OU Campus™ Advantages OmniUpdate’s OU Campus™ is the leading web content management system (CMS) for higher education. The enterprise web CMS is used to manage more than 550 college and university websites and offers a number of features and benefits unmatched by competitors. Below is a sneak peek at what makes OU Campus the leader in the higher education marketplace. Get the full scoop inside!
Fast — blazing speed for users and administrators (pg. 2)
Scalable — handles thousands of users, hundreds of sites, and millions of pages with no problem (pg. 2)
Rapid Implementation — moving from another CMS or static site is a breeze (pg. 4)
In the Cloud or On-Site — you choose the deployment option that’s right for you (pg. 4)
Zero Database Administration — designed to take the nightmare out of database maintenance (pg. 4)
Platform Independence — both client and server agnostic (pg. 5)
Automatic Upgrades — let OmniUpdate do the work (pg. 5)
Higher Education Focus — designed for your unique environment (pg. 5)
Workflows for Humans — yes, we get it and we do it right (pg. 6)
Unified Login — use the same account login as other campus systems (pg. 6)
Multi-Channel Output — web, social, and mobile channels all maintained so your message is consistent (pg. 6)
WebDAV Editing — use your favorite WebDAV-compatible application to edit content (pg. 7)
Course Catalogs — always have an up-to-date online catalog (pg. 7)
Online Calendars —keep visitors apprised of your campus activities (pg. 7)
An Editor’s Delight — a WYSIWYG editor your users will actually love (pg. 8)
Forms Management — easily create forms, surveys, polls, and more (pg. 8)
DirectEdit™ — simply the fastest, easiest way to edit a web page (pg. 9)
Preview in All Browsers — see your pages in every known browser before you publish (pg. 9)
Reuse/Repurpose Content — snippet and asset management is simple, powerful, and automatic (pg. 9)
Instant Publishing — lose the wait; you’ll never see a publishing delay (pg. 10)
Facebook Synchronization — automatically update reused content from your website to Facebook (pg. 10)
Amazing Customer Support — personal, 24/7, zero-wait support (pg. 10)
Higher Education Community — connect with other OmniUpdate customers (pg. 11)
Priced to Fit — from the largest to the smallest institution, you only pay for what you need (pg. 12)
Enterprise by Design, Offering Unmatched Speed and Scalability A great product design is key to OmniUpdate’s competitive advantage. OU Campus is an enterprise system that is secure and scalable, allowing you to manage everything from small departmental websites to multi-site enterprises. The product’s Model-ViewController (MVC) design pattern is the premise of a superior architecture, which lays a solid foundation for everything built upon it. An intricate hierarchical database structure is utilized within the model layer. This structure results in unlimited scopes, the elimination of deadlocks, and a dramatic reduction in lock contention. OU Campus is mature in its technical development. Years of code optimization have resulted in amazing speed and performance. Because it has a clean design, OmniUpdate developers have created incredibly efficient algorithms. The product redefines how dramatically fast an enterprise CMS can be. Attention to the smallest details of product development has allowed for dramatic speed improvements. For example, the use of memory caching, stored procedures, and prepared statements allows the CMS to process all database queries blindingly fast — faster than other CMS systems you’ll find in the industry. OmniUpdate uses a Parallel Directory Structure to store metadata in the database and uses the native OS hierarchical file system to store large blocks of content. By doing so, those large blocks of data can be found and processed very quickly. All high performance enterprise systems are designed this way because it allows both the database and the file system to do what they do best. OU Campus’ communication protocols ensure immediate responsiveness and a great user experience. The bottom line is that OmniUpdate has made OU Campus extremely fast, efficient, and scalable by following modern MVC design patterns, using a hierarchical database structure, and capitalizing on the power of XSLT 3.0. OU Campus is a decoupled (also known as “push”) system that offers the benefits of a dynamic publishing model.
“OU Campus is reliable, scalable, and secure. The OU Campus XSLT processing engine makes the system very powerful.” — Justin Gatewood, Webmaster, Victor Valley College
“OU Campus is secure and scalable, and its XSLT 3.0 processing engine makes it powerful and efficient.” — Nathan Gerber, Director of Web Development Services, Utah Valley University
"We've been able to use OU Campus to create a safe, controlled environment that is extremely powerful and efficient, yet easy to use for our non-web professionals." — Brenden Sparks, Web Communications Specialist, California State University, Fullerton
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Traditionally, CMS systems were designed to run on the web server, pulling data dynamically in real time. This coupled approach is the least efficient of all CMS models and creates a bottleneck to both the web CMS users and the website visitors. Today, most open source CMS products are still handicapped by this approach.
Decoupling the CMS from the web server improves performance and eliminates the bottleneck to the website visitors. However, typical push-style CMS products still suffer from a lack of performance and scalability due to the bottleneck imposed on the CMS users. Many commercial CMS products are currently handicapped by this approach.
