Blogs - January 2008

Below are the blog entries for January 2008

Happy Holidays from Hannon Hill!

By David Cummings

Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 3:50pm

As the year draws to a close, we here at Hannon Hill would like to take a moment to thank you, our customers, for constantly pushing us to make our products better and our service exceptional, and ultimately, for making our company a success.  2008 was a tremendous one for Hannon Hill; here's a few of Hannon Hill's highlights from the past year:

Once again, Hannon Hill thanks all of our customers for their continued support and invaluable feedback.  We wish you all a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year, and we look forward to providing you and your organizations with innovative products and excellent service and support in 2009!

Category

• News

Hannon Hill Welcomes New Team Members

By David Cummings

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 1:00pm

The new year has brought some new faces to Hannon Hill, so we’d like to introduce our four newest team members who have joined us throughout January: Chris Armistead, Dan Cunning, Laura Folio, and Michael Thompson.

Chris Armistead has joined Hannon Hill as our Product Coordinator.  Chris is a graduate of the University of Georgia and has experience working for King & Spalding, LLP (one of the preeminent law firms in the South) as a project coordinator and KnowledgeStorm as a communications specialist and prospector.  At Hannon Hill, Chris will serve as an internal marketing coordinator on the Cascade Server product and will be a resource for many Hannon Hill teams.

Dan Cunning is our newest Software Engineer for Cascade Server.  Dan grew up in Peachtree City, Georgia before attending Georgia Tech, where he graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a specialization in Graphics and Visualization.  After graduating, he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii where he worked for a small software company doing government contract work.  Although asked frequently, Dan does not know how to surf, but he does enjoy watching others try.  Dan will be programming as a member of the Cascade Server and new product development teams.  Dan's work will focus on User Interface design: making the products intuitive and powerful.

Laura Folio joins us as a Marketing Coordinator.  Laura graduated from Florida State University and has spent the past two years working in public relations and event planning, including project work with the Chick-fil-A Bowl. Laura will help promote the Pardot product line by coordinating branding efforts, online communications, and events. As a part of the marketing team, she will also manage clients’ implementations.

As a Project Coordinator, Michael J. Thompson will manage services projects on the Pardot product line and work with clients to determine requirements and manage internal projects to meet deliverables on time. He will also work with the Marketing team to help coordinate and promote the Pardot product line through writing blogs, press releases and marketing communications.  Michael is a 2006 graduate of Auburn University. Before joining Pardot, Michael worked in the PR industry for a firm in Atlanta and continues to do freelance writing for local and national publications.

We welcome our latest additions to the Hannon Hill team and wish continued success in their latest career endeavors.

Category

• News

Why Your Software Isn't the Only Piece of the Content Management Puzzle

By Morgan Griffith

Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 11:30am

As I’ve continued my research of the CMS market as a whole and the specific vendors within it I have been repeatedly confronted with messages such as “easy to use,” “perfect for all your content management needs,” and “fast and simple right out of the box!” As I continued to read these messages, I found myself asking how these vendors can provide such a complex product, yet continue to assert that implementation and use is so easy.  

If they won’t give you the real story, I will. The fact of the matter is - no one CMS system is perfect for any organization. Why? In my opinion, Content Management involves more than just your CMS software.  At Hannon Hill we acknowledge that the complexities involved in shopping for and using a CMS make it very difficult for any organization to completely tweak their CMS to be so-called “perfect.” Instead, we’ve found that the best way to make up for the inherent short-comings any organization will face in using any CMS is to fill these gaps with other elements that allow an organization or business to maximize the potential for success in using their CMS.

If I think about this logically, like a math equation, the fundamental pieces of the puzzle come together to result in:

                                Content Management = People + Process + Systems

Where we at Hannon Hill excel is in realizing that Cascade is just one piece of the puzzle - the system;  and it takes a total commitment to customer satisfaction and improving the user experience with Cascade in order to make Cascade the enterprise content management system it is. (I’ll spare you the typical jargon) At the core of the Hannon Hill value system is our commitment to maintaining 100% referenceable accounts; and to us, referenceable doesn’t mean doing only the bare minimum to consult with an organization, sell them a CMS, and then abandon them when it comes to implementation and use.

