Articles - Page 186

What I Mean to Say: A Practitioner Perspective on AI, Semantics, and Content Evolution

msalvatierra

OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC) today announced the general availability of OpenText Tempo and introduced Tempo Express Edition, a new offering that lets companies quickly set up a private solution for easily sharing and syncing content in the cloud. Both editions offer all the ease-of-use of consumer-oriented document sharing cloud services coupled with the rigorous records management and security required to meet internal policies and industry regulations.
<blockquote>
“Secure publishing, sharing and syncing information across multiple devices is clearly resonating with users, hence the emergence of cloud-based services on the consumer side. For enterprises, however, the consumer cloud is just another way for information to get lost or into the wrong hands,” said Eugene Roman, Chief Technology Officer of OpenText. “Tempo combines consumer-level usability with enterprise-level reliability and security. It will fundamentally change the tempo of how information is used, shared and stored by enterprise users.”
</blockquote>
With OpenText Tempo and Tempo Express Edition, organizations maintain absolute control over their content. For users, the experience and functionality is similar to popular file sharing services with full desktop integration and easy access to synchronized content from mobile apps on all the most popular devices. But while the user experience doesn't change, all content is actually being stored behind the corporate firewall with a full audit trail, versioning and permission control.
OpenText Tempo Content Server Edition is designed to bring easy file sharing functionality to organizations currently using or investing in the full OpenText ECM Suite, and can work in conjunction with existing content applications and user interfaces.
OpenText Tempo Express Edition provides a self-contained Tempo environment that can be used alone or alongside other content repositories. This gives companies an “out-of-the-box” way to take advantage of simple and fast document sharing while still maintaining full control over where content is stored, and with the benefit of an advanced content management feature set.
Key features of both OpenText Tempo and Tempo Express Edition include:
<ul>
<li>Transparent integration into user desktops, including sharing with internal and external users</li>
<li>Ability to synchronize content across any number of computers, tablets, and other devices, ensuring that users always have the latest copy of documents</li>
<li>A simple Web interface for managing file information, setting permissions or sharing files</li>
<li>A flexible deployment model that allows organizations to manage OpenText Tempo entirely on-premises or, drawing from patent-pending technology and cloud-based hosting, choose a hybrid model that allows organizations to maintain control of the information but offload the effort of maintaining the service to OpenText</li>
</ul>
OpenText Tempo was announced on a preview basis in November 2011 at the OpenText Content World customer event and made available to customers on a trial basis. The initial feedback from customers has been strongly positive about the intuitive user experience across Web, desktop computers and mobile devices.
<blockquote>
“The Tempo Web interface is very intuitive. Documents are easily and quickly accessible, and sharing is effortless,” said Christoph Hammerl, Consultant Archiving Services, Voith IT Solutions GmbH &amp; Co KG. “I'm able to access Tempo from my iPhone and the Web client and both ways work like a charm. Congratulations to everybody on the Tempo team. In my opinion Tempo is what Steve Jobs would have referred to as “insanely great!”
</blockquote>
Koen Michiels of Delaware Consulting added, “Tempo is instant and convenient. The Windows desktop client is fast and intuitive and the mobile iPhone app is very fast and user friendly.”

Effortless File Sharing, Sync Come Together with an Enterprise-Class Infrastructure to Accelerate Business "Tempo"

mike-johnston

A new release of Joomla has been made available. Version 2.5.2 addresses two security concerns, namely an XSS vulnerability and an SQL injection issue. Users are recommended to upgrade immediately to the new release.
For those unaware, there is an <a href="http://demo.joomla.org/">online demo</a> available and you can download this latest release from the <a href="http://www.joomla.org">Joomla</a> website.

Joomla CMS version 2.5.2 released

Sitefinity CMS 5 has hit the web with a selection of cutting edge mobile tools! This release delivers enhanced mobile features to manage web content uniquely adapting it to display appropriately on desktops, tablets and smartphones. Out-of-the-box, Sitefinity 5.0 integrates a responsive design approach that empowers a marketing end-user to define rule-based web pages that dynamically adapt to different size screens. No more updates of multiple content versions of the same website or “exception” only coding is required by a developer.
Utilizing Cascading Style Sheets support for CSS3 media queries, content from the same source page will automatically resize and selectively display as appropriate on the screen of a desktop, tablet or smart phone. The marketing end-user can preview the page layout on numerous smartphone and tablet devices through the built-in device emulators to ensure page elements are displayed properly, and layout and design are preserved.
<blockquote>
“In most CMS solutions, the challenges of supporting different display sizes required explicate hand coding and developing and testing of multiple website versions for different mobile devices.” said Martin Kirov, executive vice president of Sitefinity, Telerik, “Sitefinity is the first web content management platform to integrate responsive design, allowing Sitefinity developers and marketing end-users to easily define the appearance of content depending on the device. This is extremely powerful and strategic approach considering that mobile traffic is expected to continue to increase dramatically.”
</blockquote>
The Sitefinity 5.0 release also provides a new Forums module used to organize forums and threads, and manage membership and moderators. It also supports advanced posts search.
The Sitefinity Thunder plug-in for Visual Studio allows developers to create and maintain themes through the familiar Visual Studio environment. With Sitefinity Thunder developers will connect to their websites and will be able to easily create, modify and deploy their customizations.
New enhancements in Sitefinity Ecommerce will allow merchants to sell downloadable goods and digital products. End-users (non-developers) can upload the digital media (i.e., PDF, MP3, MP4, etc.) they wish to be protected using a Sitefinity’s web interface; set a price and Sitefinity will manage the authorization details.
With the new Windows Authentication support and Single Sign-on, Sitefinity website administrators managing an array of internal systems and multiple websites will be able to easily control the access and authentication process in their organizations.
Sitefinity 5.0 offers a seamless upgrade from previous Sitefinity 4.x versions. Sitefinity 3.x clients can take advantage of the integrated Sitefinity migration tool to upgrade to the latest version.
Check it out: <a href="http://www.sitefinity.com/">http://www.sitefinity.com/</a>