OU Campus takes the push model to the ultimate level by not only decoupling the CMS from the web server, but leveraging the speed and performance power of the CMS server’s native file system and eliminating all bottlenecks.
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Easiest Content Migration — No Other System Comes Close The OU Campus Content Migration Tool is key to customers’ success. Use the tool to efficiently migrate content from your current environment to OU Campus, or OmniUpdate’s professional services staff can migrate the content for you. The tool automatically reads, converts, and tags XML or HTML content exported from other systems, including Serena Collage and Ellucian’s Luminis® CMS. And, if desired, the tool can strip all fonts and styling that are not in compliance with W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the US Federal Government Section 508 requirements. Once configured, a 5,000 page site can be converted in minutes to XML files that are OU Campus ready.
Deployment Flexibility — It’s Your Choice OU Campus can be deployed as Software as a Service (SaaS) via the cloud (Enterprise SaaS License), or it can be installed on your own server (Enterprise Server License). With SaaS, there is no software installation, no application installations, and no software upgrades or maintenance required on your end. OmniUpdate pays for all the hardware, maintenance of that hardware, and the bandwidth required for the application. Alternatively, when OU Campus is installed on your own server, the CMS includes an enterprise-level database that is installed and maintained by the product itself, ensuring seamless updates, upgrades, and data migrations. Either way, your website remains hosted where it is today. And you can manage an unlimited number of physical and virtual web servers with one deployment. Whatever choice you make, you get the same great web CMS, fast implementation, and all the service and support you need to be successful.
No Database Maintenance — OmniUpdate Does the Work While most web CMS offerings leave out the cost of database purchase, support, and maintenance, OmniUpdate understands that database administrators have enough on their hands without trying to connect yet another system to complicate their world and affect the performance of other systems under management. OU Campus includes a selfcontained enterprise-level database (your choice of Sybase, MySQL, or Microsoft SQL Server) that is internally configured, self-managed, and requires zero maintenance. This ensures seamless updates, upgrades, and data migrations. One hundred percent of OmniUpdate customers are up and running with the current version within 45 days of release. OU Campus also interoperates perfectly with dynamic content that may be required to be stored in existing database systems, including MySQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server.
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Complete Server and Platform Independence OU Campus can be installed on all major server environments, including Linux, Windows, and Solaris systems. And, OU Campus can be accessed from all major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari.
App Server
Fully Managed Upgrades with No Cost or Technical Risks! Since 2001, OmniUpdate has focused on providing higher education with an enterprise web CMS that is both secure and scalable. OU Campus is under continual improvement to enhance enterprise-level power and provide industry-leading ease of use and features to meet customer requirements. All customers using OU Campus benefit from the latest improvements at no additional cost. Whether you opt for the Enterprise SaaS License or Enterprise Server License, new features are added every quarter, with a major update released about once a year. All updates and releases are backward compatible, with support for all prior versions provided. With other CMS solutions, you have to preflight, test, and deploy updates all on your own. With OU Campus, it’s done for you.
“The on-demand [SaaS] solution with OmniUpdate has never failed us. The system gets updated whenever updates come out. I don’t have to ask for them. I don’t have to do them. They are just done.” — Nathan Gerber, Director of Web Development Services, Utah Valley University
Servicing the Diverse Needs of Higher Education OmniUpdate recognizes that colleges and universities have unique needs for managing websites — from workflow requirements, to content repurposing, to online course catalogs and calendars, and more. OU Campus is designed to meet these diverse needs. Unlike its competitors, OmniUpdate spends 100% of its time servicing the web CMS needs of the higher education market. And as customer testimonials and the 2011 .eduGuru survey results show, OmniUpdate does it well.
“OmniUpdate’s approach to maintaining web content, and providing the right tools to the right people that know and can update the content, really matches the struggles that college webmasters face today.” — Jay Knape, Manager of Web Development, Columbus State University
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Workflow OU Campus offers an easily configured workflow process. Multi-level approvals/ rejections, email notifications, and page scheduling are all provided. Workflow is managed using simple point-and-click operations; no scripting is necessary. Administrators can enable automated and preconfigured, customized, or on-the-fly workflow. Each user has their own personal dashboard to manage pages that are checked out and to monitor projects within each workflow. The workflow messaging process can also integrate with your own email system.
“We like that we can set up workflow very simply in OU Campus and workflow that is very flexible to meet the different needs of the different departments that we have.” — Michael Gasparino, Web Content Manager, Stony Brook University
Remote Authentication Support OU Campus can be accessed using the same account login credentials as other systems on campus. OU Campus offers Active Directory integration with its LDAP capability. Active Directory is a combination of Directory Access and DNS. OU Campus setup handles the specification for Active Directory and OU Campus APIs allow authorization configurations to be controlled externally. Alternatively, OU Campus supports CAS and Shibboleth single sign-on, where authentication is performed by an outside system and authentication tickets are passed according to the specification.
