Modern CMS systems are all essentially designed to facilitate the same functional flow. A platform needs to be able to Consume, Process, Deliver and Retain content. Each of these steps, however, can entail and require a variety of features. Understanding the intended use and expectations for a new CMS at each of these functional points will clarify the platform’s prospective role and, subsequently facilitate the integration process.

2. CMS Integration Checklist
Contents
CMS FUNCTIONAL FLOW
3
CONSUME
4
PROCESS 6
DELIVER 10
RETAIN 15
CMS INTEROPERABILITY
17
CMS INTEGRATION PROCESS
19
2 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

3. CMS Integration Checklist
CMS Functional Flow
Modern CMS systems are all essentially designed to facilitate the same functional flow. A platform
needs to be able to Consume, Process, Deliver and Retain content. Each of these steps, however,
can entail and require a variety of features. Understanding the intended use and expectations
for a new CMS at each of these functional points will clarify the platform’s prospective role and,
subsequently facilitate the integration process.
3 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

4. CMS Integration Checklist
Consume
Content Migration
•
What is the current content inventory (id, name, type, source, keywords, and owner)?
•
What are the sources for the content import?
•
One time or ongoing for each of the content source? What are the frequencies of
updates and specific rules for each of the ongoing migration?
•
Content discrimination - is there redundant, outdated or trivial content?
•
Any content refactoring on migration?
•
Are there any requirements for special or sensitive content migration?
•
Is there any need to encrypt, re-encrypt the migrated content?
•
Will there be a “freeze” to avoid changing of migrated content?
•
What are the mechanisms (Scrape/API/Push/Pull/Batch)?
•
What are the formats (XML/JSON/Flat Files/Database)?
•
How is content import verified?
4 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

5. CMS Integration Checklist
Content Entry
•
How is the content going to be entered into the systems (Direct into CMS / Uploaded
from Microsoft Office documents?
•
What is the content break-down?
•
What are the different groups of producers that are intended to enter the content?
•
What are the volumes and frequency of the content entry and update?
•
Is in-context (as opposed to form-based) content entry important?
•
Does the content need to be previewed after entry?
•
Are there external sources for importing content? What are the mechanisms (API/Push
Pull), access (HTTP/FTP/File system/Database) and formats (XML/JSON/CSV)?
Digital Asset Import
•
What kind of assets are going to be imported? Images, documents, video?
•
What are file formats?
•
How many and how often?
•
What are approximate file sizes? What is approximate total size?
•
Bulk, or individual import, or both?
•
Manual, or automated, or both?
•
Any trans-coding or transformation needs?
•
What is the asset organization system (taxonomies, tags, etc.)?
•
Is there metadata to be ingested or captured?
•
Who is expected to do the light editing (cropping, rotation etc.)? Is it to be done pre or
post-ingestion?
5 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

6. CMS Integration Checklist
Process
Content Migration
•
What are the sources for the content import?
•
One time or ongoing for each of the content source? What are the frequencies of
updates and specific rules for each of the ongoing migration?
•
Content discrimination - is there redundant, outdated or trivial content?
•
Any content refactoring on migration?
•
Are there any requirements for special or sensitive content migration?
•
Is there any need to encrypt, re-encrypt the migrated content?
•
Will there be a “freeze” to avoid changing of migrated content?
•
What are the mechanisms (Scrape/API/Push/Pull/Batch)?
•
What are the formats (XML/JSON/Flat Files/Database)?
•
How is content import verified?
6 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

