vendors has set up full-featured demo instances of their product and provided access to the Web Services team for hands-on testing.

A select group of campus participants representing key stakeholders for the web content management system were invited to participate in in-person training sessions, as well as to participate in self-paced, hands-on testing of each product.

Web Coordinator Daniel Martinez has hosted in-person training sessions for two of the products; training for the third is scheduled next week.

If you are interested in participating in the training sessions or the hands-on testing, please contact Daniel at daniel.martinez@csuci.edu or call 805-437-3932.

In the meanwhile, the selected vendors were asked to provide multiple client contacts at institutions with similiar needs and implementations. WCM team members will be conducting interviews with these clients to obtain additional perspective on the vendors and products.

We hope to wrap up our administrative and end-user testing, as well as our client interviews, by the end of the month. As they say, it's crunch time!

Hands-on product testing

Now that the vendor demos are complete, the University will invite selected vendors to participate in our hands-on testing process (Phase 3). As the implementation of a new web content management (WCM) system will impact over 100 web content editors, it's critical for the University to get hands-on experience with each product before it makes its final selection.

During this phase, vendors will assist the University in configuring a fully-functional version of the product for testing purposes. Further, vendors will be expected to provide sufficient email and phone-based support to troubleshoot issues encountered during the configuration and testing process.

In the meanwhile, the University will invite selected members of its community to participate in hands-on portion. These campus participants will include web content editors, web designers, and current WCM system administrators representing key stakeholders at the University.

Campus participants in Phase 3 will be invited to attend a training session for each vendor's product, and will be given access to the product and instructions to complete a testing process. Testing steps and processes will vary depending on each participants existing web content management role. Test results will be documented using a standard form.


Results from the testing process will be compiled by the Core project team and reviewed, in consultation with testing participants as necessary.