Instead, on a daily basis, we are constantly taking proactive steps to make your experience with our CMS better. These daily and proactive steps are always changing based on your needs. We are committed to adapting our approach and priorities to suit your needs. Accordingly, the ‘steps’ we take to accomplish this change as often as your needs do.

Recently, we’ve begun conducting quarterly client satisfaction surveys to gauge what improvements you want to see in a new version. We have also continued to provide a ticketing-system (JIRA) for clients to reach us with new specific and tailored feature requests.

Your feedback is crucial as we are always seeking your input on what could make your use of Cascade better. One of our biggest projects for 2008 is to conduct a full audit of our documentation resources and Knowledge Base. Aside from the jargon you may hear elsewhere, one thing Cascade users can trust is that Hannon Hill's Engineering, Services, & Support teams, and our staff as a whole are truly here to help them.

Our team of people is what makes our Content Management system so special. We are constantly focused on utilizing the profound intangible 'human energy' our team possesses to ensure that our people are what make our process and product the best they can possibly be.

Category

• News

How Using your Developer Insight will Streamline Organizational Publishing

By Morgan Griffith

Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 10:00am

As an Administrator or Developer, your daily experience using Cascade is drastically different from what simple users within your organization experience; and as your fellow employees have become more familiar with Cascade and its functionality through using the system, they have undoubtedly become enthusiastic about the nearly endless possibilities for content creation, management, and publishing with their CMS. Accordingly, the number of users, departments, and areas of your business or organization using Cascade’s “Publish” feature has grown. While there are several different ways to accommodate this growing number of users seeking to publish content in the system, the most fundamental way to create a more efficient publishing process for your business is to make use of Cascade’s Publish Set functionality.

Much in the same way that your Marketing department seeks to make information about your company readily available to prospects in a transparent way, it’s imperative that Developers seek to accomplish this same goal, but for an entirely different audience.

As a Developer or Administrator, you are likely familiar the variety of goals your organization utilizes Cascade to accomplish. Whether it’s publishing press releases in your Marketing department, university professors updating course catalogs, keeping news feeds current, or providing a wealth of descriptive information about your business and products, you have a variety of Cascade users utilizing the system to perform a variety of different tasks. 

Your fundamental knowledge of the system and which assets must be published in what order give you an extra insight into the software that can ultimately aid you in making your company’s publishing process more efficient. Publish Sets are components available in the Administration area of Cascade and allow you as a developer or administrator to specify groups of assets that relate to one another to be published on-demand or according to a specified schedule. These publish sets can contain files, folders, and pages.

As an administrator or developer, you have likely run into several cases in which a business or “simple” user needs to publish a page, but is unsure as to which pages need to be published along with it to ensure all relevant content is updated.  For example, if a user creates and publishes a new press release, all pages that link to the new press release must also be published. Because these users are not exposed to the smaller, more technical elements of Cascade, often times when they need to publish a page, instead of trying to determine which assets to publish along with it, he or she may just publish the entire folder to ensure all content is updated.

While this may be fine on an occasional basis, as the use of your CMS expands and Cascade is accommodating more users, you may find yourself in a situation where multiple users are publishing multiple entire folders at once. When this happens, it may be difficult for content that is of the upmost priority to be published in a timely way, as the publisher will be overloaded publishing multiple entire folders.  Because you have a different insight into Publish Sets and which groups of Assets must be published at once, it is up to you, as an Administrator, to ensure that your Publish Sets are constructed in a way that will maximize the efficiency of your CMS and its publishing functionality.

For more information on Publish Sets, and how to best construct them, please visit our Publish Set Knowledge Base page.

