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Digital Library Coordination Committee

CMS System Requirements

27 August 2003

The following requirements were derived from identified problems, strengths and maintenance work flows of the existing web maintenance process. These requirements provide a CMS requirements list for the UW Library's public web site. Please note that the numbers in parentheses at the end of each line represent the priority for each requirement (1 = Essential, 2 = Desirable, 3 = Nice).

Authentication and Control

  1. The CMS must provide access control for content managers. (1)
  2. The CMS must ensure the assignment of responsibility to each free standing piece of content within the system (i.e. pages, page fragments, templates, etc). (1)
  3. The CMS must provide access control by groups to allow multiple individuals to maintain any single piece of content within the system. (1)
  4. The CMS must allow for client access control based upon IP and/or user profiles (TUG navbars). (1)

Document Management

  1. The CMS must provide a checkin and checkout capability to ensure conflict free handling of documents in a distributed maintenance environment with multiple users. (1)
  2. The CMS must provide for the efficient creation, maintenance, storing and tracking of resource metadata. (1)
  3. The CMS should provide a global update capability based upon style sheets technology (CSS, XSLT). (2)
  4. The CMS should facilitate content reuse with the goal of a single file (full page or content fragment) serving multiple uses. (2)
  5. The CMS should provide expiry or review date alerts to those responsible for a piece of content to avoid dated and/or stale pages. (2)
  6. The CMS should provide a change alert where the adjustment of a piece of content requires the update of information beyond the CMS system boundary (i.e. Google header). (3)
  7. The CMS should provide time depended triggers for the display or withdrawal from the display of pages or content fragments. (3)

Document Creation and Maintenance

  1. The CMS must ensure a reasonable level of knowledge is all that is required for content managers to update their content. (1)
  2. The CMS must store assets (or provide access to them) in a standardized format (e.g., XML) to provide for future migrations. (1)
  3. The CMS must be standards compliant (e.g., XHTML). (1)
  4. The CMS must meet the university level web accessibility standards. (1)
  5. The CMS must ensure a clear separation of content from presentation and transformation coding. (1)
  6. The CMS should provide spell checking for content. (3)
  7. The CMS should allow a content manager to visualize a page in test mode before publication. (3)

Document Publications/Transformation

  1. The CMS must provide a means of tailoring output based upon user profiles including domain source of request (i.e. TUG library headers). (1)
  2. The CMS should provide a sitemap index capability. (2)
  3. The CMS should provide a complete site search capability (a single search that would include static as well as database content if both form part of the CMS). (2)
  4. The CMS should provide publishing flexibility to allow the delivery of content potentially in formats other than the web (print format, text only, etc). (2)
  5. The CMS should provide content contact info on each page (spam email proof). (3)
  6. The CMS should provide a means to solicit and manage user feedback (surveys, polls, etc). (3)

Workflow

  1. The CMS should provide workflow management for content approval processing. (2)

Other Features

  1. The CMS must be able to handle the Library’s current needs and be scalable to keep pace with the site's growth over the next five years. (1)
  2. The CMS must provide a link management function. (1)
  3. The CMS must provide a sandbox or trial environment for the prototyping of changes. (1)
  4. The CMS must provide web usage statistics. (1)
  5. The CMS must allow for the integration of static and database content. (1)
  6. The CMS must allow a flexibility of customization to meet the diverse needs of the Library's web site. (1)
  7. The CMS must provide a rollback and/or backup capability. (1)
  8. The CMS should provide an archiving capability. (3)

August 2, 2005