Blogs - June 2009

Below are the blog entries for June 2009

How Cascade Server and its Users Benefit from Beta Testing

By Morgan Griffith
Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 1:00pm

If you frequent Hannon Hill's web site, use our content management system, Cascade Server, or are an active member of our user community, you've probably noticed that one of the things that sets us apart from other CMS vendors is our true commitment to our customers' experience. We provide a variety of mediums to give our clients a voice, and unlike some vendors, we listen to it.

Our Cascade Server Success Community serves as a fulcrum for our expansive user community, offering idea exchanges, a forum, and more for our clients to share ideas and get questions answered. The Cascade Server higher-ed listserv, which is run and managed by a client organization independent from Hannon Hill, is another great resource our users frequent to share product ideas and get support from other users. With these resources and many others, we at Hannon Hill are provided with valuable feedback and insight into the needs and wants of our CMS users. However, the one addition to our CMS feedback loop that has provided us with insight beyond what we could have hoped for, is the inclusion of a formal beta release testing period.

Prior to the release of the Cascade Server 6.x series, we had put out a few "silent" betas, with smaller groups of users testing our releases and providing us with feedback. However, because we're constantly striving to improve our product's usability and include those features our users want, we have scaled this process out in an effort to gain even more insight into what Cascade users are looking for.

When we released Cascade Server 6.0, we publicly advertised a beta release that we made available for download from our Success Community for approximately a month. With nearly 35 of our client organizations downloading the beta and submitting ideas and concerns, these users were given the opportunity to truly have a voice in shaping the 6.0 release. Getting this actionable user feedback during the beta period made us aware of several key benefits and issues associated with the release that led us to include even more improvements in the final 6.0 release.

Because of the valuable user response we got with the 6.0 beta release, we have decided to incorporate a beta testing period in each of our future feature releases. Most recently, we made Cascade Server 6.2 available for beta testing several weeks ago. Much of what's being included in the 6.2 release came from user-suggested improvements to core functionality received during the 6.0 beta testing.

We want to encourage all of our current Cascade users, and even prospects, to download our Cascade Server 6.2 beta release and see the value in the process. We rely heavily on user feedback to shape and improve Cascade Server, and will continue to do so for all future releases. If you haven't gotten a chance to check out the 6.2 beta release yet, feel free to download it today from our Success Community. We'll be releasing the final version of Cascade Server 6.2 in the coming weeks and would appreciate any and all feedback aimed at improving this release of Cascade Server and the product as a whole.


Category

  • Commentary

2009 User's Conference Session Schedule Now Available

By Uran Piedra
Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 10:00am

It's here! The long-awaited 2009 Cascade Server User's Conference Schedule has finally arrived.  We have a lot of great sessions planned for this year, and we are excited to show you what the schedule will look like for the conference in September.

Joining us this year to represent the client perspective of Cascade Server are speakers such as Karen Berntsen, Information Designer from Carnegie Mellon University with a presentation on Managing a University's Multi-faceted Web Presence and Jon Whitener, Web Communications Specialist from the University of Detroit Mercy, with a session on Database Publishing.  We also have Justin Klingman and Louisa Nicholson joining us from our partner, Beacon Technologies, Inc. for two presentations on Smart Cascade Server Implementations & Strategies and Cascade Server Flash & Data Integration.

But that's not all! Come to Atlanta in September to hear Ross Williams, Hannon Hill Services Trainer, give presentations such as What Workflows Can Do for You, Getting Data Into Cascade with Web Services, and New: Velocity Template Language Enhancements.  You will also have the opportunity to hear Cascade Server Software Developers Syl Turner and Mike Strauch present on Getting to Know Cascade's User Interface and Using New 6.4 Features.  Check out our schedule to see the full listing of sessions and times for this year's conference.

The conference rate will increase on July 1st to $850 for single occupancy, $750 for double occupancy, and $450 for day rate admission, so register now to secure your spot at the lower rate.

Category

  • Events

Setting Up a Test Instance of Cascade Server

By Tim Reilly
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 3:00pm

Did you know that your organization is entitled to a Cascade Server testing license free of charge as part of your standard license agreement?  There are numerous benefits to setting up a test instance of Cascade.  First and foremost, a test environment allows your organization to test all Cascade Server upgrades against a copy of your production content.  This process can help eliminate any surprises and can lead to the discovery of potential issues before they affect a production site.  End users can see how the new release will affect their content and can verify that the site is behaving as expected.  They can also experiment with new features and functionality in the confines of a safe environment which is separate from production.  In addition to this, organizations are able to get a feel for how to perform the software upgrades and an idea as to how long a particular upgrade may take to complete.

While it is possible to install a test instance on the production server, we recommend that a separate physical machine be allocated for the test instance. If both the test and production instances are installed on the production server, they could compete for resources and hinder performance.

Setting up a test instance on a separate machine:

  • Install the latest Cascade Server version.
  • Create a backup of the production database and import it as a new database.
  • Point the test Cascade Server instance to the database created in the previous step.
  • Disable publishing to destinations by issuing the following query to the database. This will prevent test assets from being published to the live site.

