Squiz

Case Study - Griffith University

About Griffith University

Griffith University is an innovative University committed to multidisciplinary teaching and research, and the creation and communication of knowledge. It has five campuses in three cities across the Brisbane-Gold Coast corridor. With more than 33,000 students and 3,500 staff, it is one of Queensland's largest universities.

Historically its legacy includes Queensland's oldest academy - the Queensland College of Art (founded in 1881) as well as one of Australia's newest campuses (Logan), Australia's fastest growing campus (Gold Coast) and Australia's newest medical and dental schools (2004).

The Griffith community comprises students from more than 80 countries and academic staff who set a rigorous pace in the achievement of research and teaching excellence. This academic approach is founded in the sharing of knowledge across traditional boundaries. This interdisciplinary framework seeks to address and solve real world problems in the 21st century. International activities are an important aspect of Griffith's intention to be a leading Australian university with a significant international reputation.

Challenges

When Squiz became involved there were several challenges facing the University:

• The existing web publishing system required over 120 content publishers to have HTML and CSS skills. There was only a limited ability to control the Griffith brand and site designs. As a result, the Griffith website grew organically with limited ability to control structure and navigation. The effectiveness, usability and accessibility of individual sites was dependent on the skill of their particular content publisher.
• The Griffith brand was being diluted. Whole of site navigation was inconsistent. Web publishers had varying levels of skill and this was reflected in the ability to maintain the quality of websites. Web publishers were required to attend a series of training courses before being allowed to publish and this create web publishing bottlenecks.
• Griffith was very concerned that its major marketing tool - the website - was ineffective due to inconsistent use of the Griffith brand and poor navigation.
• Griffith was looking to create a much more user centred website. There was a real need to remove the technical barriers to publishing so that the content was able to be maintained by the content experts and not by technical experts.
• Griffith had a need to de-clutter its public website which was overcrowded with information written for internal audiences. There was a need to re-develop Griffith's intranet presence as an integration between portal (for authentication) and CMS (for content management) technologies.

The incumbent publishing system had approximately 120 contributors. The new system would need to be capable of supporting 150 to 200 content editors and approvers.

Solution – Supported Open Source

Evaluation and research by University technical staff reinforced the potential of MySource Matrix to not only meet the primary objectives but to also provide options for other content management issues within the University.

The University was fortunate to have strong in-house PHP skills and this coupled with the knowledge that they could engage Squiz for commercial support using (among other avenues) Support Packs, reduced the risk in going with an open source product.

As part of the implementation Squiz supplied the following professional services to the University.

• Implementation Services
• Project Management
• System Configuration Services
• System Quality Assurance Testing

The University has also used a Squiz Support Pack to add new functionality to MySource Matrix in the form an extension to the LDAP Bridge which permits an alternate base DN to be entered for authentication of a user. In funding this functionality, the University is both giving back to the open source community and also helping to forge the direction of MySource Matrix.

Additionally, the University have in place a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to take care of system updates and version upgrades.

Result – Expectations Met

The MySource Matrix / Squiz solution delivered on the initial expectations. MySource Matrix was well received by the web publishing community - especially by those with little or no knowledge of HTML and CSS.

It has enabled the University to release a new style guide that is enforced by the MySource Matrix design templates. This allowed the web publishers to concentrate on good quality content in a sustainable way.

The University has almost completed the process of migrating approximately 150 top level academic and marketing sites (with about 110 live, 30 in development, 10 yet to start) for a total of 120,000 pages. Eventually this number will double to as many as 300 sites as they begin to address whole of campus needs.

So far this year (until April 2008) there have been 950,000 unique visitors paying 2,969,000 visits with some 31,307,000 pages served.

“CMS projects are multi faceted and long in duration. As a result, the biggest challenge is to maintain commitment to the change being implemented. A large part of maintaining that commitment is early acceptance of the CMS chosen and the ability to quickly demonstrate the benefits delivered. This is especially true when the solution is an open source product. In our case, our ability to configure the CMS using the skill sets of our in-house professionals and the support of SQUIZ's implementation services quickly demonstrated our ability to meet the project's business objectives” Ian smith –Project Manager – Web Collection Enhancement Project, Griffith University, Nathan Campus.