Over the last 2 years, Emory College has used Hannon Hill's Cascade Server cms to publish our academic catalog and semester class schedules to the web. Learn the trials, tribulations, and successes we've encountered along the way with data definitions, indexing, and web services. Presented on September 13, 2010 at the Cascade Server User's Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

1. Add, Drop, & Roll out Your Catalog A Cautionary Tale Adelle Frank & Brian Williams Emory College Web Team September 13, 2010 Cascade Server User’s Conference

2. Outline Where we Started Why we put our Catalog & Class Schedules online Big Dreams Obstacles we knew about Obstacles we found out about Where we are Now Plans for the Future Main Take-aways For more Information…

3. A. Where we were Outdated paper catalog Non-centralized, Differently-formatted class schedules

4. B. Why did we go online? Jealousy Easier to use & update our data Printing costs

5. B. Why did we go online? Jealousy

6. B. Why did we go online? Easier to Use & Update Print Online

7. B. Why did we go online? Printing Costs

8. C. Big Dreams All data in one bucket (location) for easier searching, editing & analyzing. Quality control & consistency. CD copy of the catalog for archiving or to send to people without internet access. Shareable, central data. Easy, distributed content editing. Connected, update once data model.

10. Edit

12. C. Big Dreams CD copy of catalog for snail mail & to archive

13. C. Big Dreams Shareable central data Department Website Catalog Description Class Schedule

14. C. Big Dreams Easy, Distributed content editing

15. C. Big Dreams Connected update once data model current connections or links between content types possible future links between content types that might be helpful to end users & increase quality control

16. C. Obstacles: Known No feed from PeopleSoft, only able to manually download a .csv file. Web services learning curve. Catalog and website content intermingled. No standard structures for data. Standard naming & paths needed. Limited time & resources. Manual data entry. Editor training needed.

17. D. Obstacles: Known No feed from PeopleSoft, only .CSV

18. D. Obstacles: Known Web Services learning curve

19. D. Obstacles: Known Catalog & Website Content intermingled (linking & archiving issues)

20. D. Obstacles: Known No Standard structures for data!!

21. D. Obstacles: Known Standard naming & paths Web services XSL

22. D. Obstacles: Known Limited Time & Resources

23. D. Obstacles: Known Manual entry of catalog data Thank you admin assistants & student workers!!

24. D. Obstacles: Known Editor Training needed: key to adoption

25. D. Obstacles: Unknown Asset-render-depth in data definitions & recursion. Index block settings & render time. Weird data quirks. User needs for rolling over data to avoid duplication of effort. Web services & slowness. Variable is a constant in XSL. Usability issues in data entry forms. Uploading files/images confusion. Moving data definition fields No-No. Permissions granularity issues. Metadata indexing only for large data sets.

26. E. Obstacles: UnKnown Asset-render-depth in data definitions & recursion

29. Faculty married names

31. E. Obstacles: UnKnown Web services + large publish jobs = SLOWNESS for all

32. E. Obstacles: UnKnown “Variable” is really a CONSTANT in XSL. Muenchian Grouping SAVES LIVES! W W M D ?

37. E. Obstacles: UnKnown Commandment I: Thou shall not put data needed for indexing into the data definition, use metadata.

38. F. Where are we Now

39. F. Where we are Now Catalog online in a Site using version 6.7 at http://college.emory.edu/catalog 3 Semesters of class schedules up in Cascade at http://www.college.emory.edu/atlas Sharing course descriptions, class schedules, and faculty bios into Departments that are in Cascade http://filmstudies.emory.edu (already seeing quality payback, as departments are noticing errors in catalog data because it lives on their site, too). Saving beaucoup $$$ with online-only catalog and class schedules.

40. F. Where we are Now Lost main Communications and content coordinator (!), quality checks are not occurring in as organized a fashion. Positive response from students and, after one semester of use, from faculty and staff. No longer use paper publications, just mail out a postcard with the catalog URL or, for non-internet audience or IP-blocked Chinese students, a CD-ROM (using a separate, manually-activated Page Configuration & Publish Set). Analytics

41. G. Potential Future Plans Change the way we do class schedules: use a feed from Peoplesoft Rollover default textbooks/descriptions Archive catalog and class schedule versions with Library in a digital format (HTML). Improve navigation & searching after College site is re-designed.

42. G. Potential Future Plans Refine content types Department (brevity) Major/Minor (more structured) Faculty (additional XSL for display) Scholarships (create structure) Create XSL transports to PDF or Word. Create more training (videos & documentation), especially re: HTML. Share class section pages on Faculty and course description pages. majors/minors with Departmental web sites in Cascade. Hire person to update catalog content.

43. H. Main Take-aways

44. H. Main Take-aways Choose a dedicated person (or persons) to update and quality-check your content. Get to know your data (& data owners) in the BEGINNING.

45. H. Main Take-aways Prioritize which content you’ll structure first (since you can’t do it all). Consider frequency of updates in whether a data-heavy project should go into Cascade or not.

47. I. For more Information XML Data Definitions, XSL Stylesheets, Web Services scripts, and a number of helpful links from this presentation can be found at: http://adellefrank.com/node/244