Concordia UniversityMaking the (up)grade

Andrei KalamkarovWeb Designer

Chantal BellemareInformation Architect

Nadine HusainINM, Director of Operations

Agenda➢ About Concordia University

➢ AEM replatforming project

➢ Concordia’s current environment

➢ Why upgrade?

➢ Upgrade challenges

➢ Testing and issues

➢ Big day

➢ What’s next?

➢ Q & A

About Concordia University➢ 4 Faculties

➢ 41 Departments

➢ 13 Colleges/Schools/Institutes

➢ 39 Research Centres

➢ 203 Offices

➢ Over 300 undergraduate and 100 graduate programs

➢ 43,903 Students (2014/15)

➢ 3,863 Faculty & Staff (2014/15)

1997

July2013

August2013

February 2016

February 2016

AEM Project TimelineMarch 2012 Project start

Summer to Fall 2012 General awareness & brainstorming sessions

Fall 2012 Business requirements

Fall 2012 to Summer 2013 Template/component specs + IA

August 5, 2013 Go live!

April 30, 2015 Migration project officially over

October 4, 2015 Upgrade from 5.6 to 6.1

Initial Pain Points➢ From an organisational and communication standpoint

○ Disjointed channels, user experiences, websites, multiple homepages○ Decentralized workflows and processes per department○ Difficulty reading content on mobiles○ Duplicate and redundant information on multiples sites

➢ From a technical standpoint

○ Disjointed technologies and data sources○ Fragmented admin tools○ Challenges maintaining multiple versions, updates difficult, security…

Opportunities Identified➢ From an organizational standpoint:

○ Co-sponsorship by the CCO and the CIO○ Understand the impact of change○ Desire to centralized information, content and assets and dynamically push content○ Consolidate and control workflows while still allowing for independance

➢ From a user experience standpoint:○ New contact points and possible experiences (mobile, social, blogs...) - in context / in real-time○ Responsive design○ Accessibility

➢ From a technical standpoint○ Single underlying technology across departments○ Capitalize on CMS with out-of-the-box capabilities

AEM was the perfect fit➢ For end-users:

○ Excellent support for mobile through responsive design and apps

○ Pertinent customized content○ Coherent and consistent messaging

➢ For authors:

○ Easy and powerful solution for

maximum autonomy, productivity and collaboration

○ Easy to learn and manage change○ Sharing content and assets○ Govern branding & communications

➢ For IT:○ IT governance○ Modular solution, open standards○ Integrate through open-standard APIs○ Scalable, maintainable, easy to evolve

➢ For organizations:

○ Consistent cross-channel experience management

○ Predictable budget, ROI, incremental investments

○ Adaptable to new business imperatives

○ Compliance (accessibility, security, industry standards…)

The Adobe Advantage in Higher Education

Facts and Insights➢ Stakeholder Buy-In

○ Awareness / brainstorming meetings with 750 stakeholders, AEM demos○ Regular updates and communications

➢ Business Analysis & Department Buy-In○ Current-state analysis: 100+ stakeholder interviews and group elicitation exercises○ Specs & requirements: 16 department briefs, 14 BRDs, 9 functional specifications docs○ Identification and prioritization of audiences (20+!)

➢ Information Architecture and Wireframing○ Close to 40 wireframes to be categorized, approved and sent to design firm for mockups

○ Content audit and inventory with migration plan: 7000 pages to migrate automatically, 150 pages with semi-automation, 700+ pages to be manually migrated, 220 pages to rewrite!

➢ Development○ 80 custom components and 30 templates○ Agile development with dailies and sprint reviews across multiple teams and locations

➢ Training: author, developer and recordings

Lessons Learned➢ At the proposal stage:

○ + Choosing technology first and then the appropriate technology partner○ - Requesting services from supplier by role type

➢ Organizational:○ + Importance to get buy-in / champions / change management○ - Awareness sessions focused on details of possible improvements: hard promises to keep

➢ About the process:○ Progressive knowledge transfer and training:

■ Demos to key stakeholders■ Out-of-the-box AEM training■ Customized training on Concordia-specific components, templates, environment■ Coaching and knowledge transfer

Lessons learned (cont’d)➢ Requirement gathering sessions

○ Helpful to get a better understanding of the current state○ Not leading to innovation

➢ Competitive reviews

○ Helpful to identify features to include○ Not leading to innovation

➢ UX○ Means to drive innovation and differentiation

Concordia’s current environment➢ In AEM: Public site (en/fr), Intranet, Shared Content (news & events)

○ 40K+ pages (including news & events)○ 104 subsites○ DAM is around 45GB○ 35 templates, 100 custom components

○ Google Search Appliance

➢ Out of AEM: MyConcordia Portal, Moodle, Stingers (Cossette), Campus Stores, Student Information System, HR Information System, etc.

