The following is a partial list of the benefits of a centrally-supported web content management service:

1. Access to the user-friendly WCMS software, as well as development services, testing and production environments.
2. Access to support services, including hardware, software, database and application support.
3. Access to sample websites and layouts to provide ideas and guidelines for using the many features of the WCMS, including graphic design elements, navigation structures, and workflows.
4. Access to best practices web development documentation, including converting or transferring existing sites to the WCMS.
5. Training and consultation to support a successful web project, including workshops, one-on-one sessions and training manuals.
6. Supported integration with other IT systems on campus including PAWS, blogs, wikis, and SESD's academic program and course information.
7. Campus peer support communities for ongoing idea generation and sharing resources for IT and web developers, and communications personnel.

The user-friendly interface allows for easy web publishing. With these services, programming skills are not required to maintain static information content on the web, making time available for more technical work such as developing applications including dynamic queries on the web, making their time available for more value-added technical work.

Any University of Saskatchewan academic or administrative unit can use the WCMS service free of charge. The unit head is ultimately responsible for any content on the unit's webpage. It is the unit head's responsibility to assign a person or people to maintain any webpage for that department. ICT will provide Cascade accounts for the people who are to maintain the pages along with necessary support, consultation and developer training.

If a department contracts with off-campus individuals to create websites, ICT will create separate accounts for these individuals and provide them with support, consultation and training as well. Sharing of University of Saskatchewan passwords with anyone, on or off campus, is not allowed.

If you need to have a new site developed or existing sites rebuilt, and plan to hire developers, Educational Media Access and Production (EMAP) is using the Cascade tool for future web site development. Their site provides additional service and contact information.

If you have made arrangements with other website development service providers, they too can use Cascade. We do need to have them take a locally-provided training course so that they know how to use the tool securely. Please contact cascade_support@usask.ca

Through the pilots we learned how important it is to spend time making critical decisions about functional things such as what the site needs to accomplish, how you will know that it accomplishes what you need it to, who updates and who approves content for the webpages. We also found that demonstrating what the Cascade tool provides generates ideas about how it can be used to help you achieve your objectives for the investment in developing and maintaining webpages.

• Examine your current content development process. Note how many people are involved and what role they play.
• Examine your current content types. Note whether any of it follows the same format and if any of it is reused in multiple places on the website.
• Examine your current website functionality. Note what is most used and what is not used at all.
• Based on information identified above, identify what processes you would like to see (or must) change and what processes cannot change (e.g. for policy reasons). Consider the ability or functional responsibilities each person in the
  process will need to have. It is a good idea to think of exception cases (e.g. do you want people to be able to upload/resize images? What happens to the page/content if the image is too large for the page?).