Sitefinity CMS 5 hits the web - brings cutting edge mobile tools

With the number of website building applications available, it can be hard to trim down the fat so to speak to get to the ones that offer the best value for the buck. <a href="/sitekreator">SiteKreator</a> is one of these website builders and today, we're going to take a look at how well it does this job in our SiteKreator review and determine whether it's worth the $20-80/ month investment (depends on the package you choose).
SiteKreator claims to have over 100,000 business websites running on their platform which is a pretty impressive number. Does it offer enough to make it valuable for you? Read on to find out.
When you first are set up with an account on SiteKreator.com, you are given a default website to begin the design process with. Here's a look at one of the templates available:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2012-03-03-at-9_08_53-am-450x318.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
Notice that at the top of the screenshot above, there is a toolbar with options such as Add Content, New Page, Page Options, Control Panel and Help.
The Add Content option pops up a menu that provides a variety of content types you can insert into your website such as Text, Image Galleries, File Areas, forms and much more. (see shot below)
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2012-03-03-at-9_17_19-am.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
As you can see, there is a great selection of items available, but this isn't all there is.. you can add more via the Applications Catalog in the Control Panel. Some of the available applications you can add to the system include:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ss-usability-form-builder_loyw78.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
There's no question that SiteKreator offers an impressive array of functionality so far… most users introduced to this system will find it offers more than enough for their needs. It's not just the applications being available that's important, it's how well they work and I can say with confidence that after trying a number of these apps, they are very intuitive and functional. I was quite impressed with the “keep it simple” concept that SiteKreator has gone with here.
To edit any of the available content areas, you simply click on the wrench icon in the top left corner of the content block. (You can see this in the first screenshot above. This brings up an editor specific to that type of content. For instance, assuming you wanted to change the navigation,  clicking on the wrench would bring up this window:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ss-usability-inline-editing_l1q5cq.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
Need to change some text? Click the wrench and you'll be presented with a slick WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2012-03-03-at-9_11_00-am-450x188.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
This is a great editor and I was impressed to find the ability to add not only text and images but also full tables, video and there's even a quick date insertion button. Well done guys!
Maybe you like slideshows and want to make a few modifications to the one included with this template? Just click the wrench for an easy configuration window:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/multi-everything_cpgqmq.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
You can tell by the screenshot how straight forward making changes to the slideshow is. This should give you a pretty good idea as to how easy to use this system is for adding / modifying content. The features don't stop there, however.
On the far right there's a control panel drop-down that gives you access to more options such as page appearance (where you can change settings such as the structure, page elements, columns and color scheme.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gears2_jixfnb.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
Perhaps you aren't a fan of the default theme? You can change that too. Here's a shot of some of the many available choices:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/phone-bg-g4-1_rinjog.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
Not enough control for you? Want to delve in deeper? You can change the color pallette, fonts and more as well.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/cloud-banner_qcsawu.png" alt="SiteKreator Review" />
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
I'm a big fan of ease of use and SiteKreator has to be one of the easiest website builder applications I've ever had the pleasure of testing out. Not only is it simple and easy to use but it's also incredibly versatile and offers functionality far and above my expectations going into this review. Normally, I'd have no problem recommending this to those looking for a slick, easy to use system that's fast and functional.
*Note: When I first wrote this review, I declined recommending SiteKreator due to a high number of validation errors. Since then, the team at SiteKreator have worked hard to address them and resolve this problem and I'm comfortable saying that this solution now is a safe bet. It speaks volumes when a company reacts to concerns by taking action instead of making promises but not correcting the problem. Kudos to the SK team for being the exception to the rule.  It's important to note that not all solutions will come back with zero validation errors (in fact it's quite rare). The previous #'s that came back were too high to recommend and have since fallen under the “reasonable” category. Feel free to go check out <a href="/sitekreator">SiteKreator</a>.