7. CMS Integration Checklist
Site Structuring
•
Is there a need for inheritance?
•
Is there a need to break inheritance?
•
Single site or multi-site?
•
Single or multiple target markets?
•
What is domain strategy?
•
How do markets relate to countries/languages and how does this affect the structure?
•
What are the differences between content and structure of multi-sites?
•
How do design, structure, and content propagate between site section/sites?
•
Is there any synchronization between site section/sites?
•
Are there needs for content inheritance between sites? Is there need to break the
inheritance?
•
Are there Microsites?
•
Will the CMS structure map to the URL structure?
•
Are there non-browsable/non-searchable pages?
•
Domain strategy?
Search Indexing
•
Is there a full-text search?
•
Are there custom boosting/relevancy requirements?
•
Is there taxonomy to index content to?
•
Does the site need faceted search?
•
Are there search suggestions? What are criteria for suggestions?
•
How is multi-lingual search handled?
•
Is there a parameterized search based on date, properties, etc.?
•
What are the internal querying needs?
•
Are there external search systems or providers?
Translation
•
What content gets translated?
•
Is there a concept of “origin” language?
7 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

8. CMS Integration Checklist
•
What are target languages for each content group?
•
When is translation intended to start/finish?
•
How is the content update handled/synchronized?
•
Does the company use a vendor? Internal staff?
•
Does the translation get approved before being considered done?
•
What is a vendor interaction mechanism? Open API? Project-based system?
•
Does the company pay per word or per FTE?
•
What is the translation turnaround per project?
•
What is the translation turnaround for minor updates?
•
Is there translation memory?
•
How do changes in completed translation propagate back into the memory?
•
How are language dependent digital assets and documents handled?
Content Analysis
•
Is there off-line content analysis?
•
What is the scope (vertical and horizontal)?
•
What is the frequency?
•
Where are the results stored and for how long?
•
Is there a content update trigger?
Client Targeting
•
Are there user accounts and profiles?
•
What is the master repository of client data?
•
Is there one or multiple CRM instances?
•
Is CRM access read-only?
•
Is there client-specific content?
•
What is user segmentation (sex/geography/age)?
•
Is there A/B or multivariate testing intended?
•
Are there recommendations, customer intelligence etc.?
8 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

9. CMS Integration Checklist
Workflows
•
What are the intended roles?
•
What are the organizational groups?
•
What are the business processes?
•
What are the steps for each workflow?
•
What are the notification requirements?
•
Are there delegation/escalation needs?
•
What is the approval process? Sequential? Parallel? Multi-stage?
•
How are workflows annotated/commented on?
•
What is the visibility of workflow comments?
•
Are there external users?
•
What do external users have access to?
9 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

10. CMS Integration Checklist
Deliver
Publishing
•
What is the frequency of publishing?
•
How often are single pages published/updated?
•
How often full branches are published/updated?
•
What needs to be re-published (one page affecting others)?
•
Do some of the digital assets need to be published independently of the pages?
•
Is content entered at-the-time or is it programmed ahead via content scheduling?
•
Is there a published content replication between multiple hosts?
•
Do producers need to time-travel the web-site?
•
Are there multi-stage publishing needs?
•
Is there content publishing scheduling? Are there multiple schedulers for one page?
•
What are the preview requirements?
•
Is there a need for all-or-nothing batch publishing?
•
Are there requirements around on-line vs. downtime publishing?
10 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

11. CMS Integration Checklist
Syndication
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Are there RSS/atom feeds, or other formats resulting from publishing?
What type of content is available (pages/video/images/)?
Are there other content consumers?
Are the consumers internal or external?
What are the means of syndicating content (push/pull/batch)?
What are the technologies (REST/WS/FTP)?
Are there additional requirements (authentication, authorization, consumer user man
agement, etc.)?
Scraping/abuse detection/prevention?
Multiple Platform Targeting
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Is it a mobile web site? Is the same site supposed to support phones and tablets or
will there be separate solutions?
Is it a single mobile site or a part of series of mobile sites (existing or planned)?
Are there additional mobile apps planned?
What are the other non-standard browser platforms for the content distribution?
What are the specifics of each platform (form factor, touch navigation etc.)?
What are the layout, content and image adjustments needed for other platforms?
Is there a different page structure needed?
What is the process of updating the content for each platform?
How do the specifics of the video, flash and other digital assets need to change for
each platform?
Is there a downward scalability of the visual assets based on the platforms’ varied
connection speed?
Device detection strategy?
Localization
•
•
•
What are the alternative content branches for each language?
Is there a geolocation mechanism requirement?
Is there a need for alternative images, text in the same language to be displayed,
de pending on location?
Right-to-left screens?
•
11 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

