The Content Management Challenge

So you're looking for a solution to your content management challenge.  You need a content management system.  Although there are many such systems, which one is right for you?  Each organisation will be in a unique situation. 

However, in all likelihood, some if not all of the following will apply to your organisation:

1. The need for central administrative control
   
   
2. The desire to decentralise management of content and give ownership of that content to the relevant departments
   
   
3. You have several sites that you'd like to manage via one content management system
   
   
4. The people in your organisation know their content subject, but aren't technically minded
   
   
5. You have specific server requirements
   
   
6. You want people in your organisation to be able to manage the site from more than one location, but you want to keep control of who can access the system
   
   
7. You don’t want to be faced with complex licensing structures and escalating costs
   
   
8. You want your content to be future-proofed - in fact, you want your content management system to be future-proofed
   
   
9. You want to make the management of content as simple a process as possible, whilst ensuring that the correct people are authorising any published content
   
   
10. You’d like the same content management system to run your public website and Intranet – in fact you may want to run many sites across the world, both public and those with restricted access – all from the same system
    
    
11. You don’t want to be installing software across all your organisation’s locations
    
    
12. You want to be able to produce pages or whole sites in more than one language
    
    
13. You want to ‘re-use’ your content and don’t want to have to reversion the content each time you want to use it in a different format
    
    
14. You want to be able to add and edit online forms, contacts, links and other resources in seconds, without the need to involve anyone technical
    
    
15. You want your site to be easy to use, as well as being accessible to users with specific needs
    
    
16. You want the content management system to natively support XML and other industry standards, not have them bolted on as an afterthought
    
    
17. You want users of your sites to be able to search for information intelligently, both on individual sites and across all your different sites
    
    
18. You want to be able to manage your resources such as images, Word documents, PDF files and so on, all via the same system
    
    
19. You don't want a compromise
    
    
20. You have a specific budget for an immediate solution, but don’t want to outgrow your content management system in a year’s time
    
    
    
    

If you have any (or all) of these requirements, you need Amaxus - the XML content management system.

 

The Content Management Solution

 Amaxus is a high-level XML Content Management System with the ability to drive multiple Intranets, Extranets and Internet websites. It currently delivers hundreds of thousands of documents and objects for organisations ranging from Chubb to the NHS.

Amaxus is built around core modules that will meet the requirements of most organisations.  If you have further specific requirements, additional modules can be added to the system at any time.  As a result:

• Amaxus is a flexible, long-term solution
  
  
• It benefits from short implementation timescales – projects can take only a few weeks to go from conception to completion
  
  
• Amaxus can be configured to your exact requirements, you don’t pay for what you don’t need
  
  
• It is adaptable, so as your organisation changes, you won’t need to change your content management system
  
  
• Amaxus is the solution to your content management challenge.

Intuitive Desktop Interface

Familiar and easy to use

A Content Management System that is easy to use will encourage buy-in throughout your organisation.

 

Amaxus is accessed through a browser-based interface, and users are immediately familiar and confident with the desktop environment.  This means that:

• Users will not be scared to use the system
  
  
• It is easy to use, particularly important with non-technical users
  
  
• There is no software to install on the users’ computers; all the functionality of the system is provided through their web browser
  
  
• New users can be added at any time, enabling the number of users to grow with the demands of your organisation
  
  
• Training is simple and short – reducing time, effort and cost
  
  
• The increased user-uptake will result in a more dynamic and up-to-date site
   

WYSIWYG Editor

Using an interface similar to standard word processor software, the ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) editor enables users to add, edit and format documents in seconds.

The familiarity means that the system can start working for you the moment it’s implemented, with no learning curve or long, drawn-out training programmes.

 

The content editor includes the following basic formatting features, all of which are user-definable:

• Headings 
• Bold, Italic, Subscript and superscript
• Numbered lists
• Bulleted lists
• Paragraph indenting
• Special character insertion (such as ©, ®, ™, ½, etc.)
• Text justification
• Image insertion
• Tables
• Cut, copy & paste text from within Amaxus or from other sources

Amaxus also provides more advanced editing features such as:

• Pagination for long documents (this document is an example of Amaxus's automatic pagination)
• Preview function
• Import from popular formats including Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF files, etc.
• Editable spell-checker and thesaurus
• Find and replace utility
• Multiple levels of Undo and redo
• The ability to add internal and external links to other pages or resources
• Enabling users to insert interactive elements, such as Macromedia Flash, directly into a page without any technical knowledge

 

Image Manipulation Suite

 

Images are uploaded to the system using the same Amaxus interface.  

Once uploaded, the system will automatically create multiple versions of the image, allowing the appropriate version to be selected for individual pages across the site.

Further image editing options are available, so the user can tailor the image without the need for any third-party software.

Integrated Site Navigation and Structure Management

In addition to the ability to edit content, Amaxus allows the user the ability to edit completely the structure and navigation of any of the sites being driven by the system.

For example, the menu on the left-hand side of this page is dynamically created by Amaxus, and the user has complete control of the menu items and their positioning.

Documents can be placed in any number of navigation categories, which allows the user to determine exactly where they want the document to appear on the website.

 

When Amaxus is used to drive more than one site, the user can determine on which of the sites the document will be available.  The menu items and structure can also be edited by the user to create the same structure across the different sites, or alternatively, to give each site a completely different navigation and structure.