SiteKreator Review

<a href="http://modxcms.com">MODx CMS</a> has continually been gaining in popularity over the years and we thought it would be interesting to touch base with the founder of this great CMS and get his thoughts on the project, how it started and where it's going. Read on!
Please tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/ryan_400x400.jpg" alt="Ryan Thrash" />
I grew up in Tyler, a small East Texas town with my parents and younger brother. In 1994 I moved to Dallas, TX, where I went to college to get a business degree at SMU. Years after graduating I was set up on a blind date with the gorgeous woman that I managed to convince to marry me, now happily so for 11 years. I am fortunate to have an incredibly supportive partner that keeps a crazy entrepreneur of 20+ years in line when needed. We have a daughter (4), a son (8) and our new puppy that arrived this Christmas.
Professionally, I come from the print world having started a pre-press and ad production shop which I owned for roughly a dozen years. While I love amazing typography, white space and beautiful proportions, I definitely don’t miss the CMYK world.
People often ask how the print-world translated into the CMS software business. My first introduction to programming was when I began hacking on mainframes in the in 4th grade at a summer class for kids at a nearby community college. While I am certainly not a developer in the true sense of the word—especially since CSS actually makes sense to me—I do know what can be accomplished. I’ve always been the lead tech at my business and, starting in the mid-90s, I started poking around with what was then PHP-FI at my pre-press shop.
My first taste of open source was osCommerce, where I was involved in that community for a while. I followed that by being part of the original 10 or so early people with ZenCart, dabbled with Mambo and Etomite, and finally started what turned out to be MODX. It was certainly not a plan, but it’s been my career for the last 7+ years.
How did MODX come to be?
In 2004 I was looking for a CMS that would let me escape the then prevalent table-based layouts and style sites with lean markup and CSS. Back then bandwidth mattered and I had ported osCommerce to output semantic markup and saw huge reductions in rendering times; from then on I was sold.
I also wanted a platform that made creating login-protected content straightforward, that my clients could pick up and use to manage their sites without breaking things and that they could learn within an hour. Needless to say, it didn’t exist. As such, I teamed up with a small group of people including Raymond Irving and Jason Coward who had similar goals and we started our journey to achieve some very specific goals:
<ul>
<li>Provide a simple template system that used standards-based (X)HTML/CSS and that didn’t inhibit design or site structures in any way.</li>
<li>Let users quickly build login-protected site content.</li>
<li>Create a sensible, robust and extensible API that developers could use to extend or override the platform without having to hack the core.</li>
<li>Allow people to organize content in a logical and understandable manner.</li>
<li>Avoid the tortuous or extended learning curves found in many other CMSes.</li>
<li>Work equally as well for basic marketing websites as it would for more complex applications.</li>
</ul>
We first released MODX in the wild in 2005, and it was exhilarating to watch people resonate with our work. Our first Packt Award for Most Promising Open Source CMS came in 2007, a big encouragement for turning a passion into a profession.
In 2010 we formed a company around MODX to give it our full-time attention. This past year I hired our CEO to focus on strategic business issues, freeing the rest of the team to focus on three key areas: Community, MODX Complete (support &amp; maintenance for businesses) and MODX Cloud, which is simply going to be an incredible platform—and which I’d love to talk about with you more at a later date.
We’re looking forward to meeting lots of people at CMS Expo this year, which we consider our first big launch. It’s kind of funny given that we already have hundreds of thousands of sites powered by MODX, amazing partners and some great traction.
Why the name MODX?
MODular and eXtendable. Or something like that … really it was a working name that originally was going to be Tattoo CMS with the tagline of “Make Your Mark” and a hand print logo, but that got shelved and the MODX moniker stuck. We love it now.
What are the distinct differentiators between Evolution and Revolution for those unaware?
MODX Revolution, “Revo” for short, is the newer, completely rewritten version of our classic code base. Revo kept the same paradigms from MODX Evolution, but executed in Object Oriented PHP using a database layer that enables MODX to also run on Microsoft SQL Server. It gives developers the ability to override and extend Revo to achieve the exact functionality any project requires, without requiring upgrade-blocking “hacks” to the core.
Not only do you get both custom functionality and an upgrade path to the next version, but this new version also offers more control, the ability to create complex applications and integrations that would have been impossible with Evo. Scaling to hundreds of millions of page views is entirely possible with Revo, for instance. You can extend the caching layer to use Memcache or Membase, sessions to use Redis or some other highly-perfomant flavor du jour of the latest technology hotness.
MODX Evolution is perfect for small marketing-dominated websites or on an inexpensive, resource-constrained shared server without too many pages. Revolution can still be used for smaller sites but allows significantly more complex development, integrations and virtually unlimited content. MODX Revolution is where the focus of development activity is for us, however, we will continue to provide guidance, patches and releases for Evolution as needed.
What makes MODX unique?
MODX makes it incredibly easy to use any design one can dream up for their website and do so without having to code—in fact we can confidently claim MODX support HTML7 and CSS5 already today. It does so while separating how a site looks from how it functions. Users of all backgrounds find MODX easy to publish their content with confidence. What further sets it apart is that the MODX management interface can be completely customized for the users and tailored to the content. This ensures that people who use MODX daily to manage a site can easily use the tool and train others quickly as needed.
What do you feel is the main reason people use it as their CMS?
MODX truly empowers creative people to have 100%, pixel-perfect control of how sites look without ever having to write a single line of PHP. You can use any flavor of HTML/CSS/JS you want and you don’t have to worry about diving into a theming system, mixed templates/code or coming to grips with taxonomies or limited categories. We also have a great track record for security, with very few critical issues surfacing since inception.
Can you direct to any significant sized implementations that you are aware of?
Complex.com currently serves about 100-million page views a month and is tracking towards 150-million by December 2012. MODX.com also serves quite a bit of traffic with a ton of complex back end infrastructure supporting all our sites. We are firm believers that our main marketing site should run on our software, constantly pushing to make it a better solution.
Which site do you feel makes the best use of MODX’s features?
MODX.com itself has many custom integrations and components. Our custom single sign on application is tied to a Mongo DB store. Our forums are built using the MODX API and handle tens of thousands of users with about half a million posts. We use our native blogging Extra called “Articles” for our news, announcements and blogging, and we have eCommerce transactions tied to FoxyCart and to Recurly.
We also have the back-end infrastructure in place for a MODX leaderboards platform that we’ve been testing for months, an internal dashboard, a live map showing when users download something or post in the forums (or anything else that will move them up the leaderboard), integration with Redmine for product management, and a lot more. We’re also working on a Certified MODX Professional program which will use another MODX Extra to handle exams and dynamically generating completion certificates PDF.
Is there a commercial offering of the CMS? How does the organization bring in funding?
MODX software is open source and will always remain free for anyone to download and to use—we’re 100% committed to open source. MODX the company offers turn key post-launch support and maintenance as well professional services working collaboratively with MODX Partners and large organizations to complete any phase of a MODX based project.
Later this year we will launch a new platform for web developers—anchored by MODX Revolution—called “MODX Cloud”. It’s a major game changer for people that build or manage websites, especially for creative or marketing organizations.
Who are the key contributors to the project? Can you tell us a bit about them?
Jason Coward and Shaun McCormick have done the majority of the development on MODX Revolution, and they both work for MODX. In the community there are hundreds of contributors who report bugs and submit pull requests to our GitHub repository. Highlights that immediately come to mind include Bob Ray, author of MODX: The Official Guide, Susan Otwell in Israel, and Stephane Boulard in France who improved the back-end Manager UI tremendously.
For MODX Evolution, the Russian and Japanese communities do a tremendous job of maintaining the software. Mike Schell, another one of our Senior Developers at MODX, vets the contributions and handles the releases.
If people want to get involved in the project, how can they do so?
There are many ways to get involved with MODX for people of all skill levels and from any location. The most basic thing people can do to contribute to MODX is let us know when something needs to be fixed or improved upon, or by requesting new features in our project tracker. This isn’t limited to just our software, if people find issues on our forums, in the documentation or anywhere on modx.com we love to hear about it so we can make it better. On that note, we can always use help improving our documentation. Developers and designers can contribute code through GitHub. To get involved contributing code don’t forget to sign a Contributor License Agreement first.
The MODX community forums of over 38,000 users is a welcoming, positive and supportive place to dig into MODX. Answering even the simplest of questions is an incredible way to master MODX, make friends and find collaborators. Most of the team at MODX came to our attention from the forums.
Finally, this past year there have been over a dozen meet-ups all over the world. We are committed to seeing our International interaction grow exponentially this year and we’re going to dedicate time and money to this. It’s a great way for MODXers to share experiences and find collaborators.
Final thoughts you may have or parting comments.
Thanks for giving us a chance to talk about MODX. We’ve been hiding in plain sight for a few years now and it’s time to change that!
I think what is truly special about MODX compared to most open source projects is that we are very friendly to commercial interests. In other words, while we are ardent proponents of open source, we are certainly not zealots. In fact I wrote a blog post on this a while ago. We certainly encourage people to license their work under an OS licence at MODX, but we also don’t hold it against them if they chose to do otherwise.
In other words, we don’t view open source as an all-or-nothing proposition. If you don’t modify the core application or use the public APIs to create something cool on top of MODX—like an amazing template or an Extra that enhances how MODX works—we think you should be able to license that however you wish. We don’t think MODX’s GPL license should “virally infect” everything that touches it and in turn dictate the license under which you release your IP. As such we’re in a great position to build an incredible commercial ecosystem around MODX Extras and Themes that is incredibly developer/designer-friendly. More on that in late 2012!

