I am very excited to show their final product. When you have a chance, be sure to check out the new web site, and let the project team know what you think of it. Kudos to HCC web implementation team!

As with our other launches, Hazard's site went up without a hitch, thanks especially to the hard work and dedication of the HCTC project team.

We're extremely proud of the final product, and we think you will be too. When you have a chance, be sure to check out the new site, and let the project team know what you think of it.

The ECTC project team, led by Bernie Davenport, did a great job throughout the course of the project, making the launch smooth and trouble-free.  We're extremely proud of the great work that they did, and we know you'll like the result too!

So when you have a few moments, be sure to swing by E-town's new web site, and drop the project team a note to let them know what you think!

• My Locked Items
  A "lock" icon will appear next to each content item your account has locked (replicates the "My Locks" option in the Review tab under the "Locks" chunk)
• Locked Items
  Shows content items that have been locked by other uses
• Workflow State
  Displays an icon representing the workflow state that they page is currently in.
• Broken Links
  If one of the fields on the template has a broken link, you'll see an icon
• Missing Versions
  Indicates any missing versions for the content item
• Publishing Warnings
  Indicates conflicts between published versions of a content item and any versions in workflow
• Validation Rules
  Displays the current validation "state" of the item, as well as a description of any issues

Just seeing these indicators is pretty cool.  But it gets better!  Some of the icons are actionable. 

Do you see an item you've locked?  Give the icon a quick click, and you'll unlock it.

Need to push something through workflow?  Click the icon and execute any workflow commands that you have access to.

Pretty nifty, huh?
 

Want more information about the Bowling Green Project? Check out their project site page! Also, check back often to find out updated information about all the projects in progress. 

Want more information about the Hopkinsville web project? Check out their project information site!

We're happy to announce that Gateway's new site--http://gateway.kctcs.edu--is live! 

Gateway launched their site on September 15^th and since then has received a lot of positive feedback.  This is a testament to the great job that their project team--led by Margaret Thomson--did throughout the implementation process.  The new site looks awesome, and we're proud of the great effort that the Gateway team gave throughout the past few months.

Gateway is the 8th college to launch their new web site.  We're are halfway there!

When you have a chance, be sure to check out the new site.  And of course, the Gateway team would love to get your feedback about the site.

The kickoff meeting went extremely well, and everyone seemed ready to get rolling on the project.  That's a good thing, of course, because the implementation time line for this project is extremely aggressive.  We know they'll do a great job, however, and we're excited to see the final outcome later this fall.

Interested?  Start by learning more about this project, and feel free to contact us if you have any questions or comments!

As with others, Owensboro's launch went very smoothly.  This is a testament to the great job that their project team--led by Jim Hartz--did throughout the implementation process.  The new site looks awesome, and we're proud of the great effort that the Owensboro team gave throughout the past few months.

Owensboro marks the 7th college that we've implemented in Sitecore with a brand new site.  We're almost halfway there!

When you have a chance, be sure to check out the new site.  And of course, the Owensboro team would love to get your feedback about the site.

I will try to keep you informed about the team's progress towards the late October rollout of our new web site.  Please visit often and feel free to make comments or suggestions.

Bernie D. Davenport

Big Sandy's project team--led by Jay Thacker--did an outstanding job of developing content for the new site, and it shows.  The site looks great, and we're extremely proud of the hard work that everyone contributed to this project!

Be sure to take a few minutes to visit http://bigsandy.kctcs.edu to check out the new web site, and be sure to let the project team know what a great job they did!

First the context: Across our web sites--especially sites for our colleges--there is a LOT of content that is (or should be) the same from site to site, like tuition rates. Until now, the content managers of each site have been responsible for their own content. Of course, with so many sites, it's easy for content--even content that should be exactly the same--to become inaccurate, get out of date, and even give contradictory information.

With the advent of Sitecore--our System wide content management system--we now have the opportunity to centralize management of common information and services. So let's go back to the example of tuition rates and talk about how reusable content can help.

In Sitecore, we can create one master page that lists the correct tution rate for the current academic year. This page can be managed by one person who has ultimately responsibility for the tuition rate. Then we can take that single page and "syndicate" (or reuse) it to all of our college web sites. This simply means that each college's tuition and fees page will pull in the information from the one master page, instead of the tuition rate information being managed separately for each site. But the best part is that whenever a change is made to the one master page, the change will be reflected immediately on all of our college web sites. No more need for e-mails to web masters to change information, no more delays in updating content, and no more contradictory information. Resuable content lets us cut down on duplication while also ensuring greater accuracy and freshness of content.

We're extremely excited about this possibility, and we've even started using it for our "Tuition and Fees" pages, as well as our "Policy and Terms" pages. It's a small start, of course, but we know there will be lots of areas where reusable content will help make our web sites better and more usable for all our visitors.

Interested in learning more about reusable content, or anything else that Web Services is working on? Be sure to let us know--we'll be glad to chat about all the exciting things we're involved in!

Of course, the large share of the credit is due to the Maysville Sitecore project team led by Mike McNutt.  The team worked extremely hard writing content and developing their site to produce the result that you see today.  Great job!!

So when you have a chance, head over to http://maysville.kctcs.edu and check out the new site.  While you're there, be sure to let them know your thoughts about the new site--they'd be glad to hear from you!

