Migration Update: Taylor Online / Portal
Progress continues on several fronts with Taylor Online and the Portal.
Over the past several weeks, Online Communications, Information Technology and several other departments have been homing in on a solution for moving distribution of promotional announcements from e-mail to a channel in the portal. A prototype has been developed and approved. Once we work through a few remaining issues and setup the organizational structure, we should be able to begin using it in time for the fall semester. This solution will allow mostly free form Web pages in order to display graphics and other design elements. It will also resolve the hosting and accessibility of attachments.
OC and IT have also been working on a solution to fully allow off-campus access to attachments mentioned above as well as other internal content. A prototype solution has been tested and appears to work. However, the current complexity of Taylor Online and its dependence on Microsoft's Front Page Server Extensions makes the task difficult. We are investigating both short- and long-term solutions. We hope to be able to move forward with this solution soon; however, this project is less certain.
Finally, the AQIP project was the first test case for using LCMS v3 to deliver content internally -- and not just to the public Web site. It worked well and proves the value of LCMS v3 for delivering content both internally and publicly. We are hoping to migrate the Taylor Online content in LCMS v3 in the near future, though this will depend on first finishing the public Web site migrations and resolving the off-campus access issue. Unfortunately, until Taylor Online / portal content is delivered via LCMS v3, there will continue to be limitations on who can publish and administer Taylor Online content and portal channels.