➢ Over 300 trained AEM authors

Concordia’s web trafficUnique visitors4,311,115 unique visitors in 201512K per day

Pageviews 52,687,091 pageviews in 20156-8M per month

Device overview (2015)Desktop - 74%Mobile - 21%Tablet - 5%

Project debt

Top items that were not completed during the migration project:

➢ System performance improvements

➢ Staging server

➢ Mobile site enhancements

➢ Search improvements

➢ Intranet improvements

Ref. Cross-functional focus group results from December, 2014

Why upgrade?➢ Stability and performance issues on our 5.6 environment

○ Author slowing down or coming to a halt○ Author has to be restarted often

○ Concordia.ca went down a few times

➢ Upgrading 5.6 to 6.1 seemed to be a promising solution

○ Adobe recommended the upgrade, "all problems will be resolved"○ CQ 5.6 was over two years old and two versions behind

➢ Project initiated in May, 2015○ Right around when 6.1 was released

Upgrade challenges➢ Pick the right time for a content freeze over an extended period

○ Many announcements, daily news, etc.

➢ Work around vacations and back-to-school period

○ Two windows of opportunity: mid-summer and mid-fall

➢ Backups / roll-back procedure

➢ Transfer users, groups and permissions

➢ Installing / re-installing DAM packages is especially time-consuming

➢ In-place upgrade problematic (clean upgrade worked)

Touch UI?➢ Not ready for Touch UI

○ Our components are not optimized for Touch UI

○ Authors need to be re-trained

➢ No critical need to switch at this time

○ Classic UI is working well in 6.1○ All authors are on desktops

○ No obvious benefit

➢ Easy to force Classic UI as the only interface

○ In the OSGi Console

Test plan➢ Front-end (content, design) and Author environment

➢ All templates and components (custom and out-of-the-box)

➢ Browser testing:

○ Chrome, Firefox and Safari on Mac○ Chrome, Firefox and IE on PC

➢ Languages (EN, FR, ZH)

➢ Tags

➢ Adobe Tough Day (4.5 times faster on 6.1 than 5.6!)

https://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-1/develop/test/tough-day.html

Some problems➢ "New" features

○ Personalization / Client Context tool

➢ Backend system change

○ Switch to the Oak-based content repository

➢ Authoring problem

○ New workflows

Broken Sidekick➢ ~2500 pages with accidental "Target"

○ No visible change to page in 5.6

○ In 6.1 the Sidekick breaks

➢ Enable "Client Context" on Author?

○ An unfamiliar feature available to everyone

➢ Disable component targeting

○ Feature is not used at preset

○ Revert pages where target was invoked

○ Transparent to users

Slow program search➢ Program queries used full-text search

○ Example: jcr:contains(., 'biology')

○ Worked great in 5.6

○ 30-60 secs in 6.1

➢ Differences in how queries work in Oak

○ Oak does not index content by default

○ Queries still work, but probably very slow

○ Custom indexes need to be created

○ Lucene or Solr for speedy full-text search

Sub-assets are confusing

➢ Sub-assets are automatically generated for PDF files uploaded to the DAM

○ Not in 5.6

○ Generates sub-asset PDF files for each page

Big Day - Friday, October 2, 2015➢ Code freeze

○ Final code release on Monday, September 28

➢ DAM freeze○ Thursday, October 1 at 5 p.m.

➢ Content freeze○ Friday, October 2 at 5 p.m.○ We had access to make emergency changes

➢ Upgrade process○ Friday at 5 p.m. - Sunday at 5 p.m.

➢ Back to normal on Monday, October 5○ Redirect to new Author link

Success?➢ Experienced problems a month after go-live

○ Degrading Author performance○ Blocked replication queues○ Necessary reboots○ Rapid repository growth

○ Repository corruption

➢ Learning curve for AEM maintenance and fine-tuning

○ Operations Dashboard○ Monthly JCR compaction○ Custom indexes, Lucene/Solr

What’s next

➢ Student Information System (SIS) - Integration projects

➢ UX lab

➢ Social Communities

➢ New visual elements

➢ Network with other Universities on AEM

solutions.forrester.com/Global/FileLib/Reports/Competitive_Strategy_In_The_Age_Of_The_Customer.pdf

Q & A