I believe that all team members are very excited to unveil the new design and the new approach to delivering user-center content to our audiences. So make sure you keep coming back for updates and keep an eye out for the web site launch!

The team, led by Jim Hartz, was very excited about the project and brought great energy and interest to the kickoff meeting.  This is good, because they have a very aggressive timeline: by early September, Owensboro will have a brand new web site!

As the big day gets closer, we'll keep you up-to-date.  In the meantime, if you have questions or comments about this project, or anything else that Web Services is working on, be sure to let us know!

Thanks to the great work of the project teams at these colleges (and the support of their presidents), we now have four colleges with new Sitecore web sites. We've also kicked off four more college projects. This means that by the middle of September, we'll have half of the colleges launched! 

A Group Effort

This migration work went so smoothly, of course, because of the great job that the Southeast Sitecore implementation project team did in developing a whole new batch of content for their brand new site, which will be launching in just a few short weeks.

Just let me express my pride in the Southeast project and migration teams.  They have been a hard-working, committed group of people who have produced some excellent work.  Once the site has launched, you'll see the outcome of all their hours of work, and we know you'll be impressed!

But how important is a Web site? For most prospective students, online information has replaced printed materials as the primary source of information about a college. The Web has become a way to connect with the world and a primary way to get information fast.

One of these tools is Sitecore's workflow engine. Without getting into the boring technical details, the idea of a workflow is that certain actions and approvals can be added to the content we create in Sitecore so that the process of managing content--from creating new content to approving it for publication to the web site-- works like we do.

An Example

Let me give you an example: Mary, in Financial Aid, creates a new page on the web site.  Once she's finished the first draft of the page, Mary submits it for approval to her supervisor, Glenda. Glenda then reviews Mary's work, edit it or make comments about it (if necessary), and finally approves it and automatically publishes the new web page to the live public web site. All of this happens with just a few clicks of the mouse, and neither Mary nor Glenda need to be web geeks to understand how to do this or to get it to work. 

That's a workflow, in a nutshell.  Of course, a workflow can be more complex, involve more steps, etc., but the idea is very cool--and the takeaway is that with worflows we'll be able to really manage content with a tool that is easy to use and is flexible to how we work, not the other way around.

Well, I'm very excited to let you know that our first workflow is nearly complete. This workflow is a skeleton workflow that we will use and adapt in situations as needed. So far, our tests have been successful and we will begin testing it with real content very soon.

As we begin to roll this out, we'll keep you up-to-date on our progress. In the meantime, be sure let us know what you think about this concept of workflows, or drop us a line about any other thoughts you have about Sitecore.

Some notes from the road:

- West Kentucky: We learned that Amy has never seen the Mississippi and that videos are much more interesting when you can hear them. The project kick-off meeting was very successful. Dr. Veazey is a joy everytime we see her. Bettie Bean, and the whole West Kentucky team are great to work with. I think this bunch may have the overall edge in writing talent for the web.

- Madisonville: We're pretty sure Joel ate everyone's brownies when they weren't looking. Brenda got a standing ovation during her part of the presentation. Sure, she tricked us into it, but sometimes you do what you have to do. Dr. Rhoads is a very sweet and gracious host, while Craig Dixon and his team were lively and engaging. This may be the team with the strongest technical skill and sense of web standards.

- Southeast Kentucky: You might argue this, but I'm telling you right now Southeast has the very best breakfast anywhere in KCTCS at their Cumberland campus grill. Dr. Ayers is a prince, while Gary and Karin Gibson are a great pair to lead the project. Southeast's project team definitely asked the most questions--very good questions too. And though they started last, it's looking like they may be the fastest team around!

We didn't have the good sense to take photos or video of our trips this round, but we definitely intend to for the next set of colleges. We can't wait to get going on those and hope to have more stories to tell very soon.

Tell Me More...

ThePoint Help can be found in the main navigation of the site.  Within Help you will find Frequently Asked Questions and helpful how-to videos.  Check back often to the Help page to see if any new videos have been added.  Just this week a few videos on the calendar function and document libraries have been added and as new features are rolled out you can expect new how-to videos.  But if you can’t find the answer to your question in either the FAQs or the videos, submit a service request.  A support team member would be happy to find the answer to your question.  Just let us know if we can help!

If you haven't had a formal introduction to thePoint, you can search for an orientation session on your campus under the Training tab on this website or contact your local Web Services staff to schedule one. As features are added, more training will be available to keep everyone abreast of thePoint's capabilities.  

This conceptual conversation will continue, of course, as we strive to reinforce the overarching goals of the Web Services Initiative. However, now that we have successfully launched two brand new web sites in Sitecore, as well as thePoint (the new employee-only intranet), we can begin to see fulfillment of the promise of the plans and tools that have been put into place.

A Little Context

One of the big motivators for moving to Sitecore and thePoint is the idea of shared content. A major goal of the Web Services Initiative is to provide a place (or places) where the same piece of content can be shared to multiple locations without replicating the same content in 25 different places. So in our new systems, how does this work out? Let me give you a very concrete example.

On the old KCTCS.edu site, we used to have a page for Business Procedures. This collection of 100+ documents was recently moved to thePoint--after all, as this content is used primarily by internal audiences, it makes sense that it should be managed in thePoint. The migration went smoothly, but during migration we ran into one small wrinkle: this content ALSO needs to be accessible by external audiences who would not be able to log in to thePoint.

