Project update; Phase 5 participants; branding

We're on our way with Phase 5 of our project: implementation and migration. Over the past two weeks we've had several meetings with OmniUpdate to work on scheduling and technical details for this phase.

There are lots of issues to consider:

• When can we provide all the information OmniUpdate needs to begin their work?
• When can OmniUpdate schedule work to begin (and complete)?
• What sites and content will we migrate, and who do these sites & content belong to? 
• How will we stage our migration? Which sites will be migrated first, and how will priority be determined? 
• When will we go "live" with the new system?
• What will our new system be called?  

 To help answer these kinds of questions, the campus WCM migration team has scheduled regular weekly meetings to discuss these kinds of questions. The last four questions are especially important, so they bear more detailed investigation.

What sites will we migrated, and who do they belong to? We have a good deal of content. Our current statistics show that in Collage we have:

• 230 unique web site design
• 5,373 contribution documents (i.e., web pages in XML format)
• 4,401 HTML documents (i.e., web pages in HTML format)

To determine who these sites belong to, Web Services staff has created a "Content Inventory" to document where the content is located, as well as the names of the content owners and editors.

How will we stage our migration? We need to complete the migration in stages because we have a lot of sites with a lot of content, and we can't move everything at once.

While the details for which sites will be migrated has yet to be determined, the principles used to prioritize are as follows:

1. Web sites that are in production and are currently being maintained in Collage have higher priority
2. Content which receives the most visits has higher priority
3. Content which is most actively updated has higher priority
4. Low hanging fruit (simple, easy, low risk, high benefit) has higher priority
5. Simple web content (static images/text) have higher priority
6. Web sites using standard CI templates have higher priority
7. Web sites whose owners or editors are eager to participate in migration have higher priority
8. Web sites with less content have higher priority 
9. Dynamic or complex web content (applications, audio/video, etc) have lower priority
10. Web sites that have not yet gone into production have lower priority

In keeping with principle #6, we're looking for organizations that wish to participate in the first stage of our roll out. If your organization is interested in participating as an early adopter of this new web content platform, please contact me at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu. Participants in the first stage must be current Collage users and have time to actively participate in the migration process, including review of existing content, post-migration content review, bug reporting, and system training.

When will we "go-live" with our new system? We have tentatively scheduled the first site(s) in the new system to "go live" on October 1, 2010. This date is subject to change based on the availability of campus and vendor resources. As mentioned, the roll out will proceed in stages, with additional sites going live throughout the Fall semester. We hope to complete migration of the remaining sites during the Spring 2011 semester.

What will our new system be called? We would like to extend the University brand to our implementation of OmniUpdate's OU Campus, in order to create a more consistent user experience and improve familiarity with this important service. We're looking for naming ideas! If you have an idea for a new name for this service, email me at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu.

Official recommendation - OmniUpdate!

After review of participants’ testing results and completion of an extensive evaluation for each of the three vendor finalists, I'm pleased to announce that OmniUpdate’s OU Campus web content management system has been determined to be the best fit for CSU Channel Islands and has been recommended for purchase to the WCM Core Team and IT management. Learn more about OU Campus.

Once the contract and purchase are finalized, the WCM Core Team will reconvene to discuss the timeline and action items for the implementation phase of the project, which will include system configuration, migration of existing web content, and training for web content editors.

Now for a few thank-yous:

• Thanks to all three vendor finalists for their responsiveness and support throughout our long and detailed evaluation and selection process.
• Thanks to Winston Churchill-Joell, Cagdas Cubukcu, Cathey Hurtt, Nathan Gerber, Jessica Dennis, Justin Gatewood, Jason Friesen, and Lee Brunjes for sharing their experience with web content management at their respective institutions.
• Thanks to members of the WCM advisory and testing teams for their valuable feedback and participation in the hands-on testing of three product finalists.
• Thanks to the members of the WCM core team for their guidance throughout the project process.
• And finally, very special thanks to Kevin Craig, Ryan Garcia, and Daniel Martinez for their unwavering commitment and care in helping the University select the best solution.

Down to the wire

The Web Services team has been working feverishly to complete the hands-on testing of the WCM offerings of three vendor finalists.

A lot of functionality is being tested: multiple browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari); multiple platforms (Windows, Mac); end-user features (such as the WYSIWYG editor) and administrative features (such as batch processing of files & folders, templating and content-reuse). It's important to note that each system has its pros and cons (from both end-user and administrative perspectives), and these must be balanced to select the best solution for our University web content environment.

Some of the challenges at this phase include:

• Ensuring that we test enough features in the right way. We approached this by spending a lot of time testing end-user features first, and then moving on to administrative/back-end portions of each product. This way we could ensure a positive experience for the end-users.
• Learning enough about how each system works. For example, some of the systems make extensive use of XML + XSL in their templating system, so knowing enough to be comfortable and to understand code examples in these languages is critical to completing testing successfully. In the case of these products, learning about & understanding the templating system in each product probably has taken the most time.

The good thing is that we have fully-functional versions of each product. The bad news is, as always, there is just not enough time to learn + test everything!
  
Within the next week, the team will meet with IT leadership to decide which vendor and system will be selected. Thanks to everyone so far for their participation & feedback throughout the process. 

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.

Vendor demo wrap-up

We completed our 4 vendor demos yesterday. Two 2-hour demos per day was a somewhat grueling schedule for the participants, but we are happy to get them done quickly.

A big "Thank you!" to all the vendors that presented, as well as all those that have participated in our process thus far.

During the next week, we will be reviewing the vendor demonstrations in greater detail, communicating with our demo participants, and determining which vendors will be invited to participate in the next phase (hands-on testing).

We anticipate selection and feedback for vendors to be available during the week of April 22.  In the meanwhile, we may be in contact with vendors to answer technical questions about their products. 

RFP responses & vendor demos

We're happy to announce that we received responses to our RFP for web content management systems from the following vendors:

• HannonHill
• OmniUpdate
• Percussion
• TerminalFour

The RFPs have been distributed to the WCM Core Team, and are under review.

Vendor demonstrations are scheduled for next week, and are open to the campus community. Because space is limited, we request that campus community members RSVP to attend any of the demonstration sessions.

Demonstrations are scheduled as follows:

• Hannon Hill - Tuesday, March 9, 12:30pm - 2:30pm PST
• TerminalFour - Tuesday, March 9, 3:00pm - 5:00pm PST
• Percussion - Thursday, March 11, 12pm – 2pm PST
• OmniUpdate - Thursday, March 11, 2:30pm – 4:30pm PST

Click here to RSVP for the WCM vendor demonstrations

Location information will be provided to those that RSVP.