Multi-Channel Output OU Campus offers component-based XML content and article-based management, allowing content to be repurposed or reused on various parts of the website or other sites. OU Campus makes it easy to make global changes and changes to content used in multiple places. Better still, you decide if repurposed content includes formatting information or conforms to the styles set forth on each target page. OU Campus can publish content to multiple output formats, such as HTML (XHTML, HTML5) CSV (spreadsheets, lists), TXT (raw text), PDF (or other printable formats), WML, and other formats designed for mobile devices. OU Campus can also repurpose content that feeds to your institution’s pages on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
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WebDAV Integration OU Campus gives developers the freedom to access and modify content on the OU Campus staging server using their favorite WebDAV-compatible applications, such as Adobe® Dreamweaver®, ® XML editor, Cyberduck, Transmit, and many others. Developers work naturally with files while still adhering to the OU Campus permission system, file locking management, Dependency Manager, and other OU Campus features.
Online Course Catalogs Universities and colleges around the country are moving toward online course catalogs to save on printing costs, support sustainability initiatives, reduce drain on staff resources, and eliminate maintenance problems. OU Campus is a great way to facilitate the creation and maintenance of your online catalog. Academic rules and policies, class schedules, and course and faculty information can all be included. Information for the catalog can be pulled from your student information system (e.g., PeopleSoft, Ellucian’s Banner® Digital Campus, Jenzabar, legacy databases, etc.). Updates made to the student information system are scheduled and passed to OU Campus. The result is a regularly refreshed and up-to-date course catalog that can be viewed, printed, and archived as necessary. In addition, information that is not contained in the student information system (e.g., maintained only in a desktop publishing file) can be added.
Online Calendars OU Campus includes a powerful enterprise calendar module that can be customized to meet your institution's site needs. The calendar module allows contributors to create event messages as desired, with a hierarchical rollup of events by department. Users can add contacts, locations, tags, and attachments, as well as schedule repeating events or multiple-date events. Event information can be published immediately or saved for later publication and can be posted to multiple calendars.
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Comprehensive Tools and Features Many Other Systems Don’t Offer
True In-Context WYSIWYG Editor When editing a page in OU Campus, a user works in context with the layout and design of the full page. The user is presented with the look and layout of the page with only the selected text area being editable. CSS styles and page layouts are represented while editing, making it easy for users to see what the page will look like as they edit without repetitive savepreview-edit cycles.
Configurable Editors OU Campus allows form-controlled editing for XML and other structured content. Administrators can create a forms-based template that presents users with an easy-to-follow guide for adding content to a structured layout. Templates can include both forms-based MultiEdit™ and WYSIWYG content editing.
Forms, Surveys, Polls Through the optional OU Campus Live Delivery Platform server-side module, the Forms feature allows users to easily create and manage forms, surveys, and polls in the CMS. Forms include six available fields, including single line text, multi-line text, radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdowns, and multi-select. Users can also elect to have the results of form submissions emailed to one or multiple recipients.
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DirectEdit™ Links Unique to OU Campus, DirectEdit offers the easiest way to edit anything on a web page. A link, image, or date stamp can be added automatically anywhere on a published page to allow users one-click access to edit that specific page. Users don’t have to traverse a directory tree to find the page they want to edit. They simply navigate the live site to the page desired, click on the unobtrusive link (typically at the bottom of the page), and they are directly able to edit that page on the staging server (if they are logged in). If users are not yet logged in, they are presented with the login screen and then taken directly to the page to be edited.
Browser Preview Checking how a page will look across browsers, versions, and OS platforms can be a challenge. The built-in MultiBrowser Preview feature in OU Campus allows users to select more than 15 different browser and operating system combinations on which a page is to be checked before publishing, resulting in full-resolution screen shots of the page in each selected browser.
Pre-Formatted Content Administrators and developers can create pre-formatted HTML content (e.g., tables, forms, image with caption) that can easily be placed by users into the WYSIWYG Editor via selection menus. Snippets are grouped in categories for users to easily select the snippet they want from a large library.
Content Reuse Ranked #1 for content reuse in the 2011 .eduGuru survey, OU Campus utilizes Assets that allow for central management of reusable content, such as text, images, media, code blocks, links, and more. Once an asset is updated and published, all the pages using the asset are updated and published. Users can insert assets in-line into pages using the WYSIWYG and Source Editors. Access restrictions can be set, and assets can be entered into the workflow system for approval prior to publishing.