Category

• Resources

Introducing the Cascade Server 5-Series - Improving the User Experience!

By Chris Armistead

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 11:00am

As one of Hannon Hill's newest additions for 2008, I feel I should introduce myself for my first blog entry.  My name is Chris Armistead and my role here will be as a Product Coordinator - meaning I will be the link between our marketing and engineering teams.  Coming from a web marketing background, I was already somewhat familiar with Content Management Systems like our product, Cascade Server.  But my experience was in describing the importance of good content, not actually creating it myself.  So I was a bit intimidated on my first day here when I was given a set of technical guides and sent on my way to learn about Cascade.  Isn't there is a big difference between explaining the benefits of a CMS and learning to use one yourself?

I admit, it was a little overwhelming at first.  I was learning the Cascade Server terminology and discovering how to publish a website - all on my first day!   But once I got started, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I was afraid it would be.  Creating, editing and publishing content was just the beginning.  I even learned how to create a workflow for content to go through a series of approvals, as well as several other high level administrator functions.  Maybe there wasn't that big of a gap between understanding a CMS and using one yourself after all!

After successfully going through the Technical Intros, when it came time to further expand my knowledge of Cascade, I was at no shortage of resources! Our expansive collection of demos, webinars, white papers, and our comprehensive Knowledge Base gave me a plethora of information at my fingertips. Now, after only a week of working at Hannon Hill, I feel confident in my knowledge of the product. Using a CMS really is easy; I can't speak on other products, but through my experience with Cascade, I have truly come to an understanding of just how important web content management is for organizations and businesses with a growing need to establish a strong web presence.

Even though I was pretty proud of myself for what I had learned, I have to give credit to the engineering team on this one.  Cascade Server is such an intuitive system; publishing content was simple with only my basic knowledge of common computer programs;  and it's all laid out in a manner that introduces concepts and terminology in a logical manner, so I could back up a step if I needed to without getting lost.  

By the end of my first week, I felt like an old pro.  But of course, the Hannon Hill team is constantly working to improve the product and streamline the user experience with Cascade. The 5-Series releases throughout this year will focus on this same goal- even better user experiences. The engineering team is always working around the clock to continue enhancing Cascade Server and make small behind-the-scenes changes that ultimately come together to make the process of managing and creating content with Cascade a vastly simpler and more efficient process.

As of this week, Cascade Server 5.1 is now available, and offers a variety of new features that all seek to accomplish this goal - improving the user experience with Cascade. Cascade 5.1 boasts new features such as Quick Links, a new Advanced Tab, and an enhanced Template Import Process. 

Quick Links gives the user a convenient pop-up on every page of the most frequently-used features such as the dashboard and his or her recent history, resulting in less time and page loads in getting from Point A to Point B.    

    

The Advanced Tab will also simplify the user experience by consolidating several less frequently-used tabs in one place for a more user-friendly interface.

Our new Template Import Process has automated all the routines/logic that were checkbox options before to ensure that any user can simply submit a template and have it handled in the expected manner. Basically, our new Template Import Process is a one-stop-shop for all of your template handling needs. 

I'm enthusiastic about this upcoming release and the continual improvements our team is making to ensure Cascade Server is a trend-setter in the CMS marketplace. All three of these new features reflect Hannon Hill's commitment to making Cascade Server as intuitive and efficient as possible - improving the user experience by providing logical defaults and simplifying the user interface. We hope you enjoy! Don't forget to check back here for new Cascade Server 5 Series upgrades and features. 

Category

• News

Hannon Hill's Internet Open House

By Elizabeth Starkey

Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 1:00pm

If you missed our Open House a few months ago, here is your chance to check out our Buckhead office via this internet photo tour. Just when you expected the office of a software company to be boring, we present you evidence to the contrary in Suite 2440 of Atlanta Plaza.

