Plone at University of Jyväskylä - 10 Years of Happiness
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Plone at University of Jyväskylä - 10 years of happiness, and counting Rikupekka Oksanen Plone Conference 2014
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Transcript of Plone at University of Jyväskylä - 10 Years of Happiness
Plone at University of
Jyväskylä
-10 years of happiness,
and counting
Rikupekka Oksanen
Plone Conference 2014
A Story of
How a small science university from middle of
nowhere grew up to have the 2nd biggest web
presence of Finnish universities, and has 80+
Plone sites or customized services to make it a
better place to study and work.
So This Is a
Plone Success Story!
3 Services to Focus On
● www.jyu.fi - Our main website
● moniviestin.jyu.fi - Our video portal
● koppa.jyu.fi - Course material delivery
Who Am I
Rikupekka Oksanen
Twitter: @rikupekka
● Plone-user/site
builder/support/trainer/project manager 2004
->
● Web developer (HTML/CSS) 1996 ->
Important at Home
● 2 cats
● 2 dogs
● 2 kids
● 1 wife
Important at Work
● Plone-sites
● Plone-based services
● (Agile) Development
● Liking every day
● Great team
How Do I See Plone?
“When you have a hammer
everything looks as nails”
Don’t think I’m comparing Plone to a
mere hammer
Plone is Powerful like a
Planet Eating Space Dragon
That’s on Your Side
Plone has only 1 feature
There is no thing it cannot do.
- M. Ohtamaa
If Plone Was a Superhero...
It Would Be Fantastic Four
Smart and Flexible, Like Mr. Fantastic
zmi zmi zmi
Powerful, Like The Thing and Human Torch
Also Well Known and Visible, Like
Invisible Woman
Earth calling, next stop, Finland
University of Jyväskylä
“A significant multi-discipline research
university and an expert in education”
https://www.jyu.fi/en/introduction
7 faculties
15 000 students
2 600 staff members
A Really Diverse Environment
● Every faculty, every department is very
independent
● Everyone is accustomed to some degree of
freedom on how to do things
● Nobody likes to be told which system to use
Academic freedom
IT-Services
● 90 people
● Infrastructure unit
● Customer support unit
● Development unit (that’s us).
15 developers
● https://www.jyu.fi/itp/en
Case 1: www.jyu.fi
Once Upon a Time in 2005
The university websites were incoherent mess
of static html-pages, updated by a handful of
IT-specialists.
Actually kind of clean design...
And Now?
The university websites are incoherent mess of
Plone-pages, updated by hundreds of staff
members.
?
In 2014
● We have some 80+ Plone websites and
services from small to very large and
complex
● Changed the whole organization culture on
how to do web content management
Statistics on www.jyu.fi
● 180 000 visitors/month
● 2 000 000 page views/month
● Hundreds of content managers
2nd Best in Web Visibility
of Finnish universities
http://www.webometrics.info/
JYU is 7th biggest university in Finland.
Google Page Rank: 7
Lots of Content
2014 we have some 250 000 content objects in
www.jyu.fi (public)
Not including the intranet material, course
material or video -> Add some 200 000+ more.
Back to 2004, when THIS happened
And him
Jussi Talaskivi
https://twitter.com/jptalask
A brilliant information system architect
“Jussi is always right”
Jussi came to know Zope in 2002 and Plone in
2004 and then we had our first Plone-site
running.
It was a staff training portal.
We Were Working in a
Separately funded “Virtual University” project
→
Lots of freedom to try and develop new things
In January 2005
● Three faculties wanted to renew their sites:
Humanistic, Information Technology and
Education
● University Communications Unit was a key
player
● And our Virtual university project jumped in
as a technical aid (=Jussi and me)
User Needs
● There should be uniform theme to the sites
● Content would be text, links, images, files
● Easy to maintain through a browser
User Needs + Solution = Victory
● It was clearly web content management the
faculties needed
● So we suggested that new sites would be
done with Plone, because we knew it
● Nobody objected :)
How It Was Done?
● No project plan
● No gathering exact requirements beforehand
● Just a couple of meetings with the pilot
faculties’ soon to be content managers
In Spring 2005
● We had unskinned Plone preview-site with
basic folder structure
● Plone-training was real work - people
managed real content at the unskinned
preview-site.