In the past, we would probably have done what has been done many times before: we would have copied the documents (again!) from thePoint, loaded them into Sitecore, and published them to the public web site. This works, of course, but leaves us right where we started--with unnecessarily duplicated content and the ever-present headache of trying to keep the content in sync as changes occur.

That Was Then...This is Now!

But guess what? This time we didn't have to do this! One of the great features of Sitecore is that it comes built-in with integration to the software that drives thePoint. We simply had to configure a few options and voila!, the documents that live in and are managed by thePoint are now available as needed to audiences on our public web site.

In case you've missed it, the best part of all of this is that whether you access the document on thePoint (as an employee) or on KCTCS.edu (as another audience), you're getting the same document! Whoever is responsible for the document can open it up on thePoint, make appropriate changes, and save it. They don't need to worry about coordinating with the web guys down the hall to make sure the update gets posted to the public web site because the integration of thePoint and Sitecore will take care of that for them.

This is Only the Beginning

I know, I know, web people get excited about the strangest things :). Nonetheless, we are very excited because this embodies, in a small, but tangible way, many of the principles we've been preaching about and working toward the last several years. As we continue to move forward, more and better opportunities like this will present themselves, and we'll find an abundance of ways to take advantage of the power and functionality that our new tools afford us.

Do you get excited about things like this too?  Let us know--we'd love to have your feedback!

• Team Sites for System-wide leadership teams and Peer Teams (Dr. McCall and the other college presidents are currently using a team site)
• Information sites for KCTCS HR and Business Services departments, allowing us to provide key information just it to our employees rather than to the entire world
• A new system-wide employee directory, searchable by name, title, phone number, college location, and/or supervisor
• Local College and System-wide news and announcements
• A dedicated helpdesk/training center for thePoint
• A new home for System-wide forms now on the KCTCS.edu web site.  

That is a pretty tall order and all of our plates are pretty full. We think that this will provide us a good foundation moving forward.  We appreciate your patience and thank you for stopping by.

We've heard lots of good feedback since launch day, which is very gratifying. It just goes to show that laying the foundation with good research, feeback from real users, and a commitment to service and standards is the right way to go.

We continue to work hard, with another launch scheduled for today (KCTCS Online), and yet another next week (thePoint). And we've already started the process for our next three college web sites.

But now that we're seeing two years of intensive infrastructure work beginning to bear fruit, the way forward is very clear. We're going to continue to bring you web sites and services based on solid principles and designed to improve the quality of service provided to all our audiences. We'd never be able to do it without your guidance, feedback, and support, so from the entire Web Services team, thank you!

• Navigation

  The first thing you’ll probably notice is that the main navigation menu is different. Right now, you’re used to this:

  The new navigation looks like this:

  Notice that “Faculty & Staff” is now in the orange menu section. The information you need will still be there, but we’ve minimized that menu item in preparation for thePoint, which will eventually be your destination as a KCTCS employee.

• Audience

  You may be asking why something as important as “Students” has been moved to that same orange menu. It’s not because students aren’t important to us anymore. It’s because the focus of the KCTCS.edu web site has changed to better reflect the role the System Office plays in KCTCS, and because we believe it’s important that students be directed to the places where they’ll get the most expert help: our colleges. Notice that “Our Colleges” is now a main menu navigation item as a result.

• System Initiatives

  Remember how hard it was to find things on the old web site like the Fire Commission, AMTEC, Career Pathways, and the like? Now it’s easy. There’s a whole section called “System Initiatives” with information and links for all those entities.

• Design

  Obviously the site looks different from the old version. Some folks have asked whether our new college sites are going to look just like the System site. The answer to that is no. The new System site is designed for a different audience—legislators, key influencers, business and industry, etc. It’s designed to appeal primarily to those audiences. Our college sites will appeal to a different primary audience: prospective students.

• Content

  Finally, you’ll notice that much of the text on the web site has been rewritten or created from scratch. The style and tone are a bit different than in the past, and the structure has been modified in keeping with best practices in web content development. This makes the text easier to scan and more relevant to our visitors. That includes you!

A special thanks

Though we had input and advice from people throughout the System, we’d like to point out some folks who played a special role in shaping the new web site and offer our thanks to them. The KCTCS Cabinet and PLT were instrumental in leading the way forward, and we especially appreciate the guidance of President McCall and Vice President Tim Burcham. We also benefited from the hard work of our KCTCS.edu Sitecore Project Team, listed below. These folks put in long hours organizing the new site, writing and editing hundreds of pages, testing and reviewing everything, and then doing it all again until it was right. We’d also like to recognize the good work of Amy Coleman, who helped manage the migration of content to the new web site and who has somehow managed to keep the current site up-to-date at the same time.

The rest of the System Office Web Services Department also played a huge role, from Jason’s server management to Matt’s technical leadership and through Ollie’s training assistance and Brenda’s willingness to keep things organized and moving forward.

Finally, and most importantly, thanks to Joel Watson and Jamie Williams for leading the KCTCS.edu Sitecore Project Team. In what can often be frustrating, tedious, and uncertain work, Joel and Jamie exhibited extraordinary grace and skill. Their leadership and drive is the single biggest reason the project was completed successfully and with such a high level of quality.

