The Implementation of a Content Management System from Start to Finish

blog provides a beginner, bird's eye view of the entire process of implementing a department-wide content management system. For more information on Enterprise Content Management systems, click on one of the companies to the right.

This is simply an account of how successful (or not successful) a new CMS was integrated into the literature department of a Fortune 500 company over the span of 6 months. I am a user of the content management system, not a developer. I do not detail the actual technical side of constructing and programming a system.

I have written about each touchstone moment in the entire process and have labeled those by Week. Note that it took longer than the number of weeks presented here; I just listed the touchstones this way to give you the semblance of a structured, yet unrealistic, timeline.

Week 1 - Implementing a Content Management System

Week 2 - Deciding on a Content Management System Team

Week 3 - CMS Training

Week 4 - My Content Management Process

Week 5 - Under Construction

Week 6 - Server Incompatible with Content Management System

Week 7 - Content Management and Knowledge Transfer

Week 8 - Content Management Goals and Consistency

Week 9 - Content Management in a Bad Economy

Week 10 - The Content Management Light at the End of the Tunnel

Week 11 - XMAX versus XMetal

Week 12 - Migration and Legacy Content

XMAX versus XMetal

I was at a meeting with Just Systems today. Just Systems is a content management software company. There most popular product is XMetal (a content management software product). Today's meeting was about a new product they have called XMAX. Basically, this is an lightware version of XMetal. It's got some of the same capabilities as XMetal as far as providing an XML editing component. The cool thing about this new content management product is how it can be customized and embedded into any container or holder that an organization may already have set up for their document needs.

At it's core, XMAX simply looks like a basic window and does have a few buttons that switch views and allows importing and exporting; beyond that, it's not really a full user interface we think of today. It's slim and serves as an editor window via using Active X. This setup makes it easy and natural, as if opening a notepad file, editing the structured content within, then embedding or integrating that augmented content into whatever container you have (such as anything created in Java or HTML).

All in all, XMAX seems intuitive and slick, seeming allowing you to update your content on the fly through this app, and then having that content fit into a web site, for example. USA Today uses XMAX on a regular basis; go to anyone of their entertainment web pages to see it in action.

Week 10 - The Content Management Light at the End of the Tunnel

This week, we are slated to finish our last, third stage of testing. Already we have gone through the development and stage environments. We are now moving into the final test phase called the production environment. As you can see from my previous blogs, it’s been a long road to get here. Years in the making. Two previous systems have already came and gone; however, it seems the third time is a charm -- working with Flatirons has gone fairly well (for the most part) and now we are in the home stretch. Testing today will comprise working through several different workflows for a few different deliverable (sales material, technical material, field material, and updates). The workflows for each have corresponding test scripts (steps) written out in fine detail on an Excel spreadsheet. As we move through each step of the workflow we mark the respective script as either a pass or fail. Those steps that have failed us as of late have mainly been due to permission and preference settings in Webtop. Those were all hammered out in the last two environments and so we should be all set.

Update: I just got handed a new copy of Adobe, Acrobat 9. I will have to install this today and run it side by side with the CMS, since some preferences in Webtop require that we select a commenting program to work from. (When reviewing topics and and maps we have to use Adobe to comment and make suggestions for the writer of the topic or map -- see prev. entry).


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