Below are the blog entries for April 2009
Learning, Networking, & Collaboration...Plus Flat Screens & Buffets
By Sam Beresford
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 11:21pm
As the 2009 Cascade Server User's Conference draws near, we promise to keep you updated on all the pertinent dates and deadlines, announcements and amendments. In the meantime though, we got to thinking about why it is that so many of you attend our User's Conference. Could it be...
- The informative, expert-level presentations given by superbly talented Cascade Server users.
- The chance to meet the Hannon Hill engineering, services, and support staff in person, putting faces to all those Success Community usernames.
- The networking and collaboration that you do with your best-in-class peers.
- The perks.
- All of the above.
Of course, it's E. All of the above; but for the sake of this blog, let's focus on answer D....
The User's Conference is held at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center, an amazing facility in a prime location. The GTHCC features plush accommodations, flat screen TVs in every room, and facility-wide wireless Internet access. There's also a 24-hour health club for a quick workout, an indoor pool for a cool dip, and a hot tub to stretch out in. And after a hard day of conferencing, lots of folks head to the slick lobby bar to unwind, or to the Club Lounge, open from 3:00 PM 'til midnight for pool-shooting, game-watching, and bar food-snacking.
As you may know, the User's Conference is all-inclusive: registration, lodging, and food are all included in the deal. But when it comes to the food part of that equation, we should call it ultra-super-fantastic-all-inclusive. A full breakfast and lunch are served every day, buffet-style, in the hotel's bright, spacious dining room and on their covered patio. Breakfast is available from 6:30 AM-10:00 AM, and lunch is served from 11:30 AM-2:00 PM; there's a ridiculous amount of variety, from hot entrees and appetizers to grilled fare and salads, and they always feature a vegetarian option and plenty of desserts.
Throughout the day, the GTHCC also has a never-ending bounty of snacks, fruit, and drinks available outside our conference rooms. And as if the two meals and constantly replenished snacks weren't enough, they also have "refreshment breaks," one mid-morning and the other mid-afternoon, consisting of a hot freshly-prepared item like a mini-burrito and accompanied by bagels, muffins, or cookies. And don't even get us started on the fully catered open house at our office on Monday night....
Anyhow, we know that you attend the Cascade Server User's Conference for the learning opportunities, the behind-the-scenes look at the product, and the congeniality of like-minded users...but c'mon, admit it, the sweet digs and smorgasbord of grub doesn't hurt, right?
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Important Rate Information for the 2009 User's Conference
By Uran Piedra
Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 12:00pm
When we opened registration for the 2009 Cascade Server User's Conference, you may have noticed that we advertised the current price for the conference as an "Early Bird Rate", which indicated that the price would go up throughout the registration period. To help you better plan your attendance this year, we wanted to make you aware of the price increases in advance. Due to a glitch last week with our registration page that may have prevented some attendees from registering, we've extended the Early Bird deadline until May 15th. The conference rates will be as follows:
Register by May 15th:
Single - $800.00
Double - $700.00 per occupant
Day - $400.00
Register between May 16th - June 30th:
Single - $825.00
Double - $725.00 per occupant
Day - $425.00
Register between July 1st - July 24th:
Single - $850.00
Double - $750.00 per occupant
Day - $450.00
Registration will be closed after July 24th; if availability at the conference site exists after this date, attendance will be available at $900.00 for single occupancy, $800.00 for double occupancy, and $500.00 for day rate attendance. Please note that the single and double occupancy room rates include conference admissions and two nights (Sunday, Sept. 27th & Monday, Sept. 28th) of accommodations at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center. The day rate includes conference admission without accommodations. You may cancel your registration until August 1st and receive a 50% refund; cancellations made after August 1st will not be eligible for a refund.
If you have any questions or concerns related to this year's User's Conference, feel free to contact us at info@hannonhill.com.
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Roles: New and Improved in Cascade Server 6.0
By Sam Beresford
Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 1:30pm
As you may know, we released Cascade Server 6.0 earlier this month. Before that, we did extensive beta testing that led to some extremely helpful feedback, and now that 6.0 is officially here, we've gotten even more insight from clients who've upgraded. In our last blog entry, we expounded a bit on Sites, one of 6.0's most important new features. And since Roles may vary between Sites (a user may be a Manager on an organization's main website, but a Contributor on that organization's intranet, for instance), we've changed and improved the way Roles work in Cascade 6.0.
In Cascade Server, user capabilities in the system are governed by the Roles to which they've been assigned. Each Role provides users with certain privileges, and is assigned by an Administrator or automatically inherited if a user belongs to a particular group. And as users must be assigned specific Roles to contribute to a workflow process, Roles are also vital in ensuring that workflows, well, flow.
Custom Roles were introduced in Cascade Server 5.5, and they gave system Administrators the freedom to finetune the 40+ abilities that can be assigned to the five standard, formerly static Roles. With the release of Cascade Server 6.0, this customization has been kicked up a notch, as Administrators are now able to create completely new Roles with precise configurations of user capabilities that are specifically suited to the tasks and needs of their organization, their department, or even to an individual user. Site Roles allow Administrators to customize a user's abilities within the context of a particular Site and are a new addition in Cascade Server 6.0. Here are a few questions that users may have about the new ways in which Roles can be used:
- With the addition of Sites, how will Roles change?
- How many Roles are now available? Do the five default Roles still exist?
- Can I have multiple Site (contextual) Roles?
- Can the default abilities of each Role be customized?