Interview with Ryan Thrash of MODx CMS

Drupal 6.25, a maintenance release fixing issues reported through the bug tracking system, is now available for download. There are no security fixes in this release.
Drupal 6.25 builds on top of Drupal 6.24 and includes all the previous bugfixes and security improvements. <a href="http://drupal.org/node/1461656" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Changes in this release</a> only fix issues introduced with the previous bugfix release (Drupal 6.24). The list of all fixes included is:
<ol>
<li>Rollback for issue #12274 given that it does not consider email domain names with hyphens valid after the first component of the domain name.</li>
<li>#1425868 by ELC, lort, greg.harvey, David_Rothstein: Fixed duplicate entry of theme primary key in system table on Drupal 6.24 when updating using drush.</li>
<li>#1425260 by mgifford: Fixed ‘Call to undefined function locale_inc_callback()' during 6.22 -&gt; 6.24 upgrade if locale module was previously enabled but is not currently enabled.</li>
</ol>
A complete list of all bug fixes in the stable 6.x branch can be found in the git commit log. There are no new features in this release.
Grab your copy from <a href="http://www.drupal.org">http://www.drupal.org</a>

Drupal CMS 6.25 released

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

#ffffff

ElggCamp San Francisco is happening March 24th at Parisoma! The Elgg Foundation and Condiminds are organizing an event for developers, social media entrepreneurs, marketing specialists, and anyone interested in using Elgg in social media.
They’re planning a day full of discussion, success stories, Elgg secrets, and networking with Elgg users.
More info: <a href="http://elggcampsf.org/">http://elggcampsf.org/</a>
Tickets are limited so register <a href="http://elggcampsf.eventbrite.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">register soon</a> to reserve your spot!

