Used by more colleges and universities than any other web CMS, OU Campus provides everything you need to manage your entire campus website.

Enterprise-Class Architecture

OU Campus is secure and scalable, supporting small departmental websites to multi-site enterprises. It uniquely offers the benefits of both decoupled (also known as "push") and dynamic publishing models, is built on open standards, and leverages the power of XML/XSL and XHTML to take your website to the next level.

Extensible Tools

The OU Campus platform offers extensibility through a modern framework and powerful APIs. It provides broad configurability through comprehensive tools and Web 2.0 technologies, such as RSS and blogs management, creating an environment for an interactive, engaging, and sustainable web presence.

Powerful Administration

OU Campus' enterprise-level power offers separation of content from design, content repurposing, multi-channel output, and so much more. And, OU Campus ensures web standards compliance, including ADA, W3C, and WAI, making your website more desirable for visitors and optimized to Search engines.

Complete Feature Set

OU Campus offers a comprehensive feature set to manage all your websites, all your users across the enterprise, and all your web applications. From in-context WYSIWYG editing and template-based publishing, to Multi-Browser Preview and customizable workflows, OU Campus has all the features you want and need.

Exceptional Ease of Use

While OU Campus offers the technical features prized by administrators, its intuitive user interface simplifies and streamlines the content management process and allows your content contributors to work independently and productively, without relying on IT support.

The extensive features, functionalities, and design of OU Campus provide an enterprise framework for long-term content management.

Enterprise Class

• Industry Standards — OU Campus is designed from the ground up to enforce industry standards, including W3C, WAI, XML/XSL, RSS, ADA Section 508, and LDAP.
• Designed for the Future — OU Campus has a modular design, along with scalability, to handle hundreds of sites, thousands of users, and millions of pages. OmniUpdate's standards-based approach combined with scalable architecture allows for both growth and change over the long haul.
• Security Services — Content locking, automatic Check-In/Check-Out, and strict content editing controls by content node are the cornerstones of ensuring content integrity with OU Campus. Multi-factor authentication, access tracking and reporting by user IP address, and automatic system locks for failed login attempts are also provided by the system.
• Web 2.0 Services — OU Campus core features include blogs and RSS management (including blog aggregation). With the installation of the optional OmniUpdate Live Delivery Platform, additional Web 2.0 user interactive services are provided, including user comments, content Tagging, favorites, watchers, polls, surveys, forums, image galleries, and more.
• Database Driven — OU Campus includes the Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise database. This enterprise-class relational database is one of the reasons OU Campus is exceedingly fast, efficient, and reliable.

Product Architecture

• J2EE Standards — Built on J2EE standards, OU Campus runs on all major servers, embraces all server-side technology (PHP, ASP, .NET, CFM, JSP, pure HTML or XHTML, etc.), and uses recognized standards for Templates, including HTML/CSS and XML/XSL.
• Integration — OU Campus supports a wide variety of protocols including SSL, LDAP, Active Directory (AD), and Single Sign-on. It also offers extensibility to developers through a robust set of application program interface (API) commands. And because development in OU Campus uses XML/XSL standards, all major development platforms are supported.
• Decoupled Publishing — Also called "push" CMS by technologists, the OU Campus decoupled architecture separates the web CMS from your live production site by publishing content as needed to your live web server. Both static and dynamic pages can be published in this manner. The upside is that your website is never throttled by your CMS application or process. Additionally, the OU Campus application can run anywhere and on any platform.

• Deployment Options — The OU Campus architecture allows for both traditional Enterprise Server License and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) License (sometimes called hosted) options. As an Enterprise Server License, OU Campus is run on your servers. SaaS, on the other hand, allows for a completely maintenance-free operation. Either way, your website remains hosted as is without modification.

Extensibility

• Application Program Interface — OU Campus allows for developers to access the core of the CMS to remotely modify users, groups, and other record data, including creating new sites and sub-sites.
• Modularity — Modular by design, OU Campus allows additional major capabilities to be added or removed from the application by administrators with simple configuration settings.
• Add-Ons — OU Campus offers web developers the ability to add to the user interface (UI) through the Add-Ons tab. Virtually any homegrown or third-party web app can be integrated into the OU Campus UI.
• Live Delivery Platform — OU Campus customers have the option to install the server-side Live Delivery Platform (LDP) to enable a rich set of Web 2.0 applications and extend the dynamic interactive capabilities of their website, including out-of-the-box apps for user comments, content Tagging, favorites, watchers, polls, surveys, forums, image galleries, and more.

