Windows Server

Kenn · Guest

I'm a (non-techie) consultant working at a Canadian post-secondary
institution that is using CMS to manage and publish its online calendar. This
institution will be migrating from version 2000 to v 2002 this spring. I'm
impressed by the enhancements in the new version. I'm wondering if CMS can be
used to produce a print version of the calendar? If so, how might this be
accomplished? Are there any examples of places that are doing this already?

Spencer Harbar [MVP] · Guest

Check out http://www.birmingham.k12.mi.us/Calendar
Implemented entirely in MCMS 2002 by Fluent Consulting.

hth
Spence
www.mcmsfaq.com

"Kenn" <Kenn@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:7147649B-4899-4DBB-8EAB-077D77CD8C36@microsoft.com...

Kenn · Guest

Hi Spence,
While that application looks great, it's not what I need. An academic
calendar (as it's called in Canada, at least) contains an institution's
official marketing, program and course information that prospective or
continuing students use to make educational decisions, leading to those