  • Disable email notifications by issuing the following query to the database. This will prevent emails from being sent regarding workflows, etc.

  • Start Cascade Server

Items to test:

Once the test instance is up and running, we recommend:
  • Navigating to several pages throughout the system and verifying that they render correctly
  • Editing/Submitting several assets within the system
  • Publishing assets to a staging server
  • Sending assets into workflow and verifying that the worfklow completes
  • Testing any custom publish triggers
  • Creating new assets using existing Asset Factories
  • Experimenting with new features/functionality in the product

For more information regarding setting up a test instance, please visit this area on our knowledge base, or if you are interested in obtaining a test license, contact info@hannonhill.com.


Category

  • Commentary

Cascade Server 6.2 Beta Packed with New Enhancements

By Morgan Griffith
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 11:00am

With initial plans for a single release in late Summer, our development team has doubled the fun with not one, but two Cascade Server releases slated for release in the Summer of 2009. The first of these two releases comes out today, with the release of the Cascade Server 6.2 Beta. Packed with new features and enhancements that build upon the release of Sites in Cascade Server 6.0, the 6.2 Beta is available for download from our Success Community now.

Most of the features in the 6.2 Beta release aim to improve upon Cascade's new Site(s) component released earlier this year, the first of these major enhancements being the ability to share templates across Sites. Because templates control the look and feel of a Site and are used to maintain brand consistency, it made sense to make it possible for Site Managers and Administrators to manage templates in a central place and share them across Sites.

In addition to template sharing to promote a consistent look and feel across web sites, the next major addition to the existing Sites functionality in Cascade is the ability to link across them. With the release of Cascade Server 6.2 Beta, users are provided with a variety of ways to seamlessly link to assets across Sites with link resolution taking place behind the scenes.

Keeping seamless link resolution in mind, the Cascade 6.2 Beta also offers up new folder copy and content wizard folder creation logic to ensure links are resolved automatically. This and Site-specific Dashboard customizations mark some of the smaller improvements in the Beta release.

The last major addition with the 6.2 Beta are some hefty improvements to Cascade's Velocity capabilities and Script Formats.The release's Velocity improvements will allow users to accomplish much of what they previously could with XSLT, by making some useful utilities available to script writers. Velocity is a procedural language, so developers with a background in PHP, ASP.NET, and other popular web programming languages, should be more familiar with it and may find it easier to use than XSLT.

For more information on any of the features mentioned above, check out the Cascade Server 6.2 Beta Release Notes. If you download the 6.2 for testing, please be sure to provide us with feedback about the beta!


Category

  • Product Upgrades

Insight into the Cascade Server Release Schedule

By Chris Armistead
Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 1:00pm

As Client Advocate at Hannon Hill, I frequently get asked questions regarding the Cascade Server release schedule.  For the past year, we have had feature releases once a quarter with bug fix releases in between.  With the release of Cascade Server 6.0, we added some improvements to our processes, and many of these changes will continue to be a part of our standard development cycle and release process moving forward.

Perhaps the biggest change for us was the release of a public beta for Cascade Server 6.0.  The beta was available for download on our Cascade Server Success Community, where we also created an idea exchange for feedback.  Due to the significant volume of downloads and valuable feedback received, a beta will now be made available prior to each new feature release.

Speaking of feature releases, in the past there has been some confusion over our numbering conventions for Cascade Server releases.  Customers would at times tell me how it was difficult to tell the difference between a feature release and a patch release.  For this reason, we recently adopted a simpler numbering convention so that our customers can more easily follow our releases:

  • A change in major version number marks the start of a Cascade Server "series" and a major change in functionality or technology - Our latest major release was from 5.x to 6.x which is indicative of a major functionality addition in Cascade. As an example, with the 5.x to 6.x transition, we introduced Sites, a new administrative feature offering an entirely new way of organizing content in the system.
  • Feature releases will be denoted by even-numbered minor point versions - Our latest major feature release was 6.0 and our next one will be 6.2. After that would be 6.4, 6.6, 6.8 and finally a new series with the release of 7.0.
  • Any release with a minor minor version number (i.e. 6.x.x) denotes a patch release - which consists of bug fixes and minor improvements made upon a previous feature release. For example, 6.0.2 is a patch release that contains the same features as 6.0, but adds bug fixes or minor improvements to those features.

The final big change in our release process concerns the idea of quarterly releases.  As many of you noticed, we took nearly twice the amount of time between Cascade 5.7 and 6.0 as we had for many of the previous releases.  The feedback on this increased amount of time between releases has been overwhelmingly positive, and we plan to continue this process moving forward.  In the future, our development team will focus on increased QA and testing (including user beta testing), rather than a rigid quarterly timeline. This testing has to lead to stronger software releases, while still allowing us to put out three or four feature releases per year.

We are very excited about the improvements to our development processes and release cycle, and their ability to help us increase the depth and quality of our releases in the 6-series and beyond.  Be on the lookout for the Cascade Server 6.2 Beta in the very near future!



 


Category

  • News