• Builds a stronger alumni web presence
• Keeps alumni connected effortlessly
• Creates and nurtures lifelong relationships
• Increases alumni participation
• Meets the demand for delivering personalized content

Enabling the Virtual Alumni Community

OmniUpdate's OU Alumni is the only solution designed to address the specialized web content management and web communications needs of alumni organizations. OU Alumni combines powerful, yet simple-to-use features for managing your web content together with automatic syndication and distribution capabilities of RSS.  Additionally, OU Alumni includes OU OnePage, an innovative content personalization solution that provides alumni with their own "homepage" to your site.

Web Content Management

At the heart of OU Alumni is a powerful yet easy-to-use web content management solution designed specifically to meet the needs of alumni organizations large and small. OU Alumni empowers current staff, chapters, volunteers and others to easily manage web content in a Word-like environment with little to no training necessary.

RSS Support

Real Simple Syndication (RSS) allows you to syndicate content from your alumni site into one or more news "feeds" that can then be read by any RSS-aware application, including Yahoo, Google and an alumni homepage created using the OU OnePage feature.  Alumni, who subscribe to one or more of your feeds, automatically receive new content as you publish it. 

OU OnePage

OmniUpdate's OU OnePage is an interactive web page solution that makes it easy to deliver targeted alumni content via a secure, branded web page.  Accessible from any web browser, a page owner can further personalize their OnePage to include content from their favorite websites.

• Separation of Content and Web Design
  Perhaps the biggest driving need to use a web CMS is the need to separate content from design. OU Alumni does this better than any other system on the market by giving you the flexibility to choose a rigid template structure (using XSL Templates) or a more conforming design structure using CSS and include files, or both! Your content editors will not be able to "break" your design guidelines or the integrity of your site structure. You'll be in control, and your website will benefit with a more consistent look and feel. Best of all, redesigns will be dramatically simpler when the time comes.
• Browser-Based
  As a Browser-Based system, OU Alumni dramatically simplifies the installation, training, and long-term support of your content contributors. No client-side installations, downloads, Java applets, or Active-X components are required by content editors or administrators of the CMS (Mac Safari users may choose to use a Java applet). OU Alumni uses AJAX extensively to provide users with an extremely responsive user interface and application-like feel.
• Full-Context WYSIWYG Editor
  OU Alumni provides an intuitive full-context "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editor enabling staff at any level of technical knowledge to make website edits. Full-context means editors work with the entire page, even when they are only editing a small part of the page. This is a vast improvement over forms-based WYSIWYG editors.
• Compatible with MS Office Smart Tags
  This powerful feature ensures web page consistency and clean XHTML code across all platforms by removing MSO code ("Smart Tags") when text is copied and pasted from MS Office applications like Word, PowerPoint and Excel.
• Paste Clean
  Clean all formatting (above and beyond simply removing MSO code) when users paste into your design Templates. This powerful feature helps you ensure CSS and other design level styles are always enforced! Ensure all users Paste Clean with a global configuration setting, or selectively choose who can paste using other methods.
• Spell Checking
  OU Alumni provides powerful, yet intuitive spellchecking with automated spelling suggestions, just like your favorite word processor.
• Workflow/Approval
  OU Alumni offers a powerful role-based Workflow/approval system designed to fit the needs of any institution. Content is automatically checked-out to users as they edit content, and automatically checked-in when content is approved. Only after content has been approved is it published to your website. Workflow can include a chain of approvers and can be overridden by administrators, or even redirected, based on the content itself. Best of all, the Workflow/approval process has an easy point-and-click setup with no programming required.
• DirectEdit
  DirectEdit makes it exceptionally easy for users to browse to the page they want to edit and login with one click. There is simply no faster or easier way to find and edit content on your website!
• Version Control
  OU Alumni creates a version of every page you publish. Rollback is simple with point-and-click commands. You can even commit to a new version of a work in progress whenever necessary.
• Link Checking
  Ensure all internal site links and external site links are viable before publishing any page using the powerful built-in link checker.
• Multi-Channel Publishing
  Publish content using XML and the power of XSL to multiple channels, such as XHTML (web), XML (feeds and data exchange), CSV (spreadsheets and lists), TXT (raw text), PDF (or other printable formats), and even WML and other formats designed for mobile devices. OU Alumni can even repurpose content that feeds your institution's social networking sites on FaceBook and MySpace.
• Automatic Navigation
  OU Alumni provides for automatically created navigation, such as breadcrumbs and other navigation elements on pages, or within includes that are then shared by multiple pages and automatically propagated across wide areas of the website.
• Groups-Based Access
  Easy to set up and administer, OU Alumni offers a powerful groups-based access system to allow the right people to edit the right pages. Partial-page editing and "selective content" editing offers fine-grain level of access to specific parts of pages. And, users can belong to multiple groups for maximum flexibility.
• Scheduled Publishing
  Content can be published immediately (without any delay), or scheduled to be published at the exact time and date required (within 15 minute increments).
• Publish Now
  Pages can be published immediately (or the moment they are approved if necessary). No waiting for scheduled events—pages can be published the moment you're ready for them to "go live". Publishing entire directories and entire sites can also be performed immediately.
• Content Expiration
  Content can automatically "expire" or be removed from the site at a date and time specified (within 15 minute increments). Expired content can be removed completely, replaced with new content, and even redirected to other content on the website.
• Scheduled Reminders
  Content can be easily configured to "remind" someone that it's time for an update. This powerful feature helps keep time-sensitive content up to date and accurate.
• Email Notification
  The Workflow/approval process triggers email notifications to approvers requesting appropriate action. These customizable email messages include a direct link back to the exact content requiring approval.
• Content Repurposing and Reuse
  Content can be configured to be repurposed or "reused" on various parts of the website. OU Alumni makes it easier than ever to make global changes and changes to content used in multiple places. Better still, you decide if repurposed content includes formatting information or conforms to the styles set forth on each target page. This feature is ideal for headers, footers, and other commonly reused content.
• Video and Multimedia Insert
  Easily insert, modify, and configure video, flash, and other media files on your website.
• File Upload and Management
  OU Alumni allows users to upload and manage any file type. Files can be uploaded individually or in batch and can be stored in any folder, according to your needs.
• Multi-Browser Preview
  Preview edited pages before publishing and see what they will look like in other browsers (e.g., FireFox Windows, FireFox Mac, Safari, and Internet Explorer).
• Forms Creation and Editing
  Create and edit forms using simple WYSIWYG tools. Simple fields, radio buttons, drop-down lists, and checkbox tools are all as easy as one click. Need the form data submitted to a file, email, or database? You control what happens to the data that's submitted.
• New Page Wizards
  Make it easy for users to create new pages based on pre-determined Templates by scripting New Page Wizards. New Page Wizards walk users through steps and create all necessary components for new pages (include files, style sheets, etc.). Custom input fields can include text, WYSIWYG, drop-down selectors, and more. Commonly added pages, such as events and press releases, can be created quickly and easily with auto-populating fields, and pages can be automatically named, placed in the appropriate directory, and automatically linked.
• Compatibility
  OU Alumni works with your site, no matter what markup or scripting language it uses (HTML, XHTML, XML, ASP, CFM, JSP, PHP, etc.), and grows with your institution as its needs evolve.
• Security
  OU Alumni uses SSL, SSH, LDAP (both SSL and TLS), and SFTP to ensure your login authentication, file transfers, and page publishing are safe and secure.
• Add-On Extensibility
  Add web applications, such as polling applications and faculty or course catalog database administration, directly into OU Campus without programming.

