Scenarios for CMS use
These persona and the web publishing scenarios illustrate the core functional requirements in use case form. They summarise key elements of the full suite of CMS requirements in a “use case” document expressed from the user perspective.
1. Multiple central unit websites contributed to by Colin (a communications specialist and senior web publisher)
2. A school website maintained by Annabel (an administrator with limited time, expertise and authority)
3. A research group website operating independently of the standard managed CMS provision while sharing content with the school – maintained by Terry (a technical manager)
4. A staff profile page with associated media resources appearing in multiple locations, managed by Harriet (an academic and head of unit)
The CMS support service has a relationship, to some degree, with all personas and is referenced throughout the scenarios. The precise nature of the service needs to be identified and costed through the course of the project. For Colin, Annabel and Harriet it is anticipated that this service will be at least comparable with the existing Polopoly CMS Support provision. For Terry, this is less clear at this stage.
1. Colin contributes to multiple
websites
Colin works in the International Office. He’s a busy manager and website management is not his specialty.
But he’s a hands-on guy and has grown into the role over the years as it’s core to his office’s activity and engagement with their target audiences.
Colin’s content management
responsibilities cover the central website, his office website and most school websites. He:
Owns and maintains content on the central website, updating material and passing it to Communications and Marketing for review and publication
Manages the International Office website, steering the overall direction but leaving groups of colleagues to maintain content in specific areas of the site
Provides content which schools re-use in their sites to reduce content management
overheads – e.g. Open Days dates, English language requirements, Immigration info summaries etc. It’s in his interest to do this rather than risk schools producing content themselves which may become inaccurate or out of date.
Colin prefers to manage the user group for his Office directly as a number of smaller organisational units
exist and he also regularly recruits staff on short term contracts to undertake content population tasks. He relies on the central CMS service to train his new recruits and grant access to the system, then he assigns editorial and publishing permissions.
The look and feel of Colin’s office website is consistent with that of the central University website. The Office has no design or technical requirements beyond those offered as standard CMS functionality.
The CMS service set up Colin’s editorial access to the central website on behalf of C&M, provides him with site admin support when he needs it and manages guidance on how to generate, use and promote shared content.
Colin’s site has the same look-and-feel and utilises the same functionality as the central website
2. Annabel acts as lead school
publisher
Annabel’s administrative role primarily deals with the processing of prospective
postgraduate enquiries and applications.
Her school doesn’t have a dedicated web manager – there are just 3 administrators who have been trained to look after the site – so she often ends up publishing content in other areas of the site when called upon by the Head of School.
Annabel’s content management
responsibility is primarily for prospective postgraduates. It’s the only material where she has any direct knowledge of the business – agreeing updates and changes with the senior postgraduate administrator. The School’s postgraduate office takes responsibility for content across the school site and all relevant research group sites. They do this so as to channel all student enquiries through their office (rather than directly to academic staff) and to attempt to minimise the number of poor and incomplete applications being submitted via EUCLID.
To be able to do this, Annabel directly edits material on all research group websites and wherever possible reuses master copy to
minimise her editorial time. Annabel also takes advantage of content provided centrally by people like Colin – again to minimise the time she needs to spend managing content.
Annabel also oversees management of the School’s news and events information which is pulled from all research groups and aggregated. Practically she does very little as this is all automated, but occasionally she is called upon by senior school staff to add an additional item to the section at school level, or to re-prioritise the items that are presented on the homepage.
Annabel relies on system admin services provided by the CMS support service. She knows how to do her tasks, and to a lesser extent how to help her colleagues doing similar things, but she has no time for, or interest in, managing users for editorial or publishing access to the site.
Annabel’s Head of School wants the site look-and-feel to be distinct. As he has limited technical resource available to take on active management of this, he opted for standard
functionality offered as part of the core CMS service including a selection of off-the-shelf templates and one of the available colour palettes. As such Annabel doesn’t need to get involved or know particularly much about how the site’s design works beyond how it influences the content she manages.
The CMS service supports Annabel and her fellow CMS users in all aspects of system usage, and undertakes user administration and permissions tasks on her behalf. The look-and-feel and CMS
Annabel’s website management and editorial activity
Annabel’s site relies on core supported CMS functionality, and presents a distinct appearance within IA and brand guidelines
3. Terry manages his research
group website
Terry is a computing officer in a research group which is part of Annabel’s school.
The majority of his time is taken up with computing support relating to the activities of the group, but he also must ensure the maintenance of the website.
Terry does very little active content management. Other than the material that is dynamically integrated, little of the content changes from year to year so Terry has little to do in this regard. He was very happy to hand over management of
content for prospective PhD students to Annabel.
Terry makes use of a news and event content module to comply with school requirements. He produced a crib sheet so that a particular academic member
of staff can update this when required and tag content appropriately so as to feed into the School’s news and events section.
The website has a non-ed.ac.uk URL as the research group is a multi-institutional collaboration.
It also has independent look-and-feel to incorporate the branding of 6 partner institutions.
Terry managed the bespoke CMS set upand oversees all access to the system. This arrangement enables specific research group requirements to be addressed and for users from all partner universities to publish (although they rarely do).
The CMS service provides no user or system admin support to Terry. Depending on how he has
configured his CMS, he may be able to refer his users to the training and support provided by the CMS service. His potential relationship with the CMS service with regard to hosting, bug fixing, upgrades etc needs to be explored.
Terry’s website management and editorial activity
Terry’s site is a bespoke development with an independent look-and-feel and a non-ed URL
4. Harriet directly manages her
profile
Harriet is a member of Terry’s research group but also has a role as a senior academic within the school.
She has a passing interest in website design and management.
Harriet manages her school staff profile content much of the time – although she occasionally calls on Annabel to also make edits on her behalf.
She’s an infrequent user, editing her profile a
few times a year and very occasionally tweaks information (for example, correcting minor details in news items or adding a link to related research on other sites).
Harriet’s profile also appears on the research group website as Terry has made use of existing school content wherever possible.
Harriet is keen for her content to be re-used
wherever appropriate, with minimal input from her. When a news item relating to her research is picked up by Communications and Marketing for a feature on the central university site, images from her profile page are able to be located and reused by the central University website team, because Harriet has flagged them as available for reuse.
The CMS service covers all of Harriet’s CMS training and user support needs. Her editorial access is maintained by the CMS service through instruction from Annabel.