We hope you enjoy the improvements on the web site, and hope you’ll join us in thanking the folks involved.

KCTCS.edu Sitecore Project Team

• Jamie Williams, Strategic Planning
• Joel Watson, Web Services
• Heather Baber, Marketing
• Shawna Burch, Marketing
• Cam Cantrill, Legal Affairs
• Therese Cheney, Fire Commission
• Amy Coleman, Web Services
• Sandy Cook, Distance Learning
• Donna Davis, Workforce
• Terri DeAtley, Legal Affairs
• Jerry Davis, Financial Aid
• Natalie Gibson, Cultural Diversity
• Terri Giltner, Marketing
• Trevor Hardin, Institutional Advancement
• Shauna King-Simms, Strategic & Organizational Development and Career Pathways
• Michael Krause, Enrollment Management
• Joan Lucas, Academic Affairs/President’s Office
• Becky Mathewson, Student Services
• Nicole McDonald, Transfer
• Suzanne McGurk, Registrar
• Lisa Mullins, Human Resources
• Brenda Nolan, Purchasing
• Brenda Perry, Web Services

And now if you've read this far, you deserve a sneak peek! Enjoy!

Standards and Branding: A Unique Challenge

Because KCTCS is so large and diverse, branding can be a unique challenge. With 16 colleges, a dozen or so other programs and institutions (like NARA and Kentucky Coal Academy), and a variety of advertising mediums to consider (TV, internet, print, etc.), how do you create a branding standard for the web that is recognizable enough to link all these different entities together, while also allowing for each to have its own identity? The answer: very carefully! To help answer these questions, we did a lot of research, had a lot of conversations, and even had some consultant’s help. We think we’ve come up with a good solution, and here is what it looks like.

We Start with the Information Architecture

When you build something--whether it’s a house, a car or a space station--where do you start? If you want it to not blow over, blow up, or fall out of the sky, you start with a plan. The plan maps out all of the requirements that are needed to make sure that whatever you are building has a sensible plan and a solid foundation.

Building a web site is no different, really. You can start with how the site looks, of course, but you’ll not really get very far. After all, just as the requirements of a house/car/space-station determine its design, the content and purpose of a web site should drive what the site ultimately looks like.

So with the rollout of our new web sites, we started at the foundation. We gathered lots of information about our potential audiences (students, communities, etc.), thought long and hard about the key services that we provide, and came up with an “Information Architecture” (we call it “IA” for short). It’s not complicated--just think of it like an outline. The IA simply lays out what kind of content will be on our web sites—and where—so we know how to build the web site.

Next: The Wireframe

Once we have the IA worked out, we can move on to developing what we call the “wireframe”. It’s another technical term, but the concept is still very simple. In this step, we simply take the content and services identified in the IA and organize them into the general layout of a web page. We use a bunch of simple boxes and placeholders to layout content and determine what functionality needs to be included. We have the beginnings of a web site, sure, but without any of the pretty stuff to distract us from the important step of wire-framing. In fact, we purposely avoid applying any kind of graphical treatment precisely so that personal preferences, distracting images, etc. don’t get in the way of determining the content and functionality needed for our sites.

Introducing the Design Concept

Once the wireframe is developed, it’s time to apply the design concept that we’ve developed to the IA and wireframe--here’s where the pretty stuff starts to come into play.

Now what is this design concept? In a nutshell, the design concept forms a set of design principles that we follow when designing a new site. It includes obvious things like a branding “checklist” (those things that have to be present to identify the web site as a KCTCS property) but also provides guidelines about specific elements that should be utilized to target specific audiences. For example, with our college web sites we know our target audience is primarily traditional students—so the design concept specifies different design principles that should be followed to most effectively appeal (from aesthetics to services) to them.

The Design Execution

Although the “concept” provides specific direction for designing a web site, it is not the design itself—as mentioned earlier, it is really just a collection of principles that should be followed in designing a site. From within this design framework, we are able to move on to the final stage—applying the design concept to a specific execution, like Ashland’s new site. One of the benefits of this process, of course, is that the design concept provides specific direction, but is also flexible enough to allow for individuality in design. It allows us to have good, measurable practices for maintaining proper brand identity across all our sites, but also lets us be really creative in what the final product looks like for each of our web sites.

So we create the design execution and apply it to the IA and wireframes we’ve already developed. The final product is a site that looks great and has its own individual flair, but is also recognizably a part of the KCTCS family of web sites because it adheres to branding standards and the design principles outlined in the design concept.

Bringing it Back to Standards

This has been a fairly lengthy description of the design process we’ve established and working through for the redesign of our web sites, but I think it’s a good example of our commitment to standards and the benefits that these standards can provide. As I described, the design “concept” provides a great standard for branding our websites because it takes concrete and easy-to-follow principles that establish and reinforce the KCTCS brand and fuses them with our over-arching commitment to providing great services and products to all of our customers.

In the coming months, you’ll see the design concept—and the branding standard it provides—utilized extensively as we bring new college web sites online. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback, so be sure to let us know what you think!

Until thePoint, that is exactly what you would have to do.  You would try and remember Jim's last name, and type that out on a number pad on your IP desk phone. Or you would have to go into the Global Address List (the "GAL") on Exchange through Outlook and get Sally's e-mail.  Even more of a challenge, what if you knew that someone  at another college had a similar job or skill set as you, but you had no idea that her name was Laverne or at what college she worked?  How would you even find that out?

thePoint as an Employee Directory, colleague finder, and more.

