A single DXP to empower more than 400 publishers

Chapter 1: Tell us a bit about your roles at the University of Newcastle?

I'm Mark I'm the website manager at the University of Newcastle we have manage a team of 10 Specialists across the ux

0:17

17 seconds

development and design and project spaces we're a busy very busy team we service the entire University which

0:25

25 seconds

consists of around 500 trained web Publishers and we provide support from a technical point of view support from a

0:33

33 seconds

project perspective and general guidance and support to the publishing Community my name is Ruby techley I am the web

0:41

41 seconds

project management specialist in the web team at the University of Newcastle I help to manage and oversee all of the

0:49

49 seconds

projects that the web Team Works on for the University alongside Mac and also our wider marketing and Communications

0:56

56 seconds

team on a day-to-day live away liaise with stakeholders in the web team to make sure that our projects and

1:03

1 minute, 3 seconds

deliverables are hitting deadlines and meeting the stakeholder expectations

1:13

1 minute, 13 seconds

so the audiences for our website are very diverse it's not just students prospective students it's also um alumni

1:21

1 minute, 21 seconds

it's it's industry it's government its current staff it's a very wide audience that accesses our University and the

1:30

1 minute, 30 seconds

general Community as well so we really have to be um very Broad in how we attract and convert some of those

1:37

1 minute, 37 seconds

audiences but most importantly how we engage with those audiences so a lot of the project work that we do in particular is underpinned by a very

1:46

1 minute, 46 seconds

heavy user experience layout which involves getting out there and talking to those audiences to find out what their needs and wants are and then

1:54

1 minute, 54 seconds

feeding that back into the project work that we deliver those audiences have not changed significantly over time but

2:02

2 minutes, 2 seconds

certainly the community side of things is very strong the University of Newcastle holds a important and prestigious place in the the hunter

2:11

2 minutes, 11 seconds

community and it's important important that the community are along that Journey with us and they're allowed to

2:18

2 minutes, 18 seconds

provide inputs and and receive a great customer experience just like all of our other targeted groups I think also the

2:25

2 minutes, 25 seconds

way that it's changed and evolved is is the websites had a much more broader presences as well

2:33

2 minutes, 33 seconds

um from holding events over the past couple of years during the pandemic to research facilities and promoting

2:40

2 minutes, 40 seconds

those academics using the website to promote themselves and the research that they're doing so I suppose there's been

2:47

2 minutes, 47 seconds

a lot more engagement in the website over the past 15 years as well from a wider a wider sense

Chapter 2: What are your priorities for improving digital student experience?

2:58

2 minutes, 58 seconds

so the priorities for our website Presence at the moment and over the next little while are really around enhancing that user experience so we're looking at

3:08

3 minutes, 8 seconds

ways that we can make content more relevant to some of those audiences um and by and in saying that one of the ways we're doing that is providing

3:15

3 minutes, 15 seconds

personalized content So based on their browsing history or where they've come from we're able to personalize the website specifically to those audiences

3:24

3 minutes, 24 seconds

and we find that really plays an important role in increasing the relevance of the content on the site and helping with engagement

3:34

3 minutes, 34 seconds

so the University of Newcastle and squids have been working together for almost 15 years which was a long time

3:41

3 minutes, 41 seconds

before my time at the University and I suppose we went we moved into the squiz space because we wanted a CMS platform

3:49

3 minutes, 49 seconds

that was easier to use and also involved our web publishing community so squares really ticked the Box in that

3:56

3 minutes, 56 seconds

regard I think that how we've used the website has changed considerably over that time and we've had to evolve with

4:04

4 minutes, 4 seconds

it how people interact with the website how we interact our community interacts with the website we've had to include

4:11

4 minutes, 11 seconds

more functions and more components to be able to really adapt to the market expectation much more quickly the user experience of our site has become much

4:20

4 minutes, 20 seconds

more important in a predominant Focus as well and we've had to adapt to that the pandemic obviously changed the way that people interacted with the university

4:29

4 minutes, 29 seconds

and I think that by having the flexibility and the input that squiz has has meant that we've been able to really

4:36

4 minutes, 36 seconds

shift and we've worked with squiz and some really big projects around that the key projects which we've delivered during our partnership we started with

4:44

4 minutes, 44 seconds

the funnel back implementation a few years ago squiz has also built has custom built approver dashboards and

4:52

4 minutes, 52 seconds

also a custom Style profile solution this Aggregates data from multiple sources into a single endpoint for users

5:01

5 minutes, 1 second

of the web we've obviously done the annual upgrades for both squares and funnel back and in the last couple of years we worked with squares to create

5:10

5 minutes, 10 seconds

our open Day online platform and zoom integration given it was mid pandemic we had to quickly pivot to hold one of our

5:17

5 minutes, 17 seconds

biggest recruitment drives online so that was a really big project that we worked with squiz on as well the most

5:24

5 minutes, 24 seconds

recent project has obviously been the upgrade to Matrix six in the cloud which was earlier this year in 2022.

Chapter 3: What was your experience of upgrading to Matrix 6?

