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David Klanac delivered Bradley Wagner’s talk on the “Cascade Server Roadmap” for the coming year.

Cascade Server Roadmap

Last Year’s Conference [recap]

Discussed:

• New Roles
• Sites
• Delivery Server

What We’ve Been Up to in 2009

• Cascade 6.x Series
• 3 Feature Releases
  • Cascade 6.0
  • Cascade 6.2
  • Cascade 6.4
    …

Cascade 6.0

• Released in first quarter
• Foundation for 6.x series development
• Sites
  • To clearly organize and segment congent, support assets, and users
• New Roles
  • To give complete flexibility when granting abilities to users

h2; We are silly for Sites!

6.x Sites Journey:

• Sites + New Roles => Site Roles (6.0)
• Cross-Site Linking (6.2)
• Shared Templates (6.2)
• Taking Sites to the next level (6.4)

Cascade 6.4

• Connectors – looking outward not just inward

  …

Why Connectors?

• Customers want CMS to perform a widening range of functions: bloggin, personalization, analytics
• We want to focus on doing a few things…and doing them well

Why Connectors?

Goal: To connect Cascade to other best-of-breed technologies already* in use and let Cascade be the content hub.

Twitter Connector [first connector]

• Of course! A Twitter connector!
• Automate the process of tweeting links to new content
• Includes prefix, …

WordPress Connector

• WordPress is a widely used blogging tool
• Author, manage content within Cascade and publish it to WordPress
• Take advantage of WordPress features
  • Comments
  • Categories
  • …

WordPress Connector

Remember last year’s Delivery Server announcement?

• WordPress is a delivery engine
• Server-side personalization capabilities
• WordPerss is our first step forward but not our last

UX Enhancements in 6.4

• Drag n’ Drop form building [data definition builder]
• Syntax highlighting code editor
• Content comparison engine

Where do I get it?

• Currently in Beta—download it today?
  http://hannonhill.com/downloads/cascade
• Full 6.4 demo… [next session]

Where are we going next?

• Confirm our connectors trajectory and then expand the feature set
• Active commitment to UX improvements
• Internal release process improvements

UX enhancements beyond 6.4

Reduce friction in executing the most frequent CMS task:

• Data definition blocks
• LDAP config user interface
• Updated sFTP/FTP libraries

Connecting to Google Analytics as one example. // did I hear that right—customization of UX for users?

// missed a slide

• Drag n’ drop UI componenets
• Improved process flows
• More content protection…

New feature (post 6.4) Recycle Bin

Internal Process Improvements

// missed details

Developer Side Projects

• Projects not in the main roadmap
• Engineering spends 20% of time
• Already mentioned
  • Syntax highlighting code editor (6.4)
    …

Release Schedule and Process

• New feature releases every 4 months
• Beta releases are here to stay – expect 1.5 – 2 month durations
• Continued separation of bug releases from new feature releases

How You Can Contribute

• Success community idea exchange
• Forums
• Quarterly check-in calls with Chris Armistead, Client Advocate

Takeaways: Themes for 2010

• Expand Connectors feature set
• Improve the user experience
• Build on internal process refinements

—end—quations:

Status on confirm publishing?

• Asking do we have plans for multi-threaded/concurrent publishing. On their radar, needs to be voted up; David will catch this person offline for more information

Any plans for people to create their own connectors

• It is on our radar. We want to see how the connector strategy pans out first to see how it’s working.

Recycle bin question—what’s a recyclable asset? Global, or site?

• Current plans are to approach it from a site-based perspective. If global it would be more like the publish queue, but more granular would be better for users.
• Not planned for administrative assets yet—currently focused on home area assets

WordPress as a publishing agent, what’s the distinction of post vs. page and categories?

• Currently only goes as posts. David will follow-up with Bradley for more information/clarification.

—more asked, but didn’t catch it in notes—

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under Cascade, Web, Work/Professional Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.