Cms processes

Hosted CMS vendor CrownPeak was always a little different inasmuch as it offered a development sandbox of sorts for customer developers to modify applications and settings at a code level. Now the company has extended and repackaged those capabilities a bit, enabling customer tech teams to make API calls to their hosted CMS application from other environments, and setting various connector paths for content to flow bidirectionally. This follows what many other ASP leaders, like Salesforce.com, are doing. We suspect that part of the motivation, though, is to be able to tell ASP-averse IT departments during a sales process that they will still be able to play with the new web content management system, just as if it resided behind their firewall... Read about CrownPeak Advantage "ES"

A Web CMS survey conducted by the University of California at Davis (preliminary results of which were released October 22, 2007) made official what many of us suspected all along: Even the best minds in the world can't agree on how to do content management. Of the 81 (out of 129) respondents who are currently using a Web CMS, roughly 20% (18 respondents) have rolled their own solution. The other 63 institutions are using 39 different branded solutions. The fragmentation of this market is really quite stunning. Can you imagine 63 colleges using 39 different word processor programs? Quantitatively, the UCD numbers are a bit on the thin side. What survey lacks in statistical significance, however, it makes up for in qualitative poignancy. The comments page makes interesting reading. The usual themes emerge: Know your requirements up front. Get buy-in from all constituencies, not just IT. Budget for training. Expect things to take longer than you thought

In one of our dreams, we can build a highly custom CMS out of independent Java components. Well, at least part of that dream has been reality for some time: you can get fairly good standalone and embeddable workflow engines and plug them into your existing J2EE architecture. We've previously highlighted Oak Grove Systems; you might also want to check out Dralasoft, who are partnering with repository component vendor, Xythos. Don't let all their "Business Process Management" verbiage fool you. These are straightforward workflow tools, and both are already getting OEMed into commercial CMS packages...Visit Dralasoft    And Oakgrove Systems

CMS Watch report buyers will recall that we have been wondering just how long Web CMS vendor eGrail would stay independent. Now we know. For FileNET, the acquisition represents a sort of U-turn back into the CMS space after the company focused deliberately on enterprise DM and business process automation software over the last few years. For eGrail, which had suffered from undercapitalized R&D efforts, the sale is clearly a boon. It remains unclear, however, how much the present eGrail technical architecture dovetails with the rest of the FileNET suite, and that should give current eGrail users some pause amid what appears otherwise to be very good news...Check out the FileNET press release

After a long series of delays, Swedish Web CMS vendor EPiServer finally released version 5.0 of EPiServer CMS last week. A major reason for the delay is that EPiServer raised their ambitions during the process. Version 5 has massive changes for developers as it is based on .NET 3. There's also a complete new workflow based on the new Windows Workflow Foundation. Interestingly the release comes only shortly after the founder sold a majority of the company, and new owners came in with a new CEO. Despite the curious timing, according to EPiServer a few new customers are already live with EPiServer 5. With the major changes make sure you get competent resources on your project, ideally somebody who's already worked with Version 5.

A smart information architect named Dan Brown has been writing about the limitations of various functional categories -- such as "role," "workflow" and "published" -- in describing how people really manage content. We think he's onto something. In various projects recently, we see more fluidity in terms of contributor rights and capabilities, as well a return to more collaborative, ad-hoc content development and approval processes. Some content management use-cases call for machine-like production workflows; most web publishers want greater flexibility. The trick is to know the difference...Read Brown's Blog

Nearly every CMS product has some sense for maintaining discrete versions of changed content. But only a handful offer user-friendly ways of comparing the differences between any two versions. MS CMS is one exception: they inherited a nice "redlining" system from nCompass Labs. Other products perform side-by-side comparisons of the code or rendered page, but that's a bit clunky. Now along comes Advanced Software Inc. (ASI) -- makers of the DocuComp module that is OEMed into most desktop word processors to provide comparison capabilities -- with a server version of their tool explictly targeted for OEM into CMS packages. Sounds like a good strategy....Find out more about DocuComp

We've previously noted Stellent's drive for the local eGov marketplace. Recently, the company has come out with a newly-branded "City/County" suite. Stellent's forms and document processing capabilities probably fit well with local eGov needs. But what is truly novel about this package is the pricing: a per-year fee based solely on the number of residents. We don't know if this is a winning approach and wonder if it is a loss-leader to upsell optional modules that carry Stellent's traditional seats+servers cost formula. But we note it as yet another marker in CMS vendors' ongoing experimentation with pricing models...Read more about Stellent's local government suite

I recently laid out the justifications for an investment in Web content management, in AIIM's E-doc magazine. Pay special attention to the caveats. Benefits accrue less from new technology and more from new processes.

CMSWatch believes that open-source CM platforms will finally come of age in 2002. An early sign of the maturation process is a willingness to cross-pollinate. Witness the "first annual open source content management systems conference" to be held next March in Zurich... Check out the impressive speaker roster

Last year we wrote about how some applications -- notably Google Mail and Suggest -- were taking advantage of Javascript plus XML-over-HTTP for richer interfaces. Now Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path has written a nice summary and (perhaps more imporantly) come up with a new name for the approach: "AJAX." Some CMS vendors are beginning to use AJAX methodologies, although from what we have seen mostly in a tentative way (if you're a vendor using AJAX, do tell where and how). Asynchronous communication with the server has tremendous potential to make heretofore very linear authoring and workflow procedures in a CMS much more fluid and therefore more, well, lifelike...

In a nice post-mortem of a tortured CMS project, an anonymous developer in InfoWorld describes how a lack of user testing nearly doomed the effort. It turns out that -- surprise, surprise -- the written functional specifications didn't convey what the editors really needed. Documents almost never can. With usability paramount for CMS success, it behooves you and your content contributors to come up with a plan their active participation in a more agile development process. If they won't test screens out, or you don't give them a chance, there's trouble ahead for everyone.