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 is a decoupled ("push") system that offers the benefits of a dynamic publishing model, embraces open standards, and leverages the power of XSLT 3.0 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, Facebook and Twitter integration, and blogs management, creating an environment for an interactive, engaging, and sustainable web presence.

Powerful Administration

OU Campus' enterprise power offers separation of content from design, content repurposing, multi-channel output, and so much more. And, OU Campus ensures web standards compliance, including Section 508, 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 to enforce industry standards, including W3C, WAI, XML/XSL, RSS, Section 508, LDAP, Active Directory, and Single Sign-on via CAS or Shibboleth.
• 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 integration with social media channels (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), RSS, and blogs management (including blog aggregation). With the OU Campus Live Delivery Platform™ (LDP), additional Web 2.0 user interactive services such as image galleries and comments are provided, and the optional server-side module provides forms, polls, surveys, and more.
• Database Choices — OU Campus offers you a choice of using MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or SyBase ASE. An efficient enterprise-class relational database schema is one of the reasons OU Campus is exceedingly fast and reliable.

Product Architecture

• XSLT 3.0 Transformation Engine — The underlying platform of OU Campus is powered by XSLT 3.0. Compared to XSLT 1.0 with the added extensions (EXSLT) or as an alternative to Velocity, XSLT 3.0 offers a major leap forward from a scripting-type language to a full-fledged functional programming language with typed variables and user-defined functions. XSLT 3.0 provides more functions, operators, and additional efficiencies that add up to significant advantages over all other approaches.
• Java Enterprise Edition Standards — Built on Java EE standards, OU Campus runs on all major servers, embraces all server-side technology (e.g., PHP, ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, JSP, HTML/XHTML), 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, and Single Sign-on via CAS and Shibboleth. It also offers extensibility to developers through a robust set of application programming 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 advantage 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 referred to as hosted or cloud) 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 Programming Interface — OU Campus allows for developers to access the Java 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. Any suitable 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 OU Campus Live Delivery Platform (LDP) to enable a rich set of Web 2.0 applications and extend the dynamic interactive capabilities of their website, including support for image galleries and comments; the optional server-side module provides forms, polls, surveys, and more. 

High Performance

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

• 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 without a publishing queue.
• AJAX-Driven User Interface — Designed for speed, OU Campus uses AJAX to provide a responsive user interface and eliminate time typically required to reload lists and commonly used data.

Platform Independent

• Server Independence — OU Campus runs on any major server (or can be hosted by OmniUpdate as a SaaS service) and publishes 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 (7+), Firefox (3.6+), Chrome (10+), and Safari (4+).

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, content and asset usage, social media messaging, and more.
• Role-Based Permission System — OU Campus has 11 customizable user levels that allow administrators fine control over the features and functions that a user can access. These levels are grouped around user roles (e.g., contributors, editors, designers, approvers), 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.
• Granular Access Controls — Permissions in OU Campus can be set at the site, directory, file, and page element level. Authorized access to areas of a page or to a directory can be restricted to select groups of users.
• Flexibility — The combination of user roles, group assignments, as well as directory, page, and content-level access controls in OU Campus provides administrators unlimited control and flexibility.
• LDAP, Active Directory, and Single Sign-on — As an alternative to our secure authentication logins, OU Campus can integrate with either an LDAP or Active Directory user access system or Single Sign-on via CAS server or Shibboleth.

Content Management

• Unlimited Workflow and Content Scheduling — OU Campus offers a customizable Workflow process. Email notifications, page scheduling, and multi-level approvals/rejections, including reassigning pending page approvals, are all provided. Administrators can enable automated and preconfigured, 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 the Workflow process. Workflow messages can also integrate with your own email system.