 

Upon entering our office, Laura greets our visitors at the front desk. Our waiting area gives the first hint of the unique design here. Our office is the former MTV office, which accounts for the distinctive use of angles and bright colors. The look could be described as inspired by a very modern, American approach to the art of Theo Van Doesburg, father of the De Stijl movement. 

The abundance of glass walls and cutouts serving as windows and doorways adds an open feel to the office. Derek, Beth, and Brock model several of these cut-outs in Sthitha's office.

In the Board Room, we conduct our large, company-wide meetings and our weekly Free Lunch Fridays. Up here on the 24th floor, we have a fantastic view of Atlanta. Our other, smaller meeting room is the War Room, which is used for departmental meetings or training sessions.

The break room features two major elements of work-day fuel, coffee and Coke. We also keep this room stocked with snacks.

Next stop: the offices where Hannon Hillians are hard at work. Dean and Syl of Sales enjoy their coffee as they discuss new potential clients. Tim, our inter-office fitness guru, shows Syl the power of the hand gym as he answers trouble tickets and other support requests.

 

Down in Cubeland, our extended office, Sadiq shows off his four monitors, maximizing efficiency with his web development work. Traveling between offices is a breeze at Hannon Hill. Brett demonstrates our Segway transportation device, a popular gadget among the members of our team.

We like to keep souvenirs from the people who have made us a success, our clients. The perimeter of Cubeland is adorned with pennants from each of our clients in higher education.

It's certainly not all work and no play here! As you can see, we have our share of toys to provide us with extra fun during a break from the computer. We have an authentic "Police Force" pinball machine, darts, and an executive putting green. Kevin G. and Beth demonstrate our foosball table and Michael W. and Kevin W. show off their ping pong skills.

We hope you have enjoyed our internet photo tour of the office, and we look forward to your arrival at our open house next year.

Category

• News

Meet the Team - Laura Helm

By Sam Beresford

Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 10:30am

SAM BERESFORD: Hey there! You're listening to Hannon Hill’s ‘Meet the Team,’ and I'm Sam Beresford.  Today, I'm here with one of our newest additions, Laura Helm.  Hi Laura, how are you?

LAURA HELM: I'm doing very well, thank you.

SAM: So how have your first few weeks been here at Hannon Hill?

LAURA: Well, it's been really amazing. All the people here are so kind and the environment is incredible.

SAM: Yes, the environment is pretty different than most companies. So tell us, have you always wanted to work for a web content management software company?

LAURA: Actually, no. (laughing)  My background is in the performing arts, but I thought that this would be a very good experience for me.  I'm learning about a lot of things that I never knew before that can really help now and even later on in my life.

SAM: So where did you go to school and what did you study?

LAURA: I was actually at Tulane for a little while until Katrina came.  Then I moved to Atlanta where I now attend American Intercontinental University.  I'm studying fashion marketing and design there.

SAM: Are you in any sororities?

LAURA: No, sororities really aren't for me. I'm kind of the quiet type around people unless I'm on stage.  I know, it's hard to explain.

SAM: Oh ok, so how is everything working out for you here?  Has adapting to this industry been tough?

LAURA: You know what? No, not at all. I think Hannon Hill is wonderful.  I've always wondered about the people and companies that actually put in the hard work to making websites so easy for the rest of us.  But now I'm actually learning about it and it's very cool.

SAM: What kind of stuff are you learning about?

LAURA: Well, so far, I've just been getting a really good introduction to web content management.  Seeing how Cascade works makes me think I could start my own website!

SAM: What else are you looking forward to experiencing here at Hannon Hill?

LAURA: I really want to know how each person here contributes to the final product.  Web developers, engineers, sales consultants....it really is a team effort.

SAM: You're absolutely right, and I'm sure everyone here will be glad to help you out.  Well, that pretty much wraps things up for us. Thanks for being on our show, Laura.  And thanks to everybody out there for checking out the latest edition of Hannon Hill’s ‘Meet The Team.’  See you next time!

Category

• News