Also In Spring 2005
● Some ploneCustom.css
● Internal user accounts (compatible with
LDAP accounts)
So, Plone Is
Easy enough to use for anyone.
Though Plone 2.0.5 was a bit simpler than 3 or
4...? (how about Plone 5?)
Until the End of 2005...
Other 6 faculties followed.
Voluntarily
+ New front page to www.jyu.fi
“Not a real project”
● In 2006 we looked back of what was
achieved
● A full renewal of university website +
organizational change
● Yet someone was upset: “That was not a
real project, it didn’t have project plan or
start/end date”
● #NoProjects
Some Milestones
2007: Plone 2.1 +
dividing one big
site to smaller
ones
2007: Plone 2.5,
integration with
other systems
2009: Plone 3, New
Plone-products,
“Presscenter”.
LDAP
2014: Plone 4.3
Continuous development
Living on the edge
We have always used the latest version of
Plone. Even alphas for production sites.
Plone has been solid even at that stage.
How about Plone 5? :)
Full Throttle
After 2007 we had great developers on board,
and that's when more magic started to happen.
Some In-House Plone Add Ons
● Dynapage (Shiny frontpage with carousel and
collections)
● Portalview (Shinier frontpage with custom layout, css,
carousel, tabs, RSS, accordion etc.)
● TUTKA-page (List of publications - integrated)
● Study Programme (integrated)
● Personnel roster (Home made FSD)
● Presscenter (For news and events)
● Office add on to Plone Form Gen (Better Excel
integration)
Don’t Get Me Started on Form Folder
It rocks.
Thousands of forms.
Saves years of work and pain compared to
paper processes.
And its “green” :)
Plone Help Center
● Thousands of How-To’s, tutorials, manuals
● Changed organization culture to making
guides in a certain way
● Guides can be differentiated in search
results from other content
What About the Happiness?
Content Manager Feedback 2014
● Plone is a system among others, no fuss
● Using Plone usually couple of times/week
● Easy to get going
● Friendly support
Here Are Some Plone Users
Look How Happy They Are
Even the Developer Is Smiling
Things Could Be Better
● Finding balance between coherent and
flexible web presence
● Too much content in www.jyu.fi - hard to
find the stuff you need
● Site performance needs attention at times
● At some point Plone was not optimal in
“small pretty websites”
Backglog is Huge
Then There Is the "Browser" from Hell
http://blog.mathewdesign.com/2013/07/18/does-ie-still-sucks/
New Version of IE is better than the
old one?
• Yes, it renders pages incorrectly faster
• TinyMCE 4 with IE10...
Happy Thoughts!
Future of www.jyu.fi 2015
● Plone 4.3 to main website (from 4.1.6)
● Plone 5 to some sites
● New Presscenter for publishing news and
events, content synchronized to department
sites
● New staff and student portals
● Visual facelift
Case 2: Moniviestin
Moniviestin
= Direct translation of multimedia
Moniviestin is a web based system for
delivering text, images, video and audio
content.
http://moniviestin.jyu.fi
Moniviestin
Back in 2003 someone suggested that
streaming video on the net would be cool.
You know, 2 years before YouTube.
Why Moniviestin?
● Easy to upload and manage video content
● Secure, data stored on university servers
● Fine tuned service for capturing video, not
just a platform
What Makes Moniviestin So Great?
1. Easy to put video and other material online...
2. and then hide it!
Seriously
The most important feature is
to hide the video somehow
1. Hashed URL, not indexed
2. Pathkey protection
3. Plone permissions
Pathkey
● A password that hides viewing of the
folder/page/content
● Easy to use
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/jyu.pathkey/1.1.3
External Moniviestin Clients
● Other universities and schools also use
Moniviestin:
● http://moniviestin.jamk.fi/
● http://moniviestin.jao.fi/
● http://moniviestin.uta.fi/
Continuous development
Moniviestin Timeline
2003: first version
zope + quicktime
2007: Moniviestin 2
using Plone 2.1
2010: Moniviestin
3, Plone 4 +
encoding
backend, mp4,
HTML5
2012: Totally
renewed encoding
backend, HD and
mobile videos
2013: Better UX,
chat, subtitles,
encoding, etc.