With the "Directory" feature of thePoint, you will be able to not only search for fellow employees by name, phone number, college location, and e-mail, but also by job information, such as job title and skill set.  Need to know who at your college is a skilled grant writer?  The Directory will be able to help. Are you a Science Professor in the far western part of the state and need to find out if anyone at your college or the 3 closest colleges is interested in starting a Science competition to get more people involved? Use the directory to network and discover colleagues you didn't know you had.

Starting small. Thinking big. Mind the junk.

Like all things on thePoint, the Directory will begin with a smaller and more focused function - to simply provide contact information in an easy to use format with powerful search capabilities. The Directory will search over employee information imported from PeopleSoft. This information includes the basic contact details of name, college, and e-mail address. In the near future, the Directory on thePoint  will expand to include a portion of user-provided information, including the employee's current project list, areas of expertise, and other professional details.  That is where the colleague finding and social networking aspects of thePoint start to take off.  When people with similar interests and skills can get together more easily, or when sought-after skill sets are more easily found, then the collaboration can take off.  The process builds upon itself.

Of course, leveraging this information - and actually relying on it - means that the information has to be solid and free of error. That responsibility comes down to all of us.  First, we, as employees, must provide our local Human Resources departments with accurate and up to date information regarding our names, work phone numbers, and other basic information. Other professional information, such as your job title, your supervisor, and your benefits and personnel system information must also be kept up to date by you and your local Human Resources department.  When this information is correct and up to date in PeopleSoft, then it will benefit many processes - not just the ones in thePoint. Secondly, when we begin to allow user-created information to help supplement the information in the directory (skills, interests, etc), then we will also need to make sure that that information is current, relevant, and appropriate for a professional setting. Policies will be developed along those lines, but that is a glimpse of the future and potential.

To begin with, the Directory on thePoint will be the basic system-wide employee search and will include contact information and job title (as defined in PeopleSoft).  All of this information is in an easy to find spot, so you don't have to look for e-mail in the GAL, phone number on the IP phone, and job title in PeopleSoft (if you even have access to PeopleSoft).  Brining information together - just one more way we can answer the question - What's thePoint?

"One of the great things about standards is that things that can be hard for the individual colleges to maintain will be uniform. I'm sure our new public web presence will be usable across the most popular browsers and ADA compliant. I'm not saying that the current web pages aren't--just that it's hard to keep them that way when content changes."

My response to Nancy was basically that we're excited too about the idea of being able to work on a unified platform that encourages compliance with standards and best practices. Joel wrote a nice piece on standards earlier that says it better than I can, in fact.

But beyond the talk about standards, I started thinking about expectations like this one: the idea that our new web sites will be standards-compliant right out of the gate. That's a great goal, but is it realistic? I don't think so. That's not because we don't want to get there, mind you. It's because "there" is further away than it may seem. And when we start talking about other expectations regarding Web Services projects, the bar is raised even higher. So let's address that.

Our goal is to provide the highest quality content and services to all our audiences through these WSI projects. We won't back away from that. We can't if we wanted to, because our audiences expect the best from us and they'll go somewhere else if we don't deliver. But it's important to move toward that goal with a clear understanding of where we are and a clear plan for getting where we need to be.

So where are we? We're at the dawn of an age in a way--at least in KCTCS terms. Our first ten years are behind us. During that first decade, we were focused on building a statewide organization out of disparate and sometimes competing parts. That's hard enough in any case, but we had to do it while in operation from practically day one. There are lots of strange artifacts in our organization left from those whirlwind days. One of them is the scattered nature of our web sites.

Our web sites were created mostly in a time when real standards hadn't even been established. The formation of KCTCS came at a time when the web itself was a terribly immature medium, without best practices, without standards, and without a great deal of professionalism. Most web sites circa 1997 reflected this chaos. Ours were no exception. An afterthought for most of our early existence, the web languished as a functional area, passing from one under-resourced shop to another. There simply wasn't enough to go around--enough tools, enough resources, enough people, and enough attention--and the web's growth as a key KCTCS service was retarded as a result.

As we grew into a statewide system, the attention paid to the web remained flat. Without a clear vision of how the web should be used by KCTCS, there was no impetus for change. And without that change, we fell further and further behind. As standards became clearer, as best practices were established, and as the very nature of our audiences changed, the societal importance of the web grew dramatically. That only increased the gap between where we were and where we needed to be. And frankly, we didn't respond quickly enough to these changes. At least, we didn't until President McCall and our college presidents took a good hard look at where we were and decided we needed to not just catch up, but leap ahead. That stroke of insight and action has set us on a new course. And that has happened at a very exciting time in our history, when we're emerging from that "get the System built" phase into a new and more outward-looking period--that "new age" I mentioned earlier. When that happens, folks get excited. They get a little anxious. They start to expect more.

I say all this to take us to back to that question of expectations then. It's hard to overestimate how very far we have to go in order to bring us to the forefront when it comes to Web Services. We really are years behind other institutions, and in web terms, that's a very long time indeed. When we start launching new web sites, a new employee intranet, or other Web Services projects then, we're making tremendous strides just to get to basic levels of service. We're finding innovative ways to bring massive projects in on completely ridiculous schedules--and we're pulling it off. We're moving to software and service platforms that will essentially allow us to skip over years of catch-up and move quickly ahead of the competition.