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- Resources
What Should I Know about Sites in Cascade Server 6.0?
By Morgan Griffith
Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 2:30pm
Although our customers use Cascade Server in many different ways, we realize that a large number of them utilize our CMS to manage not just one, but multiple websites. So with the release of Cascade Server 6.0, we created a a formal administrative component that will aid our users in organizing and managing content specific to a particular website; you'll know these components as "Sites." In previous versions of Cascade, Targets were used as the organizing principle around which each site was based. However, with Sites, organizations are able to more effectively segment and manage the content and configurations for each of their websites separately, while still maintaining the ability to share certain administrative components across them.
So, where in the system can I access Sites? What should I know about Sites before using them? What can you do with them? What can't you do with them? What will I be able to do with them? All good questions; let's get some answers.
Where in the system can I access Sites?
End-users (non-system administrators) can access Site content in the system (where applicable permissions apply) by selecting it from the drop-down menu at the top of the Cascade Server Interface:
Selecting a specific Site from the drop-down shown above will allow this Site to act as a filter that results in only assets specific to that websitebeing displayed in the Home and Administration areas.
For system administrators, the Site Management interface is accessible by clicking the new Cascade Server System Menu and selecting "Site Management." In this area, system administrators and power-users can create new sites and manage those that already exist in the system.
What should I know about Sites?
- All Home/Administration components are grouped by Site
- In the context of a specific Site, Targets are no longer available, and templates and content are decoupled from their publish destination (Target properties are redistributed at the Site and Page Configuration Level).
- Users are provided with contextual roles; Site-specific Roles and Global Area (interface) Roles now further specify and determine what content each user has access to when navigating the system.
- While not yet available system-wide, asset sharing across sites is possible with some assets. The following assets may be shared across Sites in Cascade Server 6.0:
- Asset Factories
- Data Definitions
- Workflow Definitions
- Metadata Sets
- Publish Sets
- Transports
- Blocks
- Formats
- Changes and additions to the user interface include: Site chooser (available in the Global Area), System Menu, Site-specific Tools menu, Site Management interface, and the Site Migration wizard/interface.
What can't I do with Sites?
As was mentioned above, sharing of assets across Sites is available for some assets, but not system-wide.
**Assets that are not immediately shareable across Sites with the release of Cascade Server 6.0 include Templates, Configuration Sets, and Content Types:
- Templates in the Global Area can not be used by other Sites because these templates are tied directly to Targets, a relationship that does not exist at the site level. Templates that belong to Sites will be shareable across Sites in an early release of Cascade 6.x.
- Page Configuration Sets in the Global Are will never be usable by other Sites because they do not contain all of the serialization and output properties that are required of Page Configurations on a Site. Page Configuration Sets that belong to Sites will be shareable across Sites in the same release that Template sharing is enabled.
- Content Types that belong to Sites will also be shareable across Sites in this same release.
What will I be able to do with Sites in future releases?
In a future 6.x release of Cascade Server, users will be able to share templates across sites. In future releases, more robust sharing of assets across Sites will also be available. Linking of inline text in the WYSIWYG to pages and files from other Sites will also become available in an upcoming release.Additionally, System Preferences that are now available and applied at the global-level will become more granular and applicable at the site-level in future releases.
Site copying is another functionality addition that we're considering adding to an upcoming Cascade Server release. If you'd like to suggest future Site functionality or features to be added in an upcoming release of Cascade Server, please visit our Cascade Server Idea Exchange.
Category
- Resources
Cascade Server 6.0 Arrives!
By Chris Armistead
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 9:00am
Cascade Server 6.0 is here! It's been the buzz around our office for quite some time now, we've mentioned it here on the Team Blog a few times, and some of you even grabbed the Beta release from our Success Community. The latest version of our enterprise web content management system is now available for all clients, and we're truly excited to see all of the ways in which our customers will put it to work.
Our last major release, Cascade Server 5.0, added the power to manage more users and handle more concurrency through increased content control and back-end flexibility. For 6.0, we're proud to show off two huge improvements: increased Role flexibility and the addition of Sites.
In addition to the existing default/system roles, Roles are now completely customizable and can be further tailored on a per-site basis. While "sites" have long existed in Cascade, "Sites" are new Administrative features that are used to segment and manage content, configurations, and/or assets that are relevant to specific sites.
In addition, Cascade Server 6.0 features new interface drop-down menus displaying Site- and Role-specific contents based on user profiles and access rights for seamless, secure access. An increasing number of our clients utilize large Cascade Server implementations with numerous users and decentralized departments, and these new features give content managers more control over their sites and allow administrators to focus on the system as a whole.
The release of Cascade Server 6.0 also gave us a chance to put our new Success Community to work in a big way. We offered the Beta version of 6.0 to all of our users there, and it also served as the headquarters for all feedback, improvements, bug reports, best practices, and all other 6.0 information. We'd like to thank everybody that reported an issue, answered a question, or suggested in idea, because all of you made this release one of our best ever.
So with the release of 6.0 finally here, we hope that all of our users benefit from the addition of Sites and fully customizable Roles to the system. These new features, along with our focus on customer support and service throughout the lifecycle of the product, help Hannon Hill further solidify its place as the CMS of choice for small- to medium-sized organizations. For more information about Cascade Server 6.0, please visit our Success Community, and for more information on how to purchase Cascade Server 6.0 or upgrade an existing software license, contact Hannon Hill at 800.407.3540 or info@hannonhill.com
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- Product Upgrades
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