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Support Extranet
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CMS Development Road Map - November 2006
- User Group Activities
- Business / Marketing / Sales Activities
- Recently Developed Modules & Features
- Planned Modules & Features
- Other DDSN Initiatives
User Group Activities
- Re-initiate regular (quarterly?) user group meetings in 2007. First one scheduled for Feb 2007.
- Re-launch cm3 customers / partners newsletter.
- Customer forums (www.cm3cms.com/extranet/forums) - Work to have the entire user group participating.
- Communication strategy focussing on developing sites, using the cm3 tools and processes to get more out of sites from a business perspective rather than purely technical focus.
- More shared user group developments (e.g. versioning) where the user group shares the cost of creating new features.
- CMS review survey coming soon, likely January 2007.
Business / Marketing / Sales Activities
- Continue to provide all extended modules in core licence except some niche features such as the XML Gateway.
- Considering open source. Current thinking is to remain closed source licence, but providing 90% of source code to clients for modification if needed.
- Visit CeBIT 2007 (www.cebit.com).
- Proposals going to user group for shared developments, beginning Nov/Dec 2006.
- More focus on intranet/extranet.
Recently Developed Modules & Features
Please note that this is not a comprehensive reference of new features in the content management system, it is only a very high level overview of modules and major features that have been developed or released over the past few months that we think may be interesting to many users.
Module
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Technology
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| Cross browser compatibility - Firefox, Mac |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Automatic subscriber management - Sign on, manage account, one click cancel |
ASP, off the shelf |
| Event calendar – Events by month, day, feature view, custom admin screens |
ASP, off the shelf |
| White site version 4 – Tableless design, CSS, integrated modules |
ASP (90%) & ASP.Net (75%) |
| Content push / content transport systems |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Enhanced e-newsletter and subscriber management |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Image handling – Auto thumbnail generation, sizing, caching |
Macro language, off the shelf |
| New visual editor - XHTML compliance, Flash handling, more functions, cross browser compatibility, more |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Quick Preview - Ability to preview content in an example web page with a real layout, but without the need to save it first. (The traditional "in context" preview is also still available, this requires the content to be saved first.) |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| More advanced and configurable workflow & notifications system |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Help desk |
ASP, off the shelf |
| Forums (new version) |
ASP, off the shelf |
| Time sheets (basic) |
ASP, off the shelf + customisation |
| Shopping cart (new version) |
ASP, off the shelf + customisation |
| Events calendar |
ASP, off the shelf |
| Advanced seminars / event booking, including collection of delegate/attendee details, and integration with shopping cart for online payment |
ASP, starting point for customisation |
| RSS, XML feeds |
Platform capability |
| Many macro language improvements |
Macro language, off the shelf |
| Help window in admin system |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Find & replace |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Advanced ability to customise the admin interface without any impact on central system upgrades (for developers) |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Developer tools: Database transport, advanced content transport (move content between CMS databases), configuration reference sheet, maintenance scripts |
Admin system, off the shelf |
| Many custom modules |
www.cm3cms.com/about/modules |
Planned Modules & Features
Please note that this is not a comprehensive reference of features that are earmarked for development, it is only a very high level overview of modules and major features that we think may be interesting to many users.
Module / Feature
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Time
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| Interface tweaks for Internet Explorer 7 |
ASAP |
| Merge base articles & containers (no more separate base articles!) |
December 2006 |
| Compare live/work versions |
December 2006 |
| Various interface improvements |
December 2006 |
| Dynamic content placeholders / drop-ins: The ability to define chunks of content that can be updated centrally but included within the body of multiple pages throughout a website |
January 2007 |
| Simplified email newsletter subscriber specification including direct integration of subscribers with user forms |
January 2007 |
| Enhanced logging and usability for e-newsletter system – opened newsletters report, click tracking, easy web version management |
January 2007 |
| User / member search module, off the shelf starting point |
January 2007 |
| Double byte language support (e.g. asian languages, graphical characters) for international content |
Partially supported now, full compatibility first quarter 2007 |
| Name change! |
First quarter 2007 |
| Improvements and updates to cm3 XML Web Service for integration of external systems directly with cm3 |
First quarter 2007 |
| Roll out ASP.Net standard platform |
First & second quarter 2007, underway and partially available now |
| Automatic XML output of content coupled with high performance metadata indexing & search |
First or second quarter 2007 depending on demand |
| Version 4 manual |
First quarter 2007 (already underway) |
| Full automated content versioning including rollback – Articles, containers, content types, possibly templates. Second phase includes viewing site as it was on a day in history. |
First quarter 2007, user group involvement pending |
| Logging / reporting - Particularly custom module logging, and content workflow reports such as who's working on what, what publishing is going on, current status of content, etc. |
Partially delivered now (logging platform, NTAA example) – Continued in 2007 |
| Usability improvements including user testing |
Already underway, continued in 2007 |
| More ability to customise the interface for different audiences |
Already underway, continued in 2007 |
| Front end / inline editing – Methodology built into platform |
Second quarter 2007 |
| More workflow features including content locking (e.g. check-out), more formalised authorisation/sign off, extended workflow steps (i.e. not restricted to create/edit/publish). |
Second quarter 2007 |
| Image / asset manager |
Second quarter 2007 unless demand is sooner |
Other DDSN Initiatives
- New DDSN website appearing in December 2006 or January 2007.
- Much more focus on usability and information architecture in all services and products. This is already underway, a number of customers are going through formal analysis and design projects now.
- More involvement in customers' businesses and development directly aligned with that.
- New "Writing for the Web" workshop released in October 2006, this is a key training event for all clients to consider. The workshop studies the process of generating web content, focussing on essential knowledge for all content authors and site managers.
- More workshops coming.
- Exhibit at CeBIT 2007.
Date: 2006-11-20
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