• Version Control — Unlimited versions of each page published are kept in OU Campus. Authorized users can easily backup or roll back to any previous version of a page.
• Document Comparison — OU Campus allows users to compare a page's changes with any previous 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 — The built-in Multi-Browser Preview in OU Campus allows users to select more than 15 different browser and platform combinations on which a page is to be checked before publishing, resulting in full-resolution screenshots 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.
• Assets — Assets allow for the creation and use of reusable content such as text, images, media, code blocks, managed forms, image galleries, polls, and more. The creation and management of assets is integrated into the permission system and administrators can restrict the editing of assets through group access.
• Media Integration, Video Transcoding, and Flash Player — The WYSIWYG Editor in OU Campus provides the ability to add media files (e.g., Flash, YouTube, movies, audio) 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 automatically processes and compresses your video for use on a website.
• Page Check-In/Check-Out — Content locking occurs automatically when a user edits a page in OU Campus, which prevents 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 as needed.
• 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.
• Dependency Manager — The Dependency Manager ensures that hyperlinks to pages that are managed within OU Campus are always up to date. If a user decides to rename a page or move it to a new location, the Dependency Manager will automatically update the URL found in the associated pages and update those pages on the live server. If a page is deleted, thereby causing broken hyperlinks, the user is notified to take action on those pages.
• OU Calendar™ — OU Campus includes a powerful enterprise calendar that can be customized to meet an institution's site needs.

• Snippets — Administrators and developers can create pre-formatted HTML content (e.g., tables, forms, image with caption) that can easily be placed by users into the WYSIWYG Editor via selection menus. Snippets can be designed to include Directory Variables that are resolved when a user inserts the snippet code in the page.
• Auxiliary Sites — In the WYSIWYG Editor, users can select images and media from or make links to files that reside on a centralized content repository. Administrators can set up any number of additional server sources at the account and site level.

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 by adding or removing individual toolbar elements with an intuitive point-and-click interface. This provides 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 clean copy/paste functionality, which cleans MSO code as copy is pasted into the editor (enforceable by administrators).
• Multi-Language Support — Because 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. Logged-in users can simply navigate the live site to the page desired, click on the unobtrusive link (typically at the bottom of the page), and directly edit that page on the staging server. If users are not currently logged in, they are presented with the login screen and then taken directly to the page to be edited.
• Image Upload and Editing — Authorized users can easily insert images on a page from within the WYSIWYG Editor. Images are inserted on a page via the OU Campus image editing tool. Users can browse a gallery of image thumbnails, in addition to the standard filename list, for easier identification. With the OU Campus Image Editor, users can resize, crop, rotate, rename, and save a selected image in one of many administrator-approved file formats. Text descriptions can be enforced for Section 508 Compliance; however, administrators can override this to allow for decorative images.
• Spell Checking — OU Campus includes a built-in spell checker. Users can check spelling in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Authorized users can add words to the custom dictionary to supplement the default dictionary used in the WYSIWYG Editor. Custom dictionaries can be created for each site or for all sites to share.
• Auto Draft — Every minute, the OU Campus WYSIWYG Editor automatically saves a draft of a page being edited onto the local workstation. If the browser unexpectedly quits or the user inadvertently closes the browser before saving the page, the content can be easily recovered later.
• Save-in-Place — Working in the WYSIWYG Editor, content can be quickly saved without exiting the editor. The function saves any changes made in the editor to the staging server, which allows the user to continue working.
• Page Check — Any page managed by OU Campus can be checked for broken links, spelling, as well as W3C and accessibility compliance any time during the review process.
• Accessibility Check — As part of the Page Check feature, Accessibility Check validates web pages for Section 508, WCAG, Stanca Act, or BITV and ensures accessible pages to all site visitors.
• Site Check — Site Check allows authorized administrators to check all website links, both internal and external to the site, with ease. Administrators can choose to check links for all site pages or only selected pages; they also have the option to follow link redirects and set timeout rules to ensure that links are in an optimal state. Additionally, administrators can view reports of broken links by page or by link.
• Source Code Editing — OU Campus provides developers and authorized content editors context-sensitive source code editing with word wrap and syntax highlighting. Color coding for HTML, CSS, XML, PHP, ASP, JavaScript, Visual Basic, and several other languages are supported.
• Quick Search — Users can quickly Search for page content, filenames, page titles, and other metadata. Searches can be constrained by scope, accessibility, and Boolean operators. Administrators can control which pages are indexed, allowing only the desired content to be searchable.
• Zip Import — An intuitive interface gives users an easy and efficient way to upload and extract multiple files at once. Users can upload a single zip file containing any type of asset, including text-based and binary assets. After uploading a zip file, but prior to its extraction, users are presented with an option to rename or exclude specific files and folders.