5:35

5 minutes, 35 seconds

so we did the upgrade to Matrix version six a few months ago and um the reason for us doing the upgrade was we really

5:44

5 minutes, 44 seconds

wanted to provide benefit back to our publishing Community around some of the new features and advantages that Matrix 6 had over version five so it was really

5:53

5 minutes, 53 seconds

about um those Publishers in that Community having a nice clean dashboard with additional functionality

6:00

6 minutes

um that will make their jobs a little bit easier and leveraging the latest and greatest of what squeeze have has to offer from both a functionality point of

6:09

6 minutes, 9 seconds

view but also a security point of view the upgrade itself had been planned for for quite some time in collaboration with both the university and swiss and

6:17

6 minutes, 17 seconds

the timing was was dictated around resourcing so when we had the resources to be able to plan it write test cases and really

6:27

6 minutes, 27 seconds

manage it that upgrade quite meticulously we didn't hit any major hurdles during the upgrade and the reason for that was because else we were

6:35

6 minutes, 35 seconds

able to plan it very carefully in collaboration with Swiss to identify some areas that might have posed a risk

6:43

6 minutes, 43 seconds

or needed to be fleshed out a bit more so we're able to navigate any of those risks very safely we installed Matrix 6

6:52

6 minutes, 52 seconds

in a test environment initially to allow us to run through a series of test cases both from a crossbow browser perspective

6:59

6 minutes, 59 seconds

and mobile testing both design and functional changes the feedback from their publishing Community has been really positive we developed a range of

7:08

7 minutes, 8 seconds

new training materials with videos and and written guides to help them on that Journey but I think by and large the

7:15

7 minutes, 15 seconds

feedback we've had from the community as is that version 6 is very intuitive and is a lot easier from their perspective

7:22

7 minutes, 22 seconds

as well I think some of the benefits to the

7:29

7 minutes, 29 seconds

university specifically has been that members of that broader a web Community have have got a bit more functionality

7:37

7 minutes, 37 seconds

and oversight to the back end of that website they're aware of of what their capabilities are in terms of editing and

7:45

7 minutes, 45 seconds

Publishing and also I suppose things don't maybe always go to plan and we can we can have a little bit more of a gawk

7:52

7 minutes, 52 seconds

at where that has gone on the Catalyst for the University of

Chapter 4: What was the catalyst for migrating to Squiz Cloud?

8:01

8 minutes, 1 second

Newcastle upgrading to the cloud was basically it allowed us to consolidate everything with squiz um the hosting funnel back and then

8:09

8 minutes, 9 seconds

obviously the CMS moving to the cloud gave us access also to more of squizz's digital experience

8:17

8 minutes, 17 seconds

platform where they've got marketplace with various different tools and that so I suppose being in the cloud makes

8:23

8 minutes, 23 seconds

um that a lot easier to access but also the upgrades Etc relies more on us working with squiz as opposed to needing

8:32

8 minutes, 32 seconds

that technical support from our end so the process of migrating to version

Chapter 5: Tell us about the process of upgrading to Matrix 6 and migrating to the Squiz Cloud.

8:42

8 minutes, 42 seconds

six um really involved a lot of planning from from both sides it's not every

8:49

8 minutes, 49 seconds

month you do a major upgrade and and the version 6 is a significant upgrade which required careful planning so we had um

8:57

8 minutes, 57 seconds

we had regular meetings with both our it team and squiz to fully plan it out work out who was going to be involved from a

9:06

9 minutes, 6 seconds

resourcing perspective we created detailed project plans we had detailed test cases test coverage really clear

9:13

9 minutes, 13 seconds

roles and responsibilities and then on the day of the migration itself we had um a really clear run sheet as to who

9:21

9 minutes, 21 seconds

was was doing what so from from our perspective it went really really smoothly at the same time that we did the upgrade to version six we also

9:30

9 minutes, 30 seconds

tackled the upgrade of our server environments to the squiz cloud and that also went very very smoothly and again

9:39

9 minutes, 39 seconds

that was because of their the very clear and efficient planning processes that both squares and the university put in

9:46

9 minutes, 46 seconds

place so our experience with squares has been

9:54

9 minutes, 54 seconds

really really positive it it really feels like they're a partner rather than a supplier or a vendor we have regular

10:01

10 minutes, 1 second

meetings with our account manager who luckily enough is based in Sunny Newcastle so it's always very keen to

10:07

10 minutes, 7 seconds

come on canvas and and help um and plan out projects that we might be working on to advise of any new features or

10:16

10 minutes, 16 seconds

products that are available from a squiz perspective but also as you said a support that we run regular web forums

10:24

10 minutes, 24 seconds

with our publishing Community which is 500 strong members across the university who are trained Publishers and squeeze have always been very helpful in

10:32

10 minutes, 32 seconds

providing content and presenting in some of those sessions as well so it really feels like a a close relationship in the

10:40

10 minutes, 40 seconds

future we are exploring a number of digital products offerings from squares including Swiss connect and their dxp as

10:49

10 minutes, 49 seconds

well so really excited about the future of the relationship and really excited about squeezers roadmap in general