12. CMS Integration Checklist
•
•
Is it unit or currency conversion?
Are there any geographic restrictions?
Local Caching
•
•
•
•
•
What is the caching mechanism?
Which assets are locally cached?
How often is the cache invalidated?
What are the different triggers for invalidation (TTL, Re-Publishing, etc.)?
Is there a caching for search query results and other more dynamic content?
CDN Caching
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What CDN is going to be used? Are there one or multiple CDNs?
What is cached on the CDN?
How often the content is invalidated?
Is content actively or passively invalidated?
How does content end up on CDN (upload/cache)?
Less mutable content (long TTL) vs. more mutable content (short TTL)?
Are there additional CDN requirements (in-code link replacements, specific header
data, device-detection, etc.)?
Need for ESI (edge-side-includes)?
Any geographical targeting/limiting?
Performance
•
•
•
•
•
•
12 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
What is the shape of traffic? Time-specific peak loads?
Can sessions be avoided?
How effective is CDN?
Number of authors? Usage during the day?
How much personalized content is there?
What is the desire load time for home page and/or other pages?
Confidential

13. CMS Integration Checklist
Session Management
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Are there user logins?
Are there user transactions?
Where are the client accounts managed?
Where are the client profiles managed?
Is there a forced logout after an inactivity period?
Is there any caching possible for any of the session content?
Is there any abuse detection/prevention?
SEO
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What are the requirements for URL generation?
Do URL’s need to be localized?
Are there any specific requirements for META tags handling?
Is automatic generation of site-map required?
Any specific Robots.txt requirements?
Does site-map or new pages have to be submitted to search engines after publishing?
What areas of the site should be prevented from crawling?
Customer Experience Management
•
•
•
•
•
•
Is there E-Commerce requirement?
Is there user-targeted content to be displayed?
Is there Marketing, E-Mail, SMS, etc. integration?
Are there Social features?
Are there Community features?
Are there legal, or certification requirements (PCI, child-safety, confidentiality, etc.)?
UGC
•
•
•
13 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Is there User-Generated content?
What is the extent of the UGC? Blog(s), message board(s), etc.?
Who can contribute? How often?
Confidential

14. CMS Integration Checklist
•
•
•
•
•
14 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Is there a verification process before allowing to post/comment (account history, user
name check for offensive content, etc.)?
Is the verification automated or manual?
Is there any UGC administration and/or moderation?
Is the administration/moderation automated or manual?
Who is responsible for UGC administration/moderation (internal/external/site)?
Confidential

15. CMS Integration Checklist
Retain
Content Archiving
•
Are there regulatory requirements with regards to data retention?
•
Is there archival policy in the organization?
•
Which content is archived?
•
Is there content versioning?
•
What is the projected growth of the archive?
•
Is there expiration for any of the content or digital assets?
•
Is periodic purge needed?
•
Is archived content available externally?
15 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

16. CMS Integration Checklist
Content Backup
•
How often does the backup occur?
•
Where are the backups stored?
•
Snapshot, full, or incremental backup? Content and digital assets backup?
•
On-line or downtime backup?
•
How long are the backups retained?
•
What are the possible restoration/recovery options?
Audit Trail
•
What are the audit needs, and what audit data needs to be collected?
•
Is the OOTB audit functionality enough?
•
Is the audit data backed-up and retained?
•
How often is the audit data harvested, and how long is it retained?
Statistics and Reports
•
What statistics are collected (component usability, page views, browse patterns etc.)?
•
What reports are needed and how often?
•
What are the main goals and funnels?
•
What is the goal of reporting (marketing, e-commerce, performance, usability)?
•
Is there an external integration with analytics platforms? Several?
•
Does analytic data have impact on content delivery?
•
Does the system need to be integrated with BI or ERP for traceability of reports?
16 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

