By Melody Mendoza
Starting spring term, the university website will be managed by Texas A&M-University System’s Information Technology department using Cascade Server, a cloud for higher education in the A&M-System. Phase one of its implementation is expected by spring.
The A&M-San Antonio website was launched Aug. 5, 2010 by University Communications and has been maintained internally until the decision was made to improve workflow and governance.
Brandon Oliver, multimedia and web coordinator, spoke with Faculty Senate, Staff Council and the president’s cabinet Oct. 19 at separate meetings to collect input of employees preferences and needs for the university website.
Robert Lewis, lead software applications developer of A&M-IT, presented information about the upcoming process that is expected to begin in January and listened to suggestions.
Staff Council expressed the need for calendar modules on the Web pages to display important dates for students that wouldn’t be fit for the university calendar. Oliver said the president’s cabinet and Faculty Senate showed concern for faculty’s needs, how to post information for students, bio pages and updating information more efficiently.
Lewis explained that his department “is a cost recovery center for the Texas A&M-System.” The department develops software, builds websites, provides Web security and creates databases.
The cost for project management is $5,000 per month, but can change depending on full-time equivalencies or how much time the staff needs to work on this project, Oliver said. “This will only be for a couple of months,” he added of the price.
The content management system is expected to speed up the process of loading content on the site and give employees more ownership over their Web pages.
“It’s putting ownership where it belongs,” Oliver said.
In the meeting with Staff Council, Oliver said that instead of employees having to email him content for the website, a faculty or staff member from each department will have a content creator.
He said, when the university started, “it was fine for me to be a one man band,” but as the university grows, the process needs to change, or more staff is needed.
“I think this process will streamline the efficiency to get things up on the website,” he said.
Content creators will generate and upload files and post photos or other items a department may want or need on their Web page.
The Cascade Server of the Hannon Hill Enterprise Web Content Management system will allow employees to “easily add, delete or modify Web pages without highly technical programming knowledge,” according to the A&M-IT website.
Oliver said until January, departments should focus on assigning the role of content creator and content approver. The approver will most likely be a department head or supervisor, but may differ depending on the department’s needs.
Then, University Communications, the university’s public relations team, will be responsible for ensuring there is consistent branding and overseeing the site’s overall correctness.
The project management will change in phases. In phase one, the university will assign web governance or roles of content creators and approvers. Then, in phase two, redesign will begin.
Oliver said there are boxes called modules in Cascade, which offers more flexibility to add links, imagery, calendars and databases.
He said employees won’t have to learn HTML code to alter a page or change its information. He said the will modules are drag-and-drop.
Employees responsible for Web content will receive training on the Cascade server and Saba Centra web conferencing.
“It’s not going to be too bad,” Oliver said, adding that the training sessions will be recorded to that employees can review.
Lewis did not have visual templates because he said he wasn’t there as a vendor, but said there are working examples of templates.
Oliver said the university has discussed searching for a web content management system for two years, and the process picked up this year as University Communications staff began meeting with vendors. Oliver said information technology and financing departments were supporters in this process.
He said choosing the right web content management system is important because this is a start-up university and the system shouldn’t change after a couple of years.
“We want it to be right,” he said.
