NML has built a number of Enterprise Content Management Systems (CMS). The differentiator between our CMS base layer of code and the hundreds of other CMS’s on the market is that we specifically focus on building systems that illustrate the client’s business model (and thus data model) on the web.
A good example of this is the content management system we have recently delivered for Nedgroup Investments.
Investigating their business model – namely fund management – one realises that there is a complex domain that relates various entities together. Simply described, there are fund managers who handle various funds (this relationship is many-to-many). There are funds that are made up of various asset classes, sectors and share allocations – the funds are also categorised into various fund categories. Each fund has a performance over time, a fund price sheet and a fund fact sheet (media that is associated with the fund).
The website for Nedgroup Investments needed to manage all of this data and illustrate it on their website. The data changes frequently and the changes in fund manager, fund description, fund strategy, holding and the associated media needed to be managed through the content management system administration console (the administration console also needed to be a web based application).
We used our CMS base layer to facilitate this application.
The aspects of the NML Content Management System that allowed us to build the application rapidly were:
Navigation and Site Map builder
Pages can be inserted into a parent child navigation structure. The parent child relationship (generations) can go infinitely deep. A child can also be copied to another location or orphaned (not attached to the navigation structure of the main site).
- Navigation and site map builder
User Management
The content management system allows for the creation of as many users as the system requires. The Users are allocated to various roles: Administrator; Publisher; Approver; Content Creator; and/or Media Manager. Additional roles can be added into the system.
- List of users
- Creating a new user
Generic Content Management
The tiny MCE rich text editor is used to create and edit the textual content. Images and media can also be uploaded and aligned within the text. The content has an “effective from” and “effective to” date on each record. If the “effective to” date is not set the record will stay live indefinitely. Once published a new content version of the record must be created and taken through the publishing workflow before the new version will supersede the old record. A preview can be viewed at any stage in the editing process.
In content managed websites it is often the case that lists of data need to be displayed (funds in the case of Nedgroup). The NML CMS facilitates the paging, sorting and viewing of list data. The lists of data can be linked to the entities that are stored in the database and automatic field linking is applied to the list. Place holders in the html that must repeat are replaced by data that is stored in the database.
- Creating new content
List and related data display management
The specific item can be drilled into and viewed independently. When viewing a single record (record profile) place holders are again replaced by data that is stored in the database for that record.
Content Publication Workflow
All records are taken through a publishing workflow. The phases are Creation, Edit, Approve and Publish. At each stage in this workflow, emails are sent to those in the group that must take the content record through to the next stage of publishing. If a record is rejected, a reason for rejection is given and this reason is attached to the workflow reason.
MVC Solution Framework
The NML CMS relies on the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Framework which allows for the incorporation of almost all AJAX/JQuery files into the content management system.