Adding and editing categories and the menu items can be done at any time, so it is not necessary to 'plan out' the layout of the site from the start.  It is often the case that sites will grow over time,  and Amaxus lets the user determine exactly how they want it to be structured at any point in time.

As well as the menu structure being created by the editable categories in Amaxus, the system will also create a dynamic Site Map. Site Maps are particularly useful for visitors who are interested in seeing what range of topics / products the site has to offer.

They are also very useful in terms of search engines,as the site map will give the search-engine spiders a route to all the categories of your site, helping to ensure that all the pages of your site are indexed and appear in the search engine results pages.

Resource Management

Content is more than just text.

Your site will consist of other content other than text.  Amaxus provides the ability to manage these resources in an intelligent way, so they are easy to use on your sites at any time.

 

Resources can be entered into the CMS and managed in virtual libraries.  These include:

• Images
• Microsoft Word documents
• Adobe PDF files
• Macromedia Flash animations and interactive features

These virtual libraries will hold all your resources centrally, allowing them to be shared across all your sites - or restricted to specific areas - it's your choice.  The media files are tagged with metadata, providing information about the file that can be extremely useful for both users of Amaxus, and visitors to the website.  Again, it's about making the resources useful.

Multi-Language Support

Documents can be entered in multiple languages ranging from Russian and Greek, through to Japanese and Korean.  Some of the languages supported by Amaxus are listed below:

????	??????	Româna
Català	Indonesian	Slovenšcina
Ceština	Italiano	Slovencina
??	???	Srpskohrvatski
Dansk	???	Suomi
Deutsch	Nederlands	Svenska
Español	Norsk	Türkçe
Euskara	Polski	Ti?ng Vi?t
Français	Português	English
????????	???????	Cymraeg
??????	???	???????

^{(some of the languages above might not display correctly if your browser does not have the appropriate language support)} 

Multiple Output Formats

The ability to re-purpose items makes your content more flexible

Amaxus can automatically re-purpose a single item into a number of formats and styles. As the system stores content in XML, multiple XSL templates can be defined in order to provide multi-channel output for the front-end user.

 

These include:

• HTML
• Accessible HTML
  (low graphics or text only)
• RDF
• PDF
• PDA
• WML
• WebTV
• CD-ROM 

 

Dynamic Form Creation

Online forms can be easily created, with responses being Emailed or stored in a central database.

 

Responses can then be exported to a spreadsheet or marketing database for advanced statistics and reporting

Extensible Content Types

Let Amaxus work to your unique requirements

Amaxus can administer multiple types of content - each with different fields, formatting and functionality, including:

• Standard web documents · including articles and news items.
  
  
• Resources · including images, MS Word documents, PDF files, presentations,  and multimedia files, such as Flash, audio and video.
  
  
• Events · date(s), location(s) and additional information.  Events can then be presented to site visitors in the form of an interactive calendar, dynamically created by Amaxus.
  
  
• Links · links to external pages and files (e.g. external web sites or files) can be stored as independent link objects, which can then be mapped to web documents.
  
  
• Glossary items · glossary terms can be entered, providing dynamic glossary lists on the front end.
  
  
• Forms · Amaxus automatically compiles the data from forms completed on the website into useful information in a tailorable database and can also Email the information to any number of Email addresses.

Security

Control access according to Who, Where, When & What

Roles can define security restrictions that confine users to:

• site area(s)
  
  
• IP address
  
  
• host name
  
  
• date period(s).

Any combination of these restrictions can be used to ensure that the right people have the right access, at the right time.

It is possible to allocate rules to groups as well as to individual users.  This makes adding new users to the sytem a far simpler and shorter process.

Metadata Vocabularies and Site Navigation

Content in Context

Website navigation and metadata taxonomies can be defined and managed via the CMS.

As the system has been built around the use of standards and XML, it provides the integration of advanced features, such as:

• Cross-site searching
  
  Organisations with multiple websites can provide users with the ability to search across these sites, even if they reside on different servers or use disparate systems.
  
  
  
• Information sharing through RDF files
  
  RDF - Resource Description Framework - is a syntax for representing metadata about resources.
  
  RDF is most commonly represented in XML, therefore benefitting from platform-independence and other XML advantages.  RDF is an exciting technology that will eventually allow online agents (e.g. automatic spidering applications) to gain and infer knowledge, such as date, subject and relationships, about online resources and services. 
  
  RDF forms the cornerstone of the World Wide Web Consortium's Semantic Web activity - projects aimed at the embedding, gathering and automed understanding of Internet metadata.
  

Workflow

Control and visibility of content from start to finish

One of the most important requirements of any content management system is the ability to establish an effective, transparent workflow process that removes publishing bottlenecks.

The workflow system in Amaxus adapts to suit your organisations processes.

• Unlimited number of roles with user-definable permissions
  
  
• No limitation to the number of steps or review cycles in the workflow process
  
  
• Document locking
  
  
• Integrated content ageing and bottleneck prevention system to eliminate stalled content
  
  
• Audit trail throughout the content life-cycle
  
  
• Multiple revision control to revert to previous versions of a document at anytime in its lifecycle

Support Tracking System

Help is always close at hand

A Support Tracking System is provided as part of Amaxus allowing users to submit issues directly to Box UK, or their internal administrator.

The support system uses a ticketing facility, enabling both administrators and users to audit their support queries.