General Specifications

• OU Alumni is a "push" style web content management software, meaning it does not act as a middleman in the web page serving process. Running separate from your website ensures higher website availability, no down-time for upgrades or service modifications, and the ability to service multiple separate website installations (on separate servers) with one instance of OU Alumni.
• OU Alumni can manage static HTML pages, XHTML pages, as well as dynamically driven websites (XML, ASP, CFM, PHP, etc.). The system is configurable to manage only the sections and pages of your website ready for web content management (the system does not require "all or nothing" deployment). Pages out of scope with your web content management needs or pages that are managed by other processes can be excluded from OU Alumni. Moreover, sections of pages, server-side includes, or other dynamic elements within pages can be excluded from the web CMS if they are serviced by other processes.

Server Specifications

• OU Alumni can be deployed as either an On-Demand or On-Site solution. Either way, your institution's websites remain hosted where they are physically hosted today. Unlimited physical and virtual web servers can be supported with one deployment.
• On-Demand deployment requires no software installation and has several advantages, including no application installations, no software upgrades or maintenance, pay-as-you-go cost structure and no software installation fees. Moreover, the cost savings for the On-Demand service are typically substantial from day one. As a result, more than 95% of OmniUpdate clients take advantage of the On-Demand service. OU Alumni can be used to manage websites served by Windows 2000/NT/IIS, Linux, Unix, Sun/Solaris, HP/HP-UX, SGI/IRIS and IBM/AIX, BSD, or Macintosh OS. The web server can also be hosted by a third party hosting service provider. The website can be configured to serve static pages or dynamic files from server-side environments running PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP, .NET, JSP, and many more. In fact, OU Alumni is flexible enough to handle all of the above mentioned web server environments simultaneously giving you a great level of long-term flexibility and scalability.
• On-Site deployment conforms to all of the above mentioned server specifications and can be installed on a variety of server environments, including Linux, Solaris, and Windows.

Client Specifications

• OU Alumni users and administrators require no client-side software other than a web browser. Windows, Macintosh, and Linux client configurations are all supported. Minimum requirements for Windows users include Microsoft Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, and Vista with Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 6.0 or higher is recommended) or Firefox. Minimum requirements for Macintosh users include Macintosh OS 9 or OS X with Firefox or the Apple Safari browser. Minimum requirements for Linux users include any Linux desktop client supporting Firefox 1.5 or higher.

• OU Blogs

  Blogs are the hottest user-created Web 2.0 communication trend. OU Blogs helps you manage multiple blogs and maintain control of the content.
  Learn more

• DocuComp

  See exactly what's changed on a web page before publishing. Perfect for any workflow approval process.
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• LDAP

  Ensure your web CMS uses the same account login credentials as other systems on campus.
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• OU Search

  Help your users find the content they want by controlling and customizing searches on your website.
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• RSS

  Automatically update RSS feeds whenever new pages are created. RSS allows you to syndicate important information on your website to keep your students and prospective students up to date.
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