All these things are true, yet in some ways they're almost invisible. Most of the work we've done the last couple of years has been purely about building infrastructure. It has been about building the foundation of a Web Services model that you never see, rather than the outer trappings you might think of first. When thePoint launches in a few weeks, it will represent a monumental step forward for KCTCS, even though it will at first have an admittedly limited set of features. When our first new web sites launch next week, they will represent a completely new way of doing business on the web, even though you won't see a ton of bells and whistles right off the bat.

If you're expecting a ton of those bells and whistles then, your expectations are perhaps not too high, but rather a little too early. But if you think for a moment about where we've been, and about where these projects are going to allow us to go, I hope you'll be as deeply excited and optimistic as we are. After all, we wouldn't be doing all this work if we didn't expect great things too.

Yes?

Starting March 9th, trainers at all colleges will begin to introduce KCTCS employees to our new intranet, thePoint. If you want to learn how thePoint will impact your daily work activities, register to attend an orientation session at your college. Come and find out how thePoint will allow you to complete forms online, collaborate with colleagues and to work more efficiently.

Orientations will continue through March 27th. To register for an orientation session, click on the Training link at the top of this page and choose the date and time convenient for you. You will receive an e-mail notification of your registration. If you do not see orientation sessions listed for your school, contact your local Web Services Department.

thePoint Launches on March 31st!

 It may not seem like a big deal at the moment but what really makes me happy about this is that we can take all those applications that each college had to develop on their own that do basically the same thing and create one application that has all the bells and whistles for all of the colleges.  That means colleges that don’t have full time developers have an opportunity to get the same applications that the other colleges have.  Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that we have a team of full time developers dedicated to these projects so we do have to take them one at a time and they have to be prioritized.  All in all this is a big win for everyone.
 

I’m happy to report that the meeting was extremely positive—we have only a few very minor changes that need to be made before we’re ready to throw the switch.

As we approach what is the end of a major phase in launching a web site, I’ve been reflecting on what we’ve accomplished over the last several months. You see, this new web site is not simply a "Web Services thing." To the contrary, we’ve had tons of help along the way.

Over the last 9 months or so, a project team (we called it the “KCTCS.edu Sitecore Project Team”) has been working diligently on a variety of areas that are turning the new KCTCS.edu into something great (the same thing has been happening at Ashland, too). A lot of time and energy has gone into this new site, so I thought it might be interesting to let you know a little about what we’ve been up to.

The Information Architecture

To kick off this project, our team started by creating an “Information Architecture”, or “IA.” Although somewhat of a technical term, the IA in principle is very simple. Basically, the IA is an outline of content: it provides a structure and map for all of the content that will be on the web site, from the first 50-100 pages at launch to the hundreds of other pages that will be created and migrated in the future.

To create the IA, we first began by asking key questions about the purpose of KCTCS.edu:

• Who are the primary audiences?
• What services and information do these audiences expect?
• What key messages need to be communicated?
• How can content be logically organized?

These probably seem like obvious questions, but they’re extremely important because far too often we think about ourselves according to how we are structured organizationally--departments, functional areas, etc--and write content that reflects this. Visitors to our sites, of course, do not think in these terms (or care!), so asking these questions forces us to think about our web site according to what kinds of information and services our customers expect and deserve.

Let’s Create Some Content!

Once the content roadmap (the IA) was in place, the project team began developing content for the web site. The key word here is “developing,” for we did not just copy and paste existing content into a new web site design. Rather, the process of creating the IA uncovered areas where our existing content was far too internally-focused, too technical, or simply outdated or inaccurate. So to get content that would fit into our IA (and its underlying philosophy of customer-focus), we had to start writing.

So we wrote and rewrote. We started with a core of about 50 pages which, based on our IA, we believed would be the most relevant to our target audiences. As we developed new content and revisited existing content, we kept in mind these audiences and their expectations, writing in a way that would provide the most useful and impactful content. We paid close attention to language and tone, trying always to place each piece of content within the context of the goals of the web site as a whole. This kind of work is as much art as science, of course, but we believe that the basic principles we used have given us a solid core of content. It was a lot of work, too!, but we’re pretty happy about the results, and are excited to get this web site launched!!

Toward the Future

Moving forward, what our project team accomplished will serve as a model for how we approach the re-launch of other web sites. The process wasn’t perfect, of course, and we’ve learned some valuable lessons along the way. But as we move on to other projects, we now have important experiences that will help us continue to create tools and services on our web sites that meet and exceed the needs and expectations of our customers.

If you have any questions about the process that we've walked through, are interested in more information relating to content and Information Architecture development, or just want to voice your thoughts, let us know!

I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone on the KCTCS.edu Sitecore Project Team who devoted so much time, energy, expertise and excitement to this process. Your help was critical to the success of this project and is very much appreciated. THANK YOU!!

Currently, approximately 45 trainers are meeting at spots around the state to plan the training rollout for all campuses. Starting March 9th, KCTCS employees will begin to receive announcements inviting them to see thePoint and learn how it will transform how we work going forward.

Keep an eye peeled for thePoint. It is right around the corner!

