By Kat Liendgens — Jan 8, 2019 2:00 PM
Happy New Year from Hannon Hill!
After a well deserved and mostly relaxing break, we’re back in full force to help our customers achieve their web goals. This is also a good time to look back on 2018. Here are a few of those highlights.
Four Major Cascade Releases
During 2018, we released the following updates for Cascade CMS:
- 8.8 included a centralized and customizable dictionary, as well as many new features designed to make administrators’ lives easier. Specifically, this first major 2018 update included the ability to make smart publishing only applicable to large files, new system preferences and settings for our Siteimprove connector, and timeout requests for Feed Blocks.
- 8.9 contained a number of improvements to publishing related content, content tagging, search, and loading speeds.
- 8.10 included the new Tomcat servlet container, as well as improvements to date and time displays and “last modified” information on assets.
- We ended the year with a bang! 8.11 contained a slew of new features. We created updates to the “on submit” accessibility check as well as a site-wide accessibility checker, shared fields for Data Definitions, integration with Widen Collective and Webdam Digital Asset Management tools, super granular formatting controls for the WYSIWYG Editor, API updates, user activity reports, and in product Velocity documentation, to name a few.
2018 update releases for Cascade CMS offered something to address the needs of your entire team, especially content contributors, developers, administrators, and web managers. Keep sending us your suggestions and ideas during your customer feedback sessions, in our customer Slack channel, and on our Idea Portal. Stay tuned for even more exciting new releases in 2019.
Customer Successes
One of our goals is to ensure that our customers are as self-sufficient and successful as possible with Cascade CMS; however, we are also here to help when needed. In the past year, our Professional Services team managed over 160 client projects such as new implementations, content migrations, custom integrations, and implementation audits. Some of our favorite new site rollouts included University of St. Thomas’ College of Business, Bowdoin College, Mount St. Mary’s University, James Madison University’s dynamic faculty directory, and Aurora University.
Customer Support Stats
Taking a look at the customer support stats for 2018, we feel these numbers are clear indications of our dedication to our customers. Our Support team resolved almost 3,000 incoming client requests and questions in Zendesk, plus about 1,000 conversations in Intercom, with a median first reply time of 0.4 hours and 11 minutes. Meanwhile, our customers rated the service and responses with a satisfaction rate of 99.8%.
Training Successes
We are especially proud when new users like the University of the Incarnate Word quickly get up to speed with Cascade CMS after only two days of training. Speaking of training, your feedback does impact how we improve and adjust our training materials. In 2018, the average rating score for training was 9.6 out of 10. We will strive towards an even better rating during 2019 and plan to bring you new training opportunities as well. Keep a look out for updates from the training team soon.
When Work Works Award
We were one of two Georgia companies that received the 2018 “When Work Works” award, a national workplace excellence award from Society for Human Resource Management. This national award recognizes employers who are dedicated to providing workplace flexibility and opportunities for professional development, as well as valuing individuals. Among other perks, Hannon Hill is proud to offer flexible work hours, vacation days, community service days, dedicated time for special projects, cross-departmental collaboration, company outings and celebrations, and stipends for professional development. We are always on the lookout for standout performers and team players, not just for the positions listed on our website. If you know any bright, team players that seem like a good fit for Hannon Hill, be sure to let us know.
Team Building Events
Every year, we participate in some internal team building exercises. Earlier in 2018, one of those exercises was ShipIt day (formerly known as FedEx day), which allows each Hannon Hill team member to spend a full day on a special project, either individually or on a small team, collaborating with people outside of their department. On the following day, each participant presents their project. It was amazing to see how much could be accomplish in such a short amount of time. Many of the product features throughout 2018 actually came from features that were prototyped during the ShipIt day and many process improvements were spearheaded. Some of the outcomes of this year’s ShipIt day included new workflow documentation, in app Velocity documentation, updates to the faculty and staff directory code repository, the development site provisioner, and a user activity report. We also enjoyed team outings during 2018 such as a company pool party, a shopping “contest” at Lenox Mall and our holiday parties at Little Trouble and Ormsby’s.
As you may know, we also strive to give back to the community which means we dedicate time each quarter towards community service. Last year, we volunteered at two new non-profits by helping organize classrooms at Kipp Ways Academy and setting up the awards ceremony space for the Georgia Special Olympics. We also returned to two favorite organizations by supporting rescue cats and dogs at PAWS and sorting much needed medical supplies at Medshare.
Annual Customer Event
Finally, as always, one of the highlights of the year is our annual Cascade User Conference, and 2018 was no exception. Our customers were thrilled by our main venue, The Georgian Terrace and we greatly enjoyed an evening of food, drinks and games at the Park Tavern. We received overwhelming feedback on all of the great conference presentations, including excitement about our product roadmap, training workshops, and one on one consultations. We can’t wait to share some of our 2019 plans with you.
2019 and Beyond
As always, we are so thankful to all of our amazing customers and we look forward to serving and working with you in 2019. Cheers!