ElggCamp San Francisco 2012 - Registration Open!

GetSimple CMS is having a contest this March to help drive creation and innovation within their community.
<h2>The Purpose (pulled from their site):</h2>
GetSimple has always had to deal with complaints that there were not enough good free themes available (and to a lesser extent, plugins). It's been a problem because GetSimple simply does not have the market awareness yet to attract the type of quality files that WordPress and the other larger CMS's do. The March Create-a-thon contest was created as a bold attempt to change this.
<h2>Contest Rules:</h2>
<ol>
<li>The new theme or plugin must be uploaded into the Extend repository between February 28th, 2012 and March 31st, 2012</li>
<li>All files entered will be judged on a 1-10 scale for each of four qualities*.</li>
<li>A person can enter as many times as they want, but can only win once.</li>
<li>No copyrighted material can be entered. No existing files can be entered. No “Free CSS Template” conversions.</li>
<li>GetSimple team members are allowed to participate, but are not allowed to win.</li>
<li>The GetSimple team &amp; other outside advisers will collectively pick the winners in a blind ballot.</li>
</ol>
<h2>The Prizes:</h2>
<h4>GRAND PRIZE</h4>
<ul>
<li>The (mt) Media Temple Pack3 years free (gs) hosting + schwaga $720+ value!</li>
<li>KISSmetrics Bootstrap Accountfree for 1 yeara $348 value!</li>
<li>FormAssembly Basic Accountfree lifetime accountregularly $14 a month ($168/yr)</li>
<li>TreeHouse Gold Membershipfree 1 montha $49 value</li>
<li>$100 credit at BuySellAds</li>
<li>GetSimple T-Shirtvia BlueCottonpriceless!</li>
</ul>
$1,300+ total value
<h4>SECOND PLACE</h4>
<ul>
<li>AuthorityLabs Basic Accountfree lifetime accountregularly $24 a month ($288/yr)</li>
<li>Hello Bar Solojavascript notification bar scripta $29 value!</li>
<li>TreeHouse Gold Membershipfree 1 montha $49 value</li>
<li>GetSimple T-Shirtvia BlueCottonpriceless!</li>
</ul>
$350+ total value
<h4>THIRD PLACE</h4>
<ul>
<li>FormStack Starter Accountfree for 1 yearregularly $14 a month ($168/yr)</li>
<li>TreeHouse Gold Membershipfree 1 montha $49 value</li>
<li>GetSimple T-Shirtvia BlueCotton priceless!</li>
</ul>
$200+ total value
Full details at <a href="http://get-simple.info/create-a-thon/">http://get-simple.info/create-a-thon/</a>

GetSimple is giving away over $1,800 worth of prizes in the March 2012 Create-a-thon

HelpSTAR, a leading pioneer of helpdesk software, today announced the global availability of its HelpSTAR 2012 Service Desk Collaboration Suite. HelpSTAR has set a new standard for collaborative workflow by integrating the workflow components of its award winning enterprise-class Service Desk Management solution with documentation (ECM), communication and synchronization functionality.
Today, work passing through a service desk relies heavily on input from multiple team members. The efficiency of the communication, documentation and support processes determines the effectiveness of the workflow, impacting service levels and the cost efficiency of the entire service desk.
HelpSTAR service requests include updates, escalations, business rules transactions, notifications and alerts, role based access control and more. Unique to HelpSTAR 2012, is the rich array of collaborative objects that are integrated in the service request. These range from instant messages between representatives, documents with encryption, check-in/out, searches and preview functionality as well as appointments and meetings. These features enable customers to send, receive and view communications relating to requests within one consolidated view.
HelpSTAR 2012 Service Desk Collaboration Suite features include:
<ul>
<li>Role-based access control to provide departments, teams and individuals with limited access to specific tasks, documents and calendar items.</li>
<li>Rich service desk functionality support of ITIL framework (incident, problem, change management, service level management and configuration) as well as project and workflow.</li>
<li>Document management to enable multiple users to coordinate tasks and workflows.</li>
<li>Communication tools for increased teamwork within the project/task infrastructure.</li>
<li>Mobile access from any mobile browser with no app required.</li>
</ul>
Igal Hauer, CEO of HelpSTAR, said:
“Our goal has always been to enable our clients to ‘get the job done' by providing a tool that enhances their experience and efficiency rather than presents a layer of complexity that gets in their way. Delivering excellent service in today's complex corporate and technological environment requires communication flows and coordination mechanisms between service providers, end users and suppliers that are far more sophisticated than those that existed even a decade ago. Resolving an issue in this environment is a virtual ‘Cirque du Soleil' of carefully choreographed tasks, communications and coordination activities. HelpSTAR 2012 incorporates new tools that support communications, coordination and document-management that expands and extends the capabilities of the IT service desk to other departments such as HR, facilities, legal and professional services.”
Paul Moriarty, manager of IT support services at Rochester General Hospital, said:
“Since 2009, HelpSTAR and its complete helpdesk solution has greatly increased our IT support productivity. It has an easy to use interface and a single entry point to all features so we were able to expand our helpdesk solution into other departments.”
Jesse Norwood, director, Shared Services, Veolia Environmental Services, said:
<blockquote>
“Prior to implementing HelpSTAR, the time our employees spent manually creating trouble tickets and responding to requests was time consuming and costly. Now, our staff has access to one another's trouble-shooting solutions through an interactive knowledgebase tied into the shared call management system, enabling each staff member to handle a wider variety of issues competently, consistently, accurately, more efficiently and at a lower total cost. HelpSTAR's automatic generation of tickets and responses helps our employees save time, so they can focus more directly on delivering optimal customer service.”
</blockquote>
About HelpSTAR:
HelpSTAR help desk software is an easy-to- use service desk collaborative suite that provides rapid issue, problem resolution and change management capabilities out of the box without the need for lengthy deployment and staff training. Designed for organizations with 10 to 500 support reps servicing 100 to 50,000 employees, HelpSTAR expedites problem handling through features such as intelligent queuing, various self-help tools, and prompts such as alarms, follow-up reminders, and automatic priority escalation. It offers both a built-in library of standard reports and custom query capabilities. HelpSTAR is available in both client/server and web-based versions running on Microsoft or Microsoft SQL. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.helpstar.com/" target="directory" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.helpstar.com</a>

