Echo CI is live!

We're happy to report that our first Web sites in Phase 1a of our migration went live on Friday, December 17. The Anthropology and Sociology are available to their owners for editing in Echo CI. It's taken us longer to get here than we expected because of some significant implementation speedbumps which have now been resolved.

The remaining Phase 1a sites are expected to go live in early January 2011. Migration work has already begun on Phase 1b sites, which along with the bulk of the University's web sites, will be migrated to Echo CI during the Spring 2011 semester.

We have a lot of content to migrate, and it's going to take some time to complete. According to our current experience, it will take about 1 hour or less (2 hours or more for larger sites) per unique site to migrate using the available tools and to perform the necessary quality assurance, and we estimate we have 200+ unique sites to migrate. With further migration experience we hope to reduce the time required.

Thanks to everyone for their continued patience and participation in this project, and happy holidays from the Echo CI team!

Echo CI is coming...

After much deliberation, we've chosen a name for our new web content management (WCM) service: Echo CI.

But what does it mean? We have several explanations for why we chose this name for our new system, ranging from serious to playful. You can decide which one makes the most sense (or which one you enjoy!)

1. The way Dolphins communicate: The name is a playful reference to our University mascot, the dolphin. Dolphins must communicate over short and long distances in an organized way. One way they accomplish this is through echolocation. By broadcasting sounds and listening to the results, dolphins use echolocation as a tool to navigate and understand the world that surrounds them. In a similar way, CI "Dolphins" need to communicate with each other and the world at large in an efficient and organized way.  Echo CI is a tool that enables our University community deliver its messages on the Web in a quick and meaningful way. As the University continues to grow, Echo CI will help our current and future Dolphins to navigate oceans of information by helping the University to deliver information in a consistent and flexible way.

2. Reflection: An echo is a reflection of the original information, a representation of source material. In the same way, Echo CI is a tool to make it easier to gather and reflect existing information about the University using the Web as a media. Echo CI does not create content on its own; rather, it reflects the information that members of the University put into it.

3. Defense of our future: one of our team members said the name reminded him of a SEGA video game called “Ecco the Dolphin, Defender of the Future”. Likewise, Echo CI is a tool to help to ensure our future success as a University. It should be no surprise that CI’s future depends on how effectively we communicate via the Web. In a recent survey, over 83% of current and prospective students said that the University web site is their primary means of obtaining information about the University. Echo CI is a tool to manage and sustain the explosive growth of content and information delivery methods; it helps us ensure that we are ready for what the future holds.

Echo CI will mean different things to different people, and that’s OK; in all cases, we are committed to creating a positive experience for all who will use Echo CI day-to-day, including web content writers, designers, developers, and all the users of the content that it helps our campus community to create.

Migration update

Due to the resolution of technical issues regarding our new server infrastructure, as well as the complexities of the content migration, a soft launch of the new web sites has been moved to next week. We anticipate that by Friday, October 29, all of the Phase 1 sites will be live in our new system. Once the sites are live, content editors and owners of Phase 1 sites will need to complete training in the new system before their access to edit their sites will be enabled.

The new production web servers are scheduled to go live this afternoon, starting approximately 4:00pm. We were not able to complete the migration to the new servers as planned on Friday, October 15 during our maintenance window because of technical issues with the server configuration which could not be resolved. However, in the meanwhile extensive testing has been completed to ensure these issues have been resolved, and we anticipate a smooth, glitch-free and instantaneous migration today.

WCM migration progress report; launch date change

Since the end of July, the WCM migration team has been actively working to prepare for the launch of the new web content management system.

Here's what we've accomplished so far:

• Creation of a template guide to describe the template functionality we expect in the new system. 
• Modification of our page template code (HTML, CSS, etc) to prepare for our migration
• Configuration and testing of a new set of servers which will host our production web sites (and will replace our existing production web servers for www.csuci.edu) 
• Development of new templates and template system in the new WCM in coordination with OmniUpdate
• Compiled a content ownership inventory of web site owners and editors to facilitate migration into the new system

As with any large, complex system implementation, we've run into a few snags along the way. We want to ensure that the new system launches as smoothly as possible; therefore the go-live date for the Phase 1 sites has been rescheduled for Tuesday, October 19. 

Thanks to all our project participants for their patience and cooperation. We are excited to have this new system available soon! 

Content inventory

One of the first steps in our migration process is to evaluate the content that we have and generate a kind of "content inventory". The inventory is meant to provide answers several questions:

1. What is the content, and where is it (what server, where is it physically located?)
   
   What's most important at this point in the project is to have an accurate list of existing web sites.
   
   We start by generating a list of folders on each of the servers which host our web content. This is the most definite way to determine what type of content we are serving on the Web. In our case, we use a fairly flat information architecture: most top-level folders in our site represent a single sub-site. So, the list of top-level folders makes a pretty accurate list of existing web sites. There are some exceptions to this though, so sometimes we have to dig a little deeper to generate the list.
   
   
   
2. Who does the content belong to? Who is the owner, and who are the editors?
   
   A content owner is the manager or designee that is, in the end, responsible for the accuracy and timeliness of the content on their web site. A content editor is the person tasked by the content owner with performing web site updates. Both content owners' and content editors' responsibilities derive from the chain-of-command: content owners are typically managers designated by a vice president or other executive, and content editors are designated by content owners. In some cases, the same person is both the content owner and content editor.
   
   Each site in our list is assigned one content owner and one content editor.
   
   
   
3. Does the page exist in our web content management system? If so, will we migrate it?
   
   Our content inventory encompasses web sites that exist both inside Collage and outside of it. In some cases, programs and organizations don't use Collage for publishing their web sites. For the purposes of migration, if it exists in Collage, we'll also need to determine if we'll migrate it. This depends on the content owner's approval, as well as the accuracy and timeliness of the current content.
   
    
4. Is the web site "special" in some way? Does this web site use special WCM components, or represents an edge case use of the University template? If not, which template should it use?
   
   If a web site is using Collage components, or is using a special (custom) template, we can identify it here and use the information to prioritize the migration phase. If the web site is not unusual and uses a standard University template, we also mark the content with a template number; this number maps to the template descriptions we will provide to OmniUpdate for creation of the new site templates.
   
   
   
5. When will the site be migrated into the new system?
   
   As mentioned before, there's too much content to safely migrate all-at-once. So, based on the principles of prioritization previously defined, we will assign each web site to one of several migration phases.

The inventory also has rooms for notes and other information to help describe content and issues concerning its migration.

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.