2014: Automated
lecture capturing,
1080p, better
mobile UX
Cool Features
● Automated lecture capturing in certain
auditoriums, triggered by bookings
● Live broadcasts
● HD, mobile support
● Chat, Commenting, Chapters etc.
● + All the power of Plone for content,
workflows and user management
“Full Stack” Service
● Hardware - Own servers and storage
● Software - Open source and customized
● Service - Support, lecture capturing, video
recording service
Students Are Happy
Studying can be like this
Case 3: Koppa
Koppa = basket
Koppa
● Easy to use course material delivery
system
● Integrated with our study information system
Korppi (groups, permissions, automatic
content creation)
Koppa
In 2008, after few years of Plone usage at JYU,
people asked for same kind of ease of use to
delivering course material to course students.
Koppa
● A: Public material
● B: Course material only for logged in
students enrolled in the courses
● Further developed using user feedback
Usual Case
1. A teacher adds a course to Korppi
2. He clicks a button to create course folder to
Koppa
3. Course folder, groups and permission are
generated automatically
4. Teacher adds files to Koppa
5. Students log in and access the files
Benefits?
● Optima and Moodle were too complicated for
simply delivering material
● Building an integration between Korppi and
Plone was possible
● Content managers had seen Plone in action
in departmental sites
Koppa for Open University
● Another Koppa instance for Open University
https://www.avoin.jyu.fi/en
● Students can also return assignments
● 14 000 students
● 15 000 assignments per year
● Main eLearning platform for Open University
students
Open University Compared to
Faculties
● Different course structure
● Studies are paid for
● Students come and go
● Students from every age group, from 18-99
years
Really Easy End to End Service
1. Enroll to courses
2. Pay online
3. Start studying in Koppa (often using
captured lecture videos in Moniviestin)
4. Repeat
Koppa Timeline
2008: First
version. Pilot use.
Works great.
2009: Real use.
2010: Open
University Koppa
development in 4
months. 15000
students.
2011-2012:
Making both
Koppas better
2013: Web
payment
integration. Enroll
- pay - study
2014: Plagiarism
detection. Net
Exam
Why Koppa?
We have other elearning systems too: Optima,
Moodle
● The simplicity: 1. deliver material 2. collect
assignments.
● The power of Plone: thousands of dynamic
groups, several permission levels, different
folder structures etc.
Students Are Happy
Study whenever, where ever
Summary
Content and Usage
● 10 years of Plone, 12 of Zope
● 80+ sites or services
● 500 000+ content objects
● 3 000 000+ page views/month
Plone Staff
● Devops and support
● Our development/support team has now 5
people (3 are fixed term contracts)
● Other Python-development too (Pyramid)
● 1 person at Communications unit does part
time support and training
Support and Training
● Plone-guide in Finnish and in English
● Plone training every week during semesters
(2h)
● Advanced Plone-training: Form Folders,
Dynapage, Plone tips
● Content manager seminars twice/year
● Some 1000-1500 support requests/year
Development Formula for the Win
● In-house development team
● Integration with other university systems
● User feedback
● Open source
● Agile
● Automated tests
● Continuous deployment
In Action
● Out of the box Plone offers so many features
and TTW customization options that iterative
development is easy
● Just build out a site, clickety click dexterity
content types and show the customers:
“How about this?”
Customization & Integration
● We get even more business value out of
Plone when we customize it
● Or integrate it with other systems
● ...But we got pretty far with Plone itself
Plone for Diverse Organizations?
● You can start small and go as far as you like
● Open source - no licence costs!
● Great language support
● Need an add on? Just install! For free!
● Integrations are possible
● Flexible and powerful
Gallery
● Departmental sites
● Student Portal, Staff Portal
● “Old maps”-portal
● Faceted Search
Gallery continues
● ePortfolio
● Payment services o Over 1 000 000€ cash flow/year
o Online store
o Form folder + payment
o Enroll + pay
● Diazo-themed sites
● etc.
Looking forward to
201Plone5
Plone, Live Long and Prosper
Any Questions?