HelpSTAR 2012 Delivers Collaborative Workflow Service Desk

<a href="http://www.alfresco.com/">Alfresco</a>, the open platform for social content management, and Jive Software announced the release of the Jive Connector with Alfresco, enabling cross-platform publishing between Alfresco and Jive. With the integration, customers can leverage best of breed social business technology with best of breed enterprise content management (ECM), making enterprise content both social and organized. The Jive Connector is available immediately as an add-on to Alfresco Standard and Enterprise subscriptions here.
The Connector enables cross-platform publishing through a collaboration that delivers enterprise-class repository functionality to Jive content, allowing Alfresco content to behave as native Jive content. Users in both platforms can create documents in Alfresco and publish them in Jive, or create in Jive and publish in Alfresco.
Managing and integrating enterprise and social content has long been a difficult task, and most organizations have settled with using separate systems. Now Alfresco and Jive customers can choose to work and share information to both platforms easily and securely. Customers can manage their content and publishing of their content in Alfresco and easily socialize their content in Jive.
“As more businesses require social business capabilities to support their bottom-line growth, the integration of Jive with Alfresco delivers on a major necessity in today’s market,” said John Powell, CEO of Alfresco. “We’re excited to be delivering best-in-class enterprise content management combined with Jive's industry leading social business technology, giving way to even more robust possibilities in social content management.”
Alfresco and Jive originally partnered in March 2011 to bring together best-in-class content management and social business software for overall improved functionality and capabilities for today's businesses.
<blockquote>
“Today's enterprises have established infrastructures for document management, but the new way to business requires the ability to socialize that content,” said Matt Tucker, CTO and cofounder of Jive Software. “Through this partnership, the Jive Connector with Alfresco enables a true social content management system to make social and enterprise cross-platform publishing a reality.”
</blockquote>
Benefits and features of the Jive Connector with Alfresco include:
<ul>
<li>Cross-Platform Publishing – creates content instantly in both Alfresco and Jive and publishes documents to both platforms. In addition, when in Jive, users can bring in existing Alfresco documentation and work on the platform of their choice all while taking advantage of the features of both systems through the integration.</li>
<li>Common Database and Taxonomy – uses LDAP to utilize the common user store database to ensure consistency of authorship.</li>
<li>Standards Based – employs the CMIS interface to provide a standard enterprise content management API supported by Alfresco for the primary interface for the Jive and Alfresco integration.</li>
</ul>
Together with SolutionSet (an Alfresco and Jive partner), Alfresco and Jive collaborated to deliver the Jive Connector to provide the first true Social Content Management platform, making enterprise content both social and organized.
The Jive Connector Toolkit is available to Alfresco Enterprise customers only, from the support portal. For more information on the toolkit, visit <a href="http://www.alfresco.com/products/integrations/jive/">alfresco.com/jive</a>.