In the first part of this series, we'll be looking at Department Information Sites. Quite simply, these are sites on thePoint that are intended to serve all KCTCS employees, at every college and in every job role. They will provide all employees with information and details about a given department and its services.

From an employee perspective, if you want to know about a specific Human Resources policy or a particular Business Services procedure, you would usually contact those departments with any questions or requests for that kind of information. Currently, this means going to www.kctcs.edu or your local college's main web page and wading through lots of information to try and find that information.

But that information is intended for employees! The general public, prospective students, legislators, and our other audiences don’t want to have to sift through all of that employee information to get to what they need. That stuff just gets in their way and slows them down. So why is that information on the main public websites? Good question! The answer is actually one of the main driving forces for the creation of thePoint. The short answer is that was the easiest and fastest way to provide employee information to employees. There has not been a widely available place on the web to easily disseminate policies, procedures, and other employee centered information o all employees at all colleges. We simply have not had a consistent system-wide way of doing this before.

Enter thePoint. The intranet will, among other things, allow us to create, manage, and publish this kind of information in a more centralized and widely available place. The people who actually write and develop that information can work on that material directly on thePoint and submit for approval by the people who need to approve it. Then, after the final approval, the information immediately becomes available for all employees everywhere.

We’ll be launching with the two largest and most accessed departments for all employees – Human Resources and Business Services. These departments will be represented first, followed by others as quickly and efficiently as we can add them. And that is just the beginning! Having all of the information about the various departments on one easy to access site is one thing and is a big step in the right direction. The next major step will be thinking of these sites of only as information repositories, but as service destinations. Employees will not have to know or worry about what department covers what area, they will be able to be guided to the correct answers for their questions. For instance, if an employee has a question about a procedure with their W4 for tax withholding, then thePoint can guide them to their answers with specific and targeted content. The employee will not have to figure out if they need to contact a specific person in Payroll or a specific person in Human Resources. From the employee’s point of view, the lines and distinctions between departments are blurred and become irrelevant since all they care about is finding the answers to their question. We can start answer employee “How do I” questions, rather than having them think of “Where do I go to find the information” questions.

So you see, with the employee related job information all in place on thePoint, we can all work more efficiently and hopefully a bit more easily. Department sites will be the starting place for brining this information all together in one spot and are just one way that employees will, well, get thePoint! Stay tuned for upcoming posts and descriptions on some of the other major feature areas of thePoint.

Over the next several months, you're going to hear us talk a LOT about standards. Whether it's document management on thePoint, developing content for one of our college web sites, or just us reflecting about what the Web Services Initiative is all about, rest assured that the concept of "standards" will be at the core of what we're doing and saying.

So What's The Big Deal About Standards?

Yeah, we know—'standards.' (We can hear the sighs already…) To a lot of people, "standards" can be scary, obnoxious—or both. One more policy to deal with? Another roadblock to doing my job? It's not exactly exciting reading, we know. Nevertheless, we are excited about standards!!

Excited About Standards?!?

What? How can standards be exciting? Ok, well maybe standards are not THEMSELVES exciting, but what they will allow us to do IS.

Think about all of KCTCS on the web. Besides KCTCS.edu, we have 16 college web sites and a handful of other web sites for entities like KBEMS and Kentucky Fire Commission. Without standards guiding web design and content management, we have...well...what we have right now: a couple dozen web sites that each follow their own standards (if any) and have little or no relationship to each other, or to the mission of KCTCS on the web. The result, of course, is that we spend way too much time managing outdated, standard-less web sites; we’re constantly playing catch-up, and do not have the time or resources to get down to what we are really supposed to be doing.

Obviously, this is not good, but we know standards can help us do better.

How Standards Can Help

There are a lot of ways in which standards will help us, but one of the biggest is that standards will give us a solid foundation to build upon. Take Sitecore, our new content management system, as an example. Instead of having 13 different software platforms which deliver more or less the same content, Sitecore will give us a unified system that will eventually be used to manage ALL of our public web sites. Because all of these sites will be managed similarly, we'll be able to take advantage of shared services and content which reduces the amount of resources required to support the technology, train people to use it, etc. Plus, Sitecore will allow us to have a better handle on what content is on our web sites, how this content aligns with appropriate standards, etc.

Wrapping it Up

So standards are not scary, or obnoxious. When we boil them down, standards are really just simple practices, like:

• Utilizing a common set of tools (like thePoint and Sitecore)
• Creating a unified approach to branding and identity management
• Making our web sites and services accessible to as many audiences as possible

We're doing all of these things (and more) not to be obnoxious, but rather so that we can eventually get down to really doing the work of Web Services--delivering great content and services to students, our communities, and you. Hopefully this gives a bit of insight into our philosophy of standards. Over the next several months, we'll be talking about what this means in regards to specific parts (branding, content management, etc.) of the Web Services Initiative, so be sure to follow along. In the meantime, if you have questions about standards, or just want to voice your thoughts about what we're working on right now, be sure to let us know!!

ThePoint means you'll have less trouble working on files with co-workers on another campus. It means you will be able to find that procedure you're looking for more quickly--and you will be sure it's the most recent version.

