WHAT TO EXPECT
As part of UW's website improvement strategy, we will be transitioning users and pages
to Omni CMS by Modern Campus. Site editors are encouraged to continue editing and
improving their sites as the migration will not take place until early 2023. While
a "go-live" date has not been selected yet in which Omni CMS will be the main editing
tool for website content is in place, we will provide in-depth communication to site
editors and the university at large for important milestones and other important communication.
While testing our system in December, we opted to create some editing enhancements
that will improve the overall experience for site authors. Because this testing period
was already backed up so closely to the UW administrative holidays during winter break,
we did not feel comfortable moving on from this phase until we could continue reviewing
these functions into this first week in January. Because of this prolonged testing,
we anticipate a delay and change to our original blackout date periods.
After a vendor RFP process and thorough due diligence, we have selected Modern Campus
as our partner. Modern Campus works with dozens of universities and colleges utilizing
Omni CMS -- a powerful system that specifically caters to the higher education community.
Some of Omni’s Key Features Include:
Preparing for the Migration
This website serves as a central location for site authors and website stakeholders to find information about the latest updates and milestones for this migration. Site authors will be required to engage in the process by cleaning up their Cascade CMS site by removing old pages and files. Site authors will also be responsible for reviewing all their content in the CMS site prior to "go-live" to ensure their pages' content is displaying correctly. All site authors will be fully trained before they begin reviewing their sites.
A Large Campus-Wide Effort
Website migrations are a major undertaking for any organization. Due to the scale of the UW website, this migration is a campus-wide collaboration with Institutional Marketing, IT, the Application Security Office, individual site authors and various other entities. Should you have any questions or need additional resources, we encourage you to reach out and we'll be in touch with you as soon as possible!
An Improved Experience
Transitions to a new system can be stressful, especially for our valued site authors who work hard to maintain their websites. While any migration of this scale will require new knowledge, we are confident that Omni CMS will provide users with a better experience, including easier editing capabilities without complex "blocky" editing features, future design enhancements ad the ability to create page approval workflows, spell check, accessibility checks and much more.