New Jive Connector with Alfresco Makes Social and Enterprise Cross-Platform Publishing a Reality

<a href="http://www.coremedia.com/">CoreMedia</a>, a leading Web Content Management (WCM) company, today announced the availability of a new solution tailored for the media and entertainment industry. The CoreMedia Solution for Media and Entertainment provides a comprehensive WCM solution for broadcasters, publishers and media portal providers to create and deliver highly optimized and contextual experiences for their online audiences.
As the demand for anywhere, anytime access to content intensifies, media and entertainment companies are forced to constantly innovate and build their revenues through monetizing a demanding online audience – while at the same time reducing costs and consolidating their operational activities. With the CoreMedia Solution for Media and Entertainment, companies can immediately enhance productivity and audience engagement while positioning themselves to uncover new revenue opportunities. The solution combines CoreMedia’s best-of-breed, on-premise WCM platform with new capabilities and applications designed specifically to meet the needs of media and entertainment companies. Companies can also opt for cloud-based SaaS media and entertainment applications from CoreMedia partners Internet Broadcasting and T-Systems Multimedia Solutions that leverage CoreMedia’s CMS.
CoreMedia Solution for Media and Entertainment Capabilities and Benefits:
<ul>
<li>Deliver highly relevant online experiences – Contextualization allows content publishers to gain an understanding of the audience they want to reach, and deliver the right content to them in real-time, from articles to advertising to social engagement.</li>
<li>Extend the life of content – Enables media companies to easily syndicate and repurpose content across multiple platforms and devices, substantially increasing value and visibility of content.</li>
<li>Centralize content creation and management – CoreMedia’s solution allows companies to publish content to multiple Web properties from a single, centrally managed content hub and editorial infrastructure – a huge benefit for those managing multiple brands and local presences.</li>
<li>Get to market quickly – The quick-start capabilities of the Website Blueprint empowers media and entertainment companies to quickly publish new Web properties, helping them to control implementation costs, ensure constant innovation and be responsive to new audiences.</li>
<li>Create a consistent experience across all channels – Audiences today are engaging daily with brands across multiple channels, using an assortment of tablets, laptop browsers and smartphones. CoreMedia’s solution enables companies to easily create and manage content from a central location and then optimize its delivery to each channel or device.</li>
<li>Create a community – CoreMedia empowers companies to create a social environment with their Web properties and leverage the benefits of this interaction with their audience.</li>
</ul>
CoreMedia Solution for Media and Entertainment Components:
The CoreMedia Website Blueprint is a rapid website development “best practices” framework that provides pre-configured tools, templates and advanced features for out-of-the-box deployment. Created specifically for media companies, the CoreMedia Website Blueprint builds upon the best non-proprietary features from successful projects on high performance customer websites and leverages the following product components:
<ul>
<li>CoreMedia CMS platform – CoreMedia’s enterprise-grade WCM platform that enables companies to create a more relevant, engaging and “contextual” online experience by delivering the right content, in real time, to the right audience touchpoint, including websites, mobile devices, tablets and TV sets.</li>
<li>Adaptive Personalization Module – Allows media companies to create personalized Web experiences on any platform or device based on behavioral, situational, historical and social audience data.</li>
<li>Adaptive Device Delivery Module – Created in partnership with Sevenval, a leader in mobile and multi-channel Web technology, the module automatically optimizes and delivers contextualized content, images and videos to over 18,000 clients.</li>
<li>Social Media Integration –CoreMedia’s social software enables companies to facilitate the discussion around their content and engage with their audience on a highly interactive level using one of the most scalable social software capabilities on the market.</li>
</ul>
Partner Solution Components:
<ul>
<li>Internet Broadcasting (IB) provides a Cloud-based SaaS publishing solution – with CoreMedia CMS as the platform – together with original syndicated content, digital agency and ad trafficking services. IB’s SaaS publishing platform has been specifically designed to serve the next-generation online publishing needs of media customers to easily unify, extend and package their content to drive revenue-producing engagement with audiences. IB’s clients include some of the largest media publishers in the world including Hearst Television and Post-Newsweek Stations.</li>
<li>T-Systems affiliate T-Systems Multimedia Solutions develops Internet-based solutions for large corporations and mid-sized companies. The company's approximately 1,000 employees serve customers from all industries by translating Web innovations into services for the digital business and social ecosystem. These include solutions for e-commerce, intranet and Internet portals as well as Web IT management. For the ninth year in a row, the company took the top spot in the Internet Agency Ranking 2011.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
“Context-aware computing enables companies to target and deliver relevant content to their target audiences more effectively and therefore build loyalty. For media and entertainment companies in particular, incorporating this capability into their online strategy is a business decision they cannot afford to pass up,” said Mick MacComascaigh, Research VP, Gartner, Inc. “Whether it’s on the tablet, smartphone or browser, the new reality for the industry today is that the right content must be delivered to the right audience at the right time or profit margins will suffer.”
</blockquote>
Availability:
The <a href="http://www.coremedia.com/web-content-management/what-we-offer/solutions/media-entertainment/-/10814/10648/-/_h9lvh6z/-/index.html">CoreMedia Solution for Media and Entertainment</a> is available now for purchase from CoreMedia.