High Performance

• Built for Speed — OU Campus has been designed for high performance throughput following modern MVC (Model-View-Controller) design patterns. Prepared statements and stored procedures used throughout the design enable extraordinary end-user speed and responsiveness for the most commonly accessed functions.

• Zero-Wait Reporting — Reports in OU Campus are always one click away and never require a waiting period.
• Publish Now — While scheduled publishing is an important feature of OU Campus, users with proper permissions can publish content immediately to the live production website.
• AJAX-Driven User Interface — Designed for speed, OU Campus uses AJAX to eliminate time typically required to reload lists and commonly used data.

Platform Independent

• Server Independence — OU Campus can run on any major server (or can be hosted by OmniUpdate as a SaaS service) and can publish to any web server via FTP or SFTP. All major operating systems are supported, including Linux, Solaris, and Windows. All major web server-side languages are supported, including PHP, .NET, ASP, Cold Fusion, and JSP.
• Client Independence — OU Campus is compatible with all major browsers, including Internet Explorer (6, 7, and 8), Firefox 2 and 3, and Safari 3.

User Management

• Auditing and Accountability (Reporting) — OU Campus administrators can get instant reports on user activity, pages in process, pages scheduled to publish and expire, stale pages, recently edited pages, recently published pages, and more.
• Role-Based Permission System — OU Campus has 11 user levels that allow administrators fine control over the features and functions to which a user has access. These levels are grouped around user roles (contributors, editors, designers, approvers, and others), making it easy for administrators to choose the appropriate role for each user.
• Groups-Based Access Assignment — OU Campus users can be assigned to one or more groups (a user is also a "group" with one member). A group is used as the basis for assigning access to any level of the CMS.
• Folder and Page Access Controls — Rights in OU Campus can be set at the folder, file, and page element level. Authorized access to areas of a page or to a file directory can be restricted to select groups or users.
• Flexibility — The combination of user roles, group assignments, and folder/page/element access controls in OU Campus provides administrators an infinite combination of access permissions.
• LDAP, AD, and Single Sign-on — As an alternative to our secure authentication logins, OU Campus can integrate with either an LDAP or Active Directory (AD) user access system and Single Sign-on via CAS server.

Content Management

• Unlimited Workflow and Content Scheduling — OU Campus offers a completely customizable Workflow process. Multi-level approvals/rejections, email notifications, and page scheduling are all provided. Administrators can enable automated and pre-configured, customized, or on-the-fly Workflow. Each user has their own personal dashboard to manage pages that are checked out as well as monitor projects within each Workflow. The Workflow messaging process can also synchronize with your own email system.

• Version Control — Unlimited versions of each page published are kept in OU Campus. You can roll-back to any previous version of a page with one click.
• Document Comparison — OU Campus allows users to compare a page's changes with any previously saved or published version of that page. Changes, deletions, and additions are shown in a visual format similar to that found in major word processors.
• Multi-Browser Preview — Checking how a page will look across browsers, versions, and OS platforms can be a challenge. The built-in Multi-Browser Preview in OU Campus allows users to select the various browsers and platforms on which a page is to be checked, resulting in full-resolution screen shots of the page in each selected browser.

• Multi-Output Preview — Combined with Multi-Language Editing and Preview, contributors can preview pages rendered with different file type formats, including HTML, PDF, RTF, CSV, XML, and mobile, as well as any UTF-8 compatible foreign language formats (including two-byte languages such as Chinese and Japanese). If an XSL template is designed to output multiple files, Multi-Output Preview provides the ability to view the outputs together before publishing.
• Media Integration, Video Transcoding, and Flash Player — The WYSIWYG editor in OU Campus provides the ability to add media files (Flash, movies, audio, etc.) to a web page. The necessary Tagging (and player, if needed) is automatically applied. Additionally, OU Campus offers a utility called Transcode-It^TM that will automatically process and compress your video for use on a website.
• Image Editor — Images are inserted on a page via the OU Campus image editing tool. Users can resize, crop, rename, and save a selected image in one of many administrator-approved file formats.
• Page Check-In/Check-Out — Content locking occurs automatically when a user edits a page in OU Campus, thus preventing other users from making changes while it is checked out. When a page is sent for approval, the page is automatically checked out to the approver.
• Recycle Bin — Files deleted from the OU Campus staging server are sent to the Recycle Bin rather than being completely deleted. The files are removed from the CMS directory, along with all past versions of the files, and can later be recovered and restored, if necessary.
• Page Properties — OU Campus allows users to manage nearly any page characteristic. Users can edit hidden content with ease, such as meta keywords, description, and author; change a page template or choose a different skin for a content region; select a page header from a list of available possibilities without having to worry about user error or editing code; and much more.
• Global Find and Replace — Administrators can use literal text or regular expression searches to locate, preview, and replace plain text, HTML, CSS, XML, and other underlying code across an entire site or selected directories. The process runs exceptionally fast, making changes to as many as 5,000 files per second.
• Taxonomy — Whether for Search engine use, content repurposing, or automatic inclusion in select navigation, OU Campus enables any required taxonomy schema. Automated and manual taxonomy metadata can be used.
• Automatic Navigation Building — As users build content on a site in OU Campus, the proper supporting elements are automatically created, including navigation, breadcrumbs, sub-navigation, and any other needed include elements. When a page is published, required navigation elements are added, updated, and published at the same time. The OU Campus SmartNav feature allows for control of navigation ordering, page inclusion, and link removal when a page is deleted.

