Symplectic Content Management System
The Symplectic CMS is a flexible, easy-to-use system that can help all your staff engage in maintaining your organisation's website.
Is updating your departmental pages, staff lists and professional web pages a problem for your organisation? If so, the Symplectic CMS can help save time for your staff and managers, and can also improve the quality of your web presence.
The Symplectic CMS was developed for the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, and has many features that are uniquely useful to the Higher Education sector.
Key benefits of the Symplectic CMS:
A simple editing process every staff member can use
Editing a page in the Symplectic CMS is as simple as editing a word document. For every page, the most appropriate member of staff can be made responsible for updates, without any special training.
Staff members with rights to a page log in to the editing side of the website, click on 'edit', make changes using a familiar set of text-editing tools and then simply click on 'save and exit' to finish the process.
Devolved editing rights and content approval
Editing rights for each page are under the control of the site administrators.
Staff members can be made 'editors', while managers are made 'moderators' so they can approve new content for the live website.
Applying editing rights in this way allows you to maintain the quaility of the content on your website, while maximising the site's flexibility and responsiveness to changes in your organisation.
After staff members have updated a page, another click submits the page to the moderator for approval for the live website. Automated emails alert the appropriate moderators when a page is submitted.
Fully accessible templates
The Symplectic CMS applies consistent templates to your pages, which can be updated as your organistion changes its branding and structure.
The site templates conform to visually impaired standards for accessibility (W3C A compliance).
Automatic creation of professional web pages
The CMS can be connected securely with your organisation's staff database, saving a large amount of administration time and abolishing delays in giving new staff a presence on your website.
Daily updates remove professional web pages for leavers and create pages for new staff members automatically, emailing them with details of how to update their pages.
Flexible site structure
The CMS has a unique, flexible data structure, enabling pages to be linked in below several different 'parent' pages.
Linking in pages wherever they are relevant improves the ability of users to find content when navigating the site, but leaves only one version of each page to be updated.
Extra tools and features:
Image and document management
Images, documents and other files are uploaded to the CMS before being added to pages on the site. The 'Resource Manager' tool enables these resources to be updated and then replaced wherever they appear on the site.
This feature is particularly useful for documents that are regularly updated, such as safety and HR procedures, as well as images, such as staff portraits.
News and events
Every local homepage in the Symplectic CMS can have its own 'News and Events' module added.
News items, announcements and upcoming events are then entered into the 'News and Events' tool via a simple interface.
'News and Events' has a wide range of useful features, including:
- Automatic resizing of thumbnails and feature images.
- The ability to show items on homepages only between certain dates.
- Intelligent ordering of events and news items by date.
Staff links
Links to professional web pages for key staff members can be added to department and group pages using the 'Staff Links' tool.
These links are automatically removed if a staff member leaves, eliminating the problem of having broken links on your site that need to be removed manually.
The CMS can also use the information in the 'Staff Links' tool to create automatic departmental staff lists.
Access controls
The ability to restrict page access to certain groups of logged-in users means you no longer need a separate institutional intranet.
Each page in the Symplectic CMS has its own access controls, and the composition of the different groups of users is completely under the control of the site administrator.
Simple shortcut creation
The system creates 'friendly' web addresses, showing where a page is found within the site structure.
For business cards and job advertisements, departments may want a shorter version of their web address, and the CMS makes these easy for site administrators to create and edit.
Site manager statistics
Website managers have access to a wide range of site statistics, including visitor numbers, sources of traffic and the routes visitors take through the site.
We can help you implement the system in 5 simple steps:
- Demonstration - We will run a demonstration for your academic staff to show them the system and provide them with the opportunity to feed back
as to how effective they believe the system to be.
- Feedback - Following the demonstration we will obtain and present feedback from attendees to help you assess the benefits of the system within
your organisation.
- Implementation - We will help you write a business case and plan for implementing the system, including working with web designers on your site structure, 'look and feel' and navigation template.
- Assessment - We will assess any integration requirements.
- Support - Once the system is active, we provide training and ongoing technical support.
Contact us now to arrange a demonstration.