CoreMedia Launches New Web Content Management Solution for Media and Entertainment

The CMS selection process can often be a frustrating and overwhelming one to those with little to no experience in the field. For this reason, it should come as no surprise that there are often mistakes made during the process that lead to either incorrect selection or overspending for your organization.  By outlining the most common mistakes, our hope is that you will be able to use these as guidelines to reference if tasked with choosing a CMS.
<h2>Lack of Clear Objectives</h2>
The biggest mistake made during the CMS selection process is a lack of clear objectives. The objective on any system should be decided upon by all areas of your organization and outlined in detail.
Take for example the following scenario:
Company ‘A' decides that they need a CMS so they task their IT department with finding one that fits their needs. The IT department, that already manages the existing CMS, sets out to do so with their objectives in mind. They begin by choosing a CMS that fits their needs, presenting it and the company begins the process of migrating to the new CMS.
The Problem:
The IT department has their own objectives in mind. For example, they may be looking to reduce the amount of time it takes them to maintain the system or perhaps they want to incorporate a new technology. They set about finding a CMS based on these needs and ignore those of the other departments. The result is a system that fits only the needs of one group of people and has not been vetted out to ensure that it provides the maximum value to the entire organization.
The Solution:
It's important to meet with all areas of your organization when selecting a CMS. Together, the organization should develop a list of features and functionality that is agreed upon. We recommend breaking this list down into two areas: Wants and Needs.
Wants should be features or functionality that would be great to have but that are not necessarily deal breakers. For instance, perhaps your organization currently uses a separate e-commerce platform and would like to see one that is built directly into the CMS instead. If, however, a CMS is found that meets all of your requirements but this one, you may choose to go with it if the alternative is a lesser functional system.
Needs are what they sound like. Items that absolutely must be incorporated into the CMS in order for it to serve its purpose and justify the costs / efforts involved. An example of a need may be the ability to work with your existing data stores.
I often suggest asking the various functional areas the following questions as a starting point:
<ul>
<li>What does we want from the new system?</li>
<li>What does the existing system (if there is one) not do (or do poorly) that we'd like to see corrected?</li>
<li>Fill in the blank: We would make more use of the CMS if __________.</li>
</ul>
With these simple questions, you will have spurred internal discussions and hopefully, this will lead a laundry list of items which can then be pared down to a Needs / Wants list and from there, a full-fledged list of agreed upon goals.
In a nutshell, having a clear set of objectives will make the entire process much smoother and will leave all areas of your organization feeling excited, involved and satisfied with the chosen system.
<h2>Pack Mentality</h2>
Second on the list of mistakes is what I like to refer to as ‘Pack Mentality'. Explained simply, it's the desire to move to a new platform simply because it seems like everyone else is talking about it lately and using it.
This type of thinking is surprisingly common and leads to unfulfilled expectations and more often than not, wasteful spending.  Before considering a replacement for your existing CMS or the purchase of a new one, it's always important to fully explore what the CMS you are considering offers that differs from your existing system. Once you have a list of these offerings, you will want to develop an ROI statement to reflect what exactly you are going to gain and how you intend to recoup the cost of the upgrade with said gains.
Don't fall into the trap of looking at just one CMS based on popularity, however. It's important to work with professionals who have experience in the industry to ensure you have fully vetted out a number of systems and have a short list developed. You wouldn't want to move to a new CMS without research only to find out you could have saved thousands and gained even more functionality, would you?
<h2>Not exploring both Commercial and Open Source Products</h2>
I often speak to users who fall on either side of the bench with open source or commercial CMS. The first set are die hard open source advocates who believe all commercial CMS platforms are unworthy and the second are die hard commercial fans who hate open source because it eats into their profit margins.
One thing I would stress to you is to ensure that you include both camps when evaluating the market. Don't let misconceptions and preconceived notions prevent you from properly assessing all available options.
There are plenty of commercial platforms that grew from or incorporate open source offerings and without them, would not be here today. Conversely, there are commercial platforms available that offer incredible versatility, great value and excellent support that are well worth the money.
When you begin evaluating the systems that exist, be sure to remain open minded. This is the only way you will be able to make the RIGHT choice when the time comes.
These are just a couple of common mistakes I've seen during my time consulting. I intend to write posts of this nature more in the future as well so stay tuned.
Do you have any suggestions or common mistakes you'd like to share with our readers? We'd love to hear them. Please add them in the comments below or <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contact/">drop us a line</a> and we'll expand this article with due credit. Thanks!

Simple solutions to common mistakes made when choosing a CMS

Call Tracking + AI 

Call Tracking + AI that Turns Calls into Leads

<a href="http://www.generis.ws/">Generis</a> has issued the latest release of its CARA Unified Client user interface, adding more than 250 enhancements for existing platforms (Documentum, Alfresco, SharePoint) and adding support for the Oracle WebCenter content management (formerly Stellent UCM).
Within the Documentum family, CARA provides a single unified UI to replace Webtop, DAMtop, CenterStage and TaskSpace, as well as providing Records Management functionality.
Customers with more than one repository type can leverage the ability to have the same configurable UI across multiple platforms – with new functionality in CARA v3.2 including dynamic dashboards with multi-variable selection, enhancements to Widgets now allowing external URL embedding (e.g. Twitter feed, company SOP links, external regulatory links) and a complete form builder.
CARA v3.3 is slated for release in late Spring 2012, and will include right-to-left support (with an Arabic release to accompany it and supplement the existing languages of English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Polish), as well as many media-based enhancements (video preview, coverflow and more).

CARA v3.2 released - now covering Documentum, Alfresco, SharePoint and Oracle WebCenter

CMS Kickoff 26

Find out at CMS Kickoff 26, January 13 - 14, St. Pete FL

What's the future of CMS in the AI era?

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