1. Volto Unleashed - Real Life User
Experience - Case Study Guide,
University of Jyväskylä
Rikupekka Oksanen
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Plone Conference 2020 22.12.2020

2. Contents
1. Intro
2. Open University Study
Guide
3. Why Plone and Volto?
4. User feedback
5. Summary
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https://www.jyu.fi/en
Rikupekka Oksanen
University of Jyväskylä, Finland, since 2001
Team lead, agile enthusiast
Plone-user since 2004: User, site builder, trainer,
foundation member, marketing team
Co-founder of AgiNotes

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This presentation
I conducted a survey to new Volto users at Open University of Jyväskylä,
asking on how they managed to create over 1500 pages of content in
approximately a month, each page having multiple blocks that are linked to
different parts of the study guide.
I found out, what was their experience with Volto, what were pros and cons, and
how that compares to Plone.
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University of Jyväskylä Open University
• Open University is an independent institute at the
University of Jyväskylä. We are open to everyone and
have no entrance requirements. Open University offers
studies in nearly 50 subjects in Finnish. Our studies are
offered mainly online and developed for adult learners.
Students can register non-stop and study self-paced.
• https://www.avoin.jyu.fi/en
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The use case: Study Guide
During spring 2019 at the University of Jyväskylä, we developed an integration with our study
information system Sisu and our GatsbyJS-based Study Guide https://studyguide.jyu.fi/2020/en
In 2020, Open University of University of Jyväskylä needed more: they wanted to also have more
customized content in addition to just basic study information. They wanted to have images, videos,
and customized text blocks for each of their over a thousand courses.
That is when a Volto-integration came along, resulting to this: https://studyguide.jyu.fi/2020/en/ou/
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Sisu study information system Study Guide Study Guide with Volto content
2019 2020

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Requirements vs. possibilities
• We needed to combine three sources/systems:
Sisu study information system – basic data on courses, disciplines and
teaching schedules
Study guide itself – accessible, responsive and fast presentation of
information
User generated, edited content, that would have rich text, links, images,
videos
• Trying to get development for the Sisu study information system itself was a
dead-end, it’s not a software that is under our development, and it is used by
other universities too, so customizing was not possible
• So what would help..?
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Plone and Volto for the Study Guide
• Plone CMS with its latest user interface, Volto, provided us both hierarchical object database and modern
user interface required for managing the additional content.
• Plone shines in managing content in folder tree like hierarchies, and sharing access rights for them
accordingly.
• Volto, on the other hand, makes Plone faster and easier to use than ever before.
• Plone ships with out-of-the-box customizable structured content types. Without any custom code, we
were able to enhance our Volto-editable pages with metadata fields to store the connecting information.
This also made the data available in Plone REST API for GatsbyJS data source integration.
• Thanks to Volto user interface being customizable with our own ReactJS code, it was possible to customize
the select widget of our primary connecting field, to search our Hasura GraphQL API for all the possible
value options, to be saved with the content page.
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Volto
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More info on the case
• Asko Soukka (@datakurre) will dig into
technical details in his presentation “Plone
and Volto in a Jamstack project”
https://2020.ploneconf.org/talks/plone-and-
volto-in-a-jamstack-project
• Also in a blog post
https://tech.blog.jyu.fi/2020/06/plone-volto-
hasura-gatsbyjs-mashup/
• https://plone.org/what-is-plone/volto
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Study Guide & Volto, screenshots
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Study Guide & Volto, screenshots
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• Structure of pages
and subpages
• Tabs
• Rich text, titles, lists,
links
• Images
• Videos

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Study Guide & Volto, screenshots
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• User generated
content
• Data from the Study
information system
• All together now

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Study Guide & Volto, screenshots
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• Volto content
editing
• Each block in
Volto can be
assigned to a
certain page(s)
and tab(s) in the
Study Guide

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Volto + Study Guide, screenshots
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• Here a block in Volto
is assigned to a
certain page and tab
in the Study Guide

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Volto feedback survey
• Background
CMS experience, level of own
“techwizardry”
Role and activity
• Volto usability and robustness
Simplicity, visual elements
Navigation, adding and editing
Features, technical robustness
• Summary
Need for info and training
Comparison to Plone
Overall
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• Form was built on Plone
Form Gen add on

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Notes
• Mostly Windows users
• We were using Volto version 4 and 5
• The amount of respondents was quite low
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Survey Questions - background
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CMS experience
Plone WordPress
Plone and WP Plone and WP and something else
• All users inclined to get well
along with new software
and most knew some Plone
10+ years 4-10 years 1-2 years 1 year or less
Plone experience

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Survey Questions - background
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• How often did you manage
content
Varies, but maybe not that
often
• Your role:
Admin 25%
Content editor 75%
People
Multiple times a day Daily Weekly Couple of times a month Rarely

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Survey Questions – Volto first impressions
0 0 0
Simplicity and clarity Visually pleasing First impressions
First impressions
1 2 3 4 5
4
4
4
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Volto navigation and speed
Navigation clarity Speed
Navigation and speed
1 2 3 4 5
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4
4

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Volto most used features
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• 75% adding and editing text blocks (titles, paragraphs,
lists
• 75% adding and editing links
• 37,5% adding collections
• 25% adding images
• 12,5% adding videos

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Volto page editing
Easy to find editing
option
Easy to edit page title Easy to add blocks Easy to add and edit
links
Easy to add attachments Adding images
Page editing
1 2 3 4 5
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Volto comments
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• “Works well and feels simple. Same logic in the backround
than in Plone, which might help. Most annoying thing: when I
press enter in the editor it creates more boxes, which I need
to delete then.”
• “Usability is okay and the folder structure is clear. Only
annoying thing is doing bullet point lists. Sometimes removing
link is hard. You’ll have to be precise when you select the
right spot. But maybe its just me ”
• “Occasionally I might have wanted to edit layout of the page
or the link in the editor. I haven’t found a possibility to add
links to an image?”

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Bonus question for Plone users
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• “Volto seems more simple to use. Though, Plone has
more features now, so it depends.”
• “Volto is easy, once you get the logic. I don’t use Plone
much, but maybe its just a little harder to use.”
• “Volto is much faster and I like the UI overall.”
• “Classic Plone has much more visual elements to create
brand-driven content. This is something I miss. Also
adding and editing links is better in Plone.”

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Volto technical error frequency
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Frequency
Never Occasionally Rarely Often
• 62,5% no errors ever
• 25% maybe 1-2/week
• 12,5% rarely
• 0% often

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Volto need for instructions and training
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Training and instructions
I didn't participate training or read instructions
I glanced the instructions
Participated in the training and read instructions
Read instructions repeatedly
• Most of the users
needed little to none
instructions or training

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Survey Questions – Summary
• Overall review 4/5
• Would you recommend Volto?
•  100% Yes
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What next with Volto at University of Jyväskylä?
• We will update Study Guide Volto from
version 5 to 10
• We will have Plone and Volto as the
platform for registration of international
students, and purchase portal for
international studies (with integrations to
Moodle, payment provider, our identity
management and external digital identity
provider).
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34. Thank you!
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Rikupekka Oksanen
University of Jyväskylä, Finland, since 2001
Team lead, agile enthusiast
Plone-user since 2004: User, site builder, trainer,
foundation member, marketing team
Co-founder of AgiNotes