Content Editing

• In-Context WYSIWYG — When editing a page in OU Campus, a user works "in-context" with the layout and design of the page. The user is presented with the complete look and layout of the page with only the selected text area being editable. This makes it very easy for a user to see what the page will look like as they edit, eliminating repetitive save-preview-edit cycles.

• MultiEdit — OU Campus allows for form-controlled editing for XML and other structured content. Administrators can create a forms-based template that presents users with an easy-to-follow guide for adding content to a structured layout. Templates can include both forms-based MultiEdit and WYSIWYG content editing.

• Custom Editing Toolbars — OU Campus administrators can create any number of custom WYSIWYG toolbars. Each individual tool element in the toolbar can be added or removed, providing complete control over what and how content is edited or styled in the WYSIWYG editor. A comprehensive set of functions is provided, including text formatting, spell checking, media insert, customizable CSS drop-down menu, table and form editing, and many more.
• Drag and Drop — The OU Campus WYSIWYG editor allows for both drag and drop and "smart" copy-paste functionality. Other options include "smart" paste from MS Word and other MS Office documents, which cleans MSO code as copy is pasted into the editor (enforceable by administrators).
• Multi-Language Support — OU Campus is UTF-8 compliant. Content can be added or edited in any single or double byte language characters.
• DirectEdit Links — DirectEdit is unique to OU Campus. A link, image, or date stamp can be added automatically anywhere on a published page to allow users one-click access to edit that specific page. Users don't have to traverse a directory tree to find the page they want to edit. They simply navigate the live site to the page desired, click on the unobtrusive link (typically at the bottom of the page), and they are directly able to edit that page on the staging server (if they are logged in). If users are not yet logged in, they are presented with the login screen and then taken directly to the page to be edited.
• Page Link Checking — Any page managed by OU Campus can be checked for broken links, resulting in a comprehensive report.
• Source Code Editing — OU Campus provides developers (and select content editors) context-sensitive source code editing. Color coding for HTML, CSS, XML, PHP, ASP, JavaScript, Visual Basic, and several other languages are supported.

Content Publishing

• Template-Based Publishing — OU Campus provides designers with a robust template structure using XML/XSL or XHTML, ensuring standards-perfect pages every time. Flexible OU Campus page Tagging allows for complete control over all elements of how and who can edit a page or section of a page.
• Wizards — OmniUpdate's powerful script language provides for the development of wizards that make it simple for users to fill out a form to create any page type, multi-pages, RSS feeds, as well as complex site structure building, navigation, and deployment.
• Web Standards — Templates that have been ADA Section 508 and/or W3C validated in OU Campus ensure compliance throughout the editing and publishing process.
• Flexible and Consistent — OU Campus Templates allow users to create content as needed within a template framework, which guarantees a consistent look and feel to published pages.
• Universal Content Publishing — With multiple XSL files, OU Campus publishes multiple output types (HTML, PDF, CVS, mobile, etc.), enabling multi-channel content output.

• Decoupled — Using XML/XSL and CSS in OU Campus, web designers can completely separate content from layout, allowing for template swaps and site-wide re-skinning without touching any page content.
• Regular Expressions — REGEX can be used to control acceptable filenames of pages and uploaded files in OU Campus.
• Publish Now — With OU Campus, users can instantly publish pages, directories, or entire sites. OU Campus has a direct publish model; therefore, publishing queues and deployment tables are not required. While pages that need to be published in the future can be easily scheduled, all other pages are instantly published.