17. CMS Integration Checklist
CMS Interoperability
Modern CMS systems are all essentially designed to facilitate the same functional flow. A platform
needs to be able to Consume, Process, Deliver and Retain content. Each of these steps, however,
can entail and require a variety of features. Understanding the intended use and expectations
for a new CMS at each of these functional points will clarify the platform’s prospective role and,
subsequently facilitate the integration process.
Internal Systems
CMS User management
•
Is there an existing LDAP, AD or any other centralized user management system?
•
Does it need to be used to manage CMS users?
•
Does there need to be any integration with an existing HR system(s)?
Business
•
Is there a need to integrate with an existing CRM, accounting or ERP system(s)?
•
Is there a need for an E-Commerce system integration?
17 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

18. CMS Integration Checklist
•
Are there online transactions?
•
What are the business specifics (subscriptions, flash sales, etc.)?
•
Which part of e-commerce is responsibility of CMS? Shopping cart? Checkout?
•
Is there an existing user management system for the web clients?
•
Is there an external product management system used that needs to be integrated?
•
Is there an existing BI platform that needs to be integrated with the CMS?
External Systems
Client Verification
•
Is there a credit card verification system used?
•
Is there an address verification system used?
Ads
•
Is there external or internal ad engine integration?
•
Is the targeting locale, platform, and content-specific?
•
Is there any tracking required for the ad displays, clicks etc.?
•
Is there a reporting integration with the engine?
Social Media
•
Is there social profiles integration?
•
Should there be any widget-based social integration (Twitter feeds, Facebook apps etc.)
•
Are there any web component embedded with social networks?
Videos Delivery
•
Should the videos be managed by an external service?
•
What are the players and formats?
•
What are the target platforms?
•
What’s the organization structure (tags, metadata, etc.)?
•
Is there a graceful downgrade for the slower speed/low resolution devices?
•
How many versions are needed per asset?
•
Are there any restrictions for video access?
•
What is the process of outdated videos cleanup?
•
Are there any integration between video service and CDN?
18 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

19. CMS Integration Checklist
CMS Integration Process
Integration projects for CMS platforms consist of a multitude of overlapping and interdependent
work streams. The dependencies can be purely technical, organizational, or a complex combination of both. The overall complexity also increases as the number of parties and vendors involved
into the project goes up.
Planning
•
What is the intended feature scope?
•
What’s the project plan?
•
What are the goals, dates, deliverables, intended project style (waterfall, agile, etc.)?
•
Is the intent to go “all or nothing,” or is there vision of multiple phases and iterations?
•
What is the expertise of the in-house IT group(s)?
•
What are the technology preferences? Languages, DBs, platforms etc.
•
What is the involvement of the vendor?
•
What is the support agreement? Professional services involvement?
•
What design artifacts are being provided? Are there PSDs, UI elements, HTML, JS, CSS etc.?
•
Is there an agency taking care of the design?
19 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

20. CMS Integration Checklist
•
Are they available throughout the project?
•
How detailed are the specs?
•
What are the functional specs, UI specs, performance spec etc.?
•
How dynamic/alive are the specs?
•
After the specs are finalized, what are the change control procedures for introducing,
or changing features and functionality
Development
•
What is the selected platform?
•
What’s the repository storage type (DB, XML, JCR etc.)?
•
What’s the existing functionality?
•
What languages are supported, preferred?
•
What’s the documentation available?
•
What are the best/recommended practices?
•
Is the CMS intended to be a master source for any data (MDM)?
•
What are the other master sources and data synchronization considerations?
Environments
•
What is the intended topology of the hosts and environments?
•
What is the frequency of the system updates and how are they distributed?
•
What are the product licenses?
•
Is there an available monitoring system?
•
If not, what would fit better into the infrastructure?
•
What needs to be monitored? When are the alerts distributed?
•
Should the system attempt “self-healing” if an issue occurs?
•
What are the prospective needs? What are the hardware resources available?
•
Planning for vertical vs. horizontal approach, and what is best supported by the platform.
•
Where is the system intended to be hosted? In-house, cloud, SaaS, or a combination of
the above
20 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