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. Templates can be nested and shared across multiple sites, providing flexibility and consistency for your institution.
• Wizards — OU Campus' powerful Template Control Files provide 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 — Built on open standards, OU Campus does not contain system-generated code that developers cannot control. OU Campus provides support for multiple web development languages (e.g., PHP, ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, JSP, HTML/XHTML) and uses recognized industry standards for Templates, including W3C compliant HTML/CSS and XML/XSL.
• Accessibility — OU Campus ensures web accessibility compliance, including WAI and Section 508, thereby making your website more desirable for visitors. OU Campus publishes Section 508 compliant pages through proper implementation of validated Templates.
• Customizable Template Groups — Administrators can use an intuitive point-and-click interface to define which Templates are available in a given section of the site, guaranteeing a consistent look and feel to published pages.
• Universal Content Publishing — Using multiple XSL designs, OU Campus can publish a single piece of content into multiple output types (e.g., HTML, PDF, CSV, mobile), enabling multi-channel content output.

• Flexible Configuration — Target multiple server-side environments by publishing pages to HTML, HTML5, XHTML, PHP, ColdFusion, ASP, .NET, JSP, and more.
• Decoupled — Using XML/XSL in OU Campus, web designers can completely separate content from design, allowing for template swaps and site-wide re-skinning without modifying any page content.
• Regular Expressions — Regular expressions (regex) provide administrators and authorized users a powerful tool for searching and replacing text, as well as enforcing file naming restrictions. Administrators can use regex to locate, preview, and replace plain text or source code across an entire site or selected directories. Regex can also enforce acceptable filenames of pages and uploaded files in OU Campus. Additionally, administrators can create custom regex for text validation in LDP Forms.
• Final Check — Administrators have the ability to enforce spell checking, link checking, W3C validation checking, and/or accessibility checking before a page is published.
• Publish Now — The direct publish model allows users to instantly publish pages, directories, or entire sites. OU Campus does not rely on publishing queues and deployment tables, which can drastically slow down the publishing process.

• Scheduled Publish, Expire, and 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 — All URLs are filename based and either relative to the root or fully qualified, thus making your website SEO-friendly. OU Campus provides complete control over the filenames, allowing your site to have user and SEO-friendly URLs.

• 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 (e.g., podcasts, videocasts). 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 newsreader subscription. Individual feeds can be added to multiple feed groups that are updated automatically.
• What's New Live™ — OU Campus allows for dynamic CSS-driven display of RSS content on a web page with What's New Live. Unique scripts for any major platform (e.g., PHP, ASP, CFM, JSP) are provided in a page template, along with a CSS file to present RSS feed data in any format required.
• Social Media Publish — Authorized users can automate the publishing of content to social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, with the creation or update of a web page. Updates can occur on an immediate or scheduled basis, and users can publish to multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts simultaneously. Additionally, administrators can view a report of all social media posts published from OU Campus. 
• OU Social™ Facebook App — OU Social gives institutions a powerful, yet simple solution to have their presence known on Facebook. Authorized users can determine which OU Campus-managed web page or content is synchronized by linking a Facebook Page to OU Campus.

 

• 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 subsites (even sites hosted on different web servers). Access, user, and Group Management can be independently controlled for each site. Templates and other resources can be shared across multiple sites or unique for each site.
• Custom Reports — Designated administrators can create specific reports to manage, monitor, report, and ultimately control or change settings within OU Campus. Customized, zero-wait reports are available for users, directories, pages, sites, groups, social media posts, and more. 
• Walled Garden — Account-level access in OU Campus provides for "walled garden" sites or subsites 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 makes multi-site management a reality by allowing for content and resource sharing. Templates and assets 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 a rich set of Web 2.0 apps to create a dynamic experience for website visitors.
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• TrueCost Calculator

  The TrueCost Calculator is a simple and straightforward cost of attendance estimator for your website that allows you to specify your institution's tuition, fees, merit aid, and more.
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• Interactive Campus Map

  The interactive campus map is an engaging and completely customizable map that creates a virtual tour of your campus.
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