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Instant Publishing With OU Campus, users can instantly publish pages, directories, or entire sites using the Publish Now feature. OU Campus has a direct publish model; therefore, publishing queues and deployment tables are not required. While pages that need to be published in the future can be easily scheduled, all other pages are instantly published with zero wait.
Facebook Synchronization The OU Social™ feature in OU Campus allows you to synchronize a Facebook Page tab with any page on your website. If a change is made to your web page, the content on your Facebook Page tab will automatically be updated.
Personal Customer Support Unlike Any Other in the Industry OmniUpdate recognizes customers want support services that open source solutions can’t offer. OmniUpdate’s commitment to providing the highest levels of customer service allows you to work with minimal downtime and have peace of mind in the company’s ability to quickly resolve issues. OmniUpdate staffs in-house support teams with coverage from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM Pacific Time, Monday through Friday. Support personnel are OmniUpdate employees who are fully trained OU Campus professionals with web development and customer service backgrounds. A support team comprised of a Project Manager, Customer Support Manager, Web Developer, Support Engineer, Support Technician, and Training Manager is assigned to each implementation to provide personalized attention and a skill set to best service your particular needs. Implementation and training are tailored for your institution, and OmniUpdate continues to manage ongoing support via phone, web form, and email, so nothing is lost in handoffs. OmniUpdate’s zero-hold policy means the team has their undivided attention on your issue. Support issues are handled the same day they are reported and are typically resolved with one phone call. OmniUpdate also offers an online user community and support site, where you can quickly find information on OU Campus features and troubleshoot issues with easy-tofollow instructions. In addition to the online community and support site, OmniUpdate provides 24/7 access to the following resources:
Complete product documentation manual Quick reference materials Print and video tutorials Printable training guides and workshops
Best practice documentation Webcasts on technical features and web best practices FAQs
Free technical white papers
“OmniUpdate has been fantastic to work with. The staff is amazing. They are always available, either through email, chat, or even a phone call. There have been times we’ve had a programming issue come up, we’ve worked with the staff, and they’ve actually had the problem solved before we had the phone hung up.” — Kevin Rydberg, E-Communications Coordinator, Dakota State University
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An Open Product Roadmap with Community Input — Learn from the Best! The OmniUpdate Community Network (OCN) is a large, active online community that connects and serves developers, administrators, and other web professionals using OU Campus. The OCN is a priceless asset where community members come together to share experiences, strategies, tactics, organization, tips, tricks, code examples, and more. The site provides user documentation, developer guidelines, frequently asked questions, and other tools helpful to understanding and using OU Campus. Through the OCN, users can request and vote on features and find out the status of items under development. This one-stop online community provides OmniUpdate customers an ideal way to share best practices and lessons learned with peers, as well as find out what OmniUpdate recommends on all topics related to OU Campus.
“The OmniUpdate Community Network has been wonderful; it’s a great place to network, understand new features, share ideas, and get a little bit of inspiration.” — Catherine Hillman, Webmaster, Cuesta College
Yes, Your Users Will Accept It — and Like It, Too! For an enterprise-level application to succeed, user buy-in is critical. OU Campus has proven itself to be the most successful CMS on the market through its overwhelming buy-in by more than 20,000 users. The 2011 .eduGuru survey results are proof! OmniUpdate is confident that you and your users will love OU Campus as well.
“After our training in OU Campus, people were running out to go use it… they were beyond excited.” — Tracey Mayfield, Associate Librarian, California State University, Long Beach
“Our users have found OU Campus to be extremely simple to learn. Most of our users are up and running in the system in 15 minutes.” — Brian Hill, Webmaster, Yosemite Community College District
“Our users have done a great job keeping the site up to date and have really appreciated switching to this new content management system. I think every one of my 60 users across campus would recommend OU Campus.” — Missy DeYoung, Web Architect, Simpson College
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Priced to Fit Your Needs and Your Budget OU Campus can be obtained in a particularly affordable manner via SaaS. This option is especially attractive as it minimizes the risk, planning, manpower, complexity, support, and cost associated with software installed on a server at your facility. OmniUpdate’s SaaS approach realizes exceptional security, reliability, and availability due to OmniUpdate’s investment made to support hundreds of customers. Your costs to maintain and assure OU Campus availability to the degree assured by OmniUpdate’s SaaS model would be significant and use your valuable resources — resources that you may have to procure or reallocate, or are best used elsewhere. OU Campus via SaaS requires no large up-front investment. This is a pay-as-you-go approach where you pay for only the number of users that you need. When you need more, you can easily increase the number for just an incremental cost. Alternatively, you can pay a single price for unlimited access with an Enterprise Server License. Your up-front costs are higher; however, costs flatten out over time. You make an initial investment for the license and only pay recurring costs for maintenance and support.
Lowest 1st Year Cost
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