It means you will be able to request leave, complete a timesheet, or submit expenses online, with quicker turnaround time, more accurate data entry, and less hassle It means every KCTCS employee will be able to go to a central Web site to obtain accurate information and helpful services. At the outset, thePoint will help us with three major areas:

• Collaboration - ThePoint will allow us to share files, manage meetings, communicate via discussion boards, and much more--all without leaving our desks, printing tons of duplicate documents, or relying on elaborate e-mails that can clog our inbox.
• Document management - ThePoint will not only let us share files, but it will allow us to organize them better, improve our ability to search, and give us powerful tools to review, approve, and publish them.
• Services - ThePoint will help us organize content designed for employees only. That means business procedures, HR information, and more. More than that, thePoint will allow us to move many of our existing processes online, starting with forms first. Rather than printed forms that waste paper and encourage errors, thePoint will feature online forms with electronic signatures, instant notifications, and easy review.

And in case you're wondering, training on how to use thePoint is quick, easy, and will be provided. There is also a robust support system in place so if you ever run into trouble, we'll be here to help.

President McCall established a System-wide team to look into the issue. That team, represented by folks from every college and every functional area, made several key recommendations that were accepted by the President's Leadership Team. But that's just the beginning of the story.

After that team's work was completed, the list of people involved in improving our web offerings grew and grew. Dr. McCall, his Cabinet, and all the KCTCS college presidents have been overseeing the Web Services Initiative from the beginning. A new Web Services Peer Team was formed that included web professionals from every college and the System Office. The Marketing departments across the System were brought in to the project. We used outside firms to assist our employees with research, consulting, programming, design, hosting, training--you name it. We formed other System-wide teams to help guide the creation of our projects. We relied on other teams to help us keep them on track. We've worked with HR, Academic Affairs, Student Services, Facilities, Advancement, Business Services, and every single other functional area in the System to nail down details and propose great ideas. We've made presentations and visits at almost every college, done tons of Live Meetings and conference calls, and talked to what sometimes seems like everybody in KCTCS.

So what's the point of all this? Just that while there's a small team of committed folks at the System Office working on the Web Services Initiative, we couldn't do a thing without the support, leadership, and guidance we've had from all of you. The work we're doing really does belong to all of us, and that's something we always keep in mind.

Okay, "finished product" is a bad choice of words. One thing we're trying very hard to communicate is that what you see at the launch of thePoint is just a starting place. It's the foundation upon which we will build. Once we have the initial version of thePoint in place, we'll be able to create all kinds of new tools and services on it--all designed to make our jobs a bit easier.

ThePoint then will always be growing, changing, and adapting to our needs. "Finished" just isn't the right word to describe that, is it?

That sounds like you're going to have two web sites, right? Well, yes and no. Lots of the content on our public web sites right now is really geared toward employees only. Part of the purpose of thePoint is to get that employee information off of our public web sites and into a place just for us. While there won't really be separate college sites on thePoint right out of the gate, there will be college-specific content at the outset, with something more like college sites coming in probably 3 months or so after launch.

That leaves all the content on our public web sites. As I said, every college is on the schedule for implementation of their new public web site in the coming months. The timing for your new site depends on where you are. We're starting with West Kentucky, Southeast Kentucky, and Madisonville in March 2009. Additional groups of three will follow 3-4 months apart as we complete the previous implementations. To find out exactly where your college sits in the implementation order, contact your local Web Services staff. They'll have the latest projected dates.

Practically all our web sites across KCTCS have had three basic problems: they've been hard to manage, they haven't provide the services our audiences expect, and they haven't done a good job of complying with standards. That's outside research and feedback from our own users talking, by the way.

Part of the answer to those issues then is to find a way we can allow employees to easily manage web site content without having to become technical experts. While we're at it, we need something that lets us build better tools and services. And finally, we need to do that in a way that makes keeping up with standards much easier. Sitecore is basically software that meets all three of those needs.

So when we roll out new web sites for Ashland and KCTCS.edu, they'll be built on Sitecore. At first, you won't see a whole lot of difference--apart from fresh new designs. But over time, these sites will have much better content and services. That allows us to better serve our fellow citizens. And really, isn't that what our web sites ought to be about?

We're going to try for once then to use plain old English to talk about what's going on with Web Services. We make no promises, but here goes...

First, you may be wondering what we're actually doing. Fair enough. We're doing three things: making new web sites for KCTCS and our colleges, making a new web site just for KCTCS employees, and reorganizing the way we manage the web. The first two are pretty straighforward; we're simply building web sites. The third is a little more complex, but basically we're just putting new resources in place (people, software, and procedures) so we can do a better job on the web for our audiences.

Second, you may now be asking yourself why do new web sites and a new way of approaching the web matter. That's a good question, and it's surprisingly easy to answer. The world has changed, and our audiences have changed with it. People use the web now more than TV, radio, or print. You can look that up--on the web, in fact. :) Not only are people using the web more, but they also have higher expectations than they used to. They expect great service and good answers, and they expect to get it whenever suits them. When we measured how well we were meeting those high expectations a few years back, we simply weren't doing well. We had to make changes.

Think of the web as the new front door of KCTCS, of our colleges, and even of your office. When someone comes through our front door, we want them to have a good experience, right? That's what all this noise about Web Services really comes down to. We're making the changes we need to in order to give our audiences (including us) the experience they deserve. In some ways, this isn't about the web at all. It's about what we've always been about--service. And if you ask us, that's not only why it matters, it's the only thing that matters.