• Scheduled Publish, Expire, Stale Page Notification — OU Campus provides scheduling tools directly within the page publishing Workflow. Email notifications can also be sent when a scheduled page is published. Pages can be set to expire and be removed from the website (options for page replacement or redirection are also provided). Stale page reminders can be set for any page to notify a user when a page has reached a user-defined period without any updates.
• Search-Friendly URLs — OU Campus is a "Push" or "Decoupled" CMS, meaning all pages (both static and dynamic) are published to the live production web server. All URLs are filename based and either relative to the root or fully qualified, thus making your website SEO friendly.

• XSL:FO — OU Campus supports the use of XSL:FO-a language for formatting XML documents that, for example, can be used for the creation of PDF versions of XHTML pages when they are published.

Content Syndication

• RSS Management and Automation — RSS items in OU Campus can be automatically created when a page is created or updated, and published to the feed when the page is published. OU Campus provides for easy creation and management of any number of RSS feeds.
• Media RSS — The use of traditional RSS feeds is extended, allowing users to attach and share audio, video, and image files. The interface makes it easy to enter media files, links, titles, descriptions, image thumbnails, and keywords. Entry of this information can also enhance the site Search process.
• Syndication Groups — RSS feeds can be easily combined into aggregate groups in OU Campus for syndication on your website or news reader subscription. Individual feeds can be added to multiple feed groups.
• What's New Live^TM Option — OU Campus allows for dynamic CSS-driven display of RSS content on a web page with OmniUpdate's What's New Live option. Unique scripts for any major platform (PHP, ASP, CFM, JSP, etc.) are provided in a page template, along with a CSS file to present RSS feed data in any format or portion required.
• Dynamic Metadata-Driven Content Areas — In combination with metadata taxonomy for content, pages can be created in OU Campus with content that is dynamically pulled into the page when the paged is served to a user's browser. Users can select which metadata tags are desired and used to collect current content to that page.

Site Management

• Multi-Site Management — OU Campus is built to support and manage unlimited sites and sub-sites (even sites hosted on different web servers). Access, user, and Group Management can be independently controlled for each site.
• Walled Garden — Account-level access in OU Campus provides for "walled garden" sites or sub-sites to contain and simplify user access and management. Completely separate user and group lists are used for each account, enabling real-world needs. For example, department websites (physical or virtual) can be divided into unique sites for fine-grain management and control.
• Shared Content — OU Campus allows for content and resource sharing to make multi-site management a reality. And, Templates used by one site can be easily reused across multiple independent sites.

General Specifications

• As a decoupled web CMS, OU Campus runs separate from your website. Multiple separate website installations (on separate servers) can be serviced with one instance of OU Campus.
• OU Campus uses XML/XSL open standards; therefore, all major development platforms are supported.
• OU Campus manages static HTML and 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 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 Campus. Sections of pages, server-side includes, or other dynamic elements within pages also can be excluded if they are serviced by other processes.

Server Specifications

• OU Campus can be deployed as either an Enterprise Server License or an Enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) License. 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.
• Enterprise SaaS deployment requires no software installation, no application installations, and no software upgrades or maintenance. 
• Enterprise Server can be installed on all major server environments, including Linux, Solaris, and Windows.
• OU Campus 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 more.

Client Specifications

• OU Campus 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, or Vista with Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 6.0 or higher) 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 Campus is offered as both an Enterprise Server License and an Enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) License. With the Server License, you can buy everything you could possibly need up front, whereas with the SaaS License, you pay as you go. If budgets are tight today, the SaaS approach might be the perfect solution. With SaaS, OmniUpdate pays for all the hardware, maintenance of that hardware, and the bandwidth required for the application. Your website, however, remains hosted as it is today. And, you can manage an unlimited number of physical and virtual web servers with one deployment.

Enterprise Server License

With OU Campus deployed as an Enterprise Server License, there are no hidden costs or additional third-party software requirements. For example, the solution includes an enterprise-level database that is installed and maintained by the product itself, ensuring seamless updates, upgrades, and data migrations. This saves significant up-front costs and many months of disruptive database administrator efforts.

 
Enterprise Software-as a-Service License

With OU Campus deployed as an Enterprise SaaS License, there is no software installation and there are several advantages over traditionally installed software, including no application installations, no software upgrades or maintenance, and no software installation fees. The SaaS License offers a pay-as-you-go cost structure, and the cost savings are substantial from day one. From a financial perspective, it's nearly impossible to beat the SaaS approach.

• OU Search

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

  The OmniUpdate Live Delivery Platform enables two-way conversation with your site visitors and helps foster a dynamic website experience by allowing visitors to take advantage of popular interactive applications.
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