21. CMS Integration Checklist
Migration
•
How much of the existing content needs to be migrated?
•
What are the migration timelines?
•
What are the formats and available mechanisms for migration?
•
Can the migration occur incrementally?
•
Are there images, documents and other digital assets that need to be migrated?
•
Can all of the migration be automated, or manual input will be required?
•
Does the old URL structure need to be supported?
•
Do both, old and new systems need to be running together? Is there a concurrent
running, or phased and incremental migration strategy?
Content Entry
•
Who provides the new copy for the content entry?
•
Who will be entering the content?
•
What is the timeline for the copy delivery?
•
Can the content be inputted automatically, or all of it needs to be entered manually?
•
What is the degree of content authoring/formatting that needs to be accomplished?
Localization
•
What are the intended languages for translation?
•
Is any localization intended for the CMS UI itself?
•
What is the translation timeline?
•
Can the translation start before the content is entered into the CMS?
•
What is the pre and post-integration exchange format?
•
What is the pricing scheme? Turnaround time?
•
Who can verify and approve the translations? Are there resources available in-house
Integration
•
What are the other systems?
•
What is the integration work that needs to be done on both sides?
•
What are the technologies, protocols and locations (internal/external) for each system?
•
What is the ability and availability of the resources to work on the other (non-CMS)
side of integration?
21 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

22. CMS Integration Checklist
•
What is the integration timeline? When each point needs to be connected?
•
Is there integration with the existing system? What is the extent? What are the goals?
How permanent is it expected to be?
Testing
•
What is the testing schedule?
•
Is there a test-plan, use-cases, anything that can serve as a testing roadmap?
•
Are there resources to perform in-house testing?
•
Is there a UAT plan?
•
Is there a need for separate “back-end” testing? What framework/approach (JUnit,
Mock Objects etc.)
•
Is there a need for automated Web UI testing? What framework, scripts (Selenium, Silk, etc.)?
•
Is there a separate effort to test CMS UI?
•
Is there a need for memory profiling? What tools should be used
Support
•
Should there be training organized for the users?
•
Should there be training organized for the in-house developers?
•
Is there a separate, post-launch support agreement? What is the scope (bug-fixing,
new features, etc.)?
•
Is there a plan for the post-launch features?
•
Is there a plan for the next phase?
•
Is there a process for requesting and delivering new features post-launch?
22 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential

23. CMS Integration Checklist
Established in 1993, EPAM Systems (NYSE: EPAM) provides complex software engineering solutions through its award-winning
Central and Eastern European service delivery platform. Headquartered in the United States, EPAM employs over 8,100 IT
professionals and serves clients worldwide from its locations in the United States, Canada, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden,
Belarus, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Poland.
EPAM is recognized among the top companies in IAOP’s “The 2012 Global Outsourcing 100”, featuring EPAM in a variety of sublists, including “Leaders – Companies in Eastern Europe”. The company is also ranked among the best global service providers
on “The 2012 Global Services 100” by Global Services Magazine and Neogroup, which names EPAM “Leaders - Global Product
Development” category.
For more information, please visit www.epam.com
G l ob al
EU
CIS
41 University Drive Suite 202,
Newtown (PA), 18940, USA
Phone: +1-267-759-9000
Fax: +1-267-759-8989
Corvin Offices I. Futó street 47-53
Budapest, H-1082, Hungary
Phone: +36-1-327-7400
Fax: +36-1-577-2384
9th Radialnaya Street, bldg. 2
Moscow, 115404, Russia
Phone: +7-495-730-6360
Fax: +7-495-730-6361
© 1993-2013 EPAM Systems. All Rights Reserved.
23 │ EPAM SYSTEMS, INC.
Confidential