Q: How do I know if this is the right tool for me?

Each situation is unique, but a successful CarolinaContent project might include items such as:

  • A large volume of content and documents.
  • Content that has long term value for the university. (IE — a Web site for a quick project that will only be relevant for a short period of time might work better in another tool)
  • A need for strong version control, rollback and archiving capabilities.
  • Content that will be repurposed in multiple pages and sections.
  • Content that is both public and restricted, based on an LDAP/Onyen security model.
  • A need for an approval workflow model.

Items not typical of a CarolinaContent project include:

  • Transactional or web-application functionality
  • E-commerce
  • Sites with a very specific or small target audience

Q: What are some other campus groups that will be using Oracle UCM system?

Web Services plans to migrate and build new sites in the UCM for selected key campus administrative units, such as Human Resources, Finance and the main University Web site.

Will this replace all other CMS tools on campus?

Ultimately the project is intended to provide an enterprise Web content and document management solution for the entire campus. However, there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” CMS. CarolinaContent will not replace all other CMS tools on campus. It’s all about selecting the right tool(s) for the job. In some scenarios, a “hybrid” solution that leverages multiple tools may be the answer. A small blog may not need the robust feature set of an enterprise CMS. Other sites may be a great fit for a straightforward CarolinaContent implementation.

Q: What type of governance is in place for the tool?

As part of our support plan for CarolinaContent, we intend to establish a governance structure. However, during the initial phase of the project (its.unc.edu and help.unc.edu), these requests are reviewed by the manager of ITS Web Services, Jeremy Davis, in collaboration with the CIO and Deputy CIO.

Q: How do I open and view previous revisions?

Content contributors may view and roll back to previous revisions by accessing content items in Content Server. See http://help.unc.edu/CCM1_015546 for more information.

Q: How do the dev, test, prod environments work?

What is the difference between major and minor releases? Web Services is implementing a more formal development model. Part of our approach includes weekly “Point” releases in which we deploy non-outage configuration changes such as template changes, fragment updates or layout changes as they pertain to its.unc.edu or help.unc.edu. In addition to these weekly point releases, we have a process in place for monthly “Major” releases for more intensive, outage-oriented upgrades. Both the major and minor release updates are made in the development environment and pushed to a test environment for review. Once the updates are functional in the test environment, they are pushed to the production environment where site visitors can view them on the live site.  These kinds of changes are done in the development environment.  Content contributors will manage their content updates in the production environment and will not need to follow the release schedule. This development model will be a part of future Web Services Web and content management initiatives. You may view the 2009 release schedule at its.unc.edu/carolinacontent.

Q: Will we work in a dev environment, or is editing instantaneous?

Content contributors work in a production environment and site updates are immediate (note: it may take a few minutes for sites to reflect changes from time-to-time)

Q: What types of file formats can you import into the system? Can all file types go in?

According to Oracle documentation the ContentServer will hold just about any file type.

Q: Is there one centralized place to change a piece of content?

There is a content repository (“Content Server”) that contains all of the content in a site. Users may view and edit a content item’s medadata (information about the content item such as title, release date, site category, etc.)

Q: Can you pull content/info into pages from other systems such as LDAP?

Yes. This may require custom development and add to the scope/resource needs of a Web site project.

Q: What kind of workflows are available?

Oracle UCM describes workflow as “the electronic routing of a content item for the purpose of obtaining approval to release the item to the consumer.” The system can provide as simple or robust of a workflow as necessary. Note that workflows can easily get complex and time consuming. A simple, short workflow process is recommended. For the first phase of CarolinaContent (its.unc.edu and help.unc.edu), workflow has been disabled.

Q: Can you get an alert when it is time to update your page?

Yes. This can be achieved using Oracle UCM’s workflow capabilities, but authors are also notified prior to a piece of content expiring.

Q: Is there an audit trail for content that has been edited?

Yes. Content revisions are saved within the content server. You can view previous versions of the content, the time and date of changes, the author that made the updates, as well as any other metadata that has been changed.

Q: Does it have Web statistics built in?

No. You will want to continue to use Google Analytics, Urchin, or a similar tool to get this kind of data.

Q: Can we future release multiple pieces of content at once – similar to a code release, but for content?

Yes. Multiple pieces of content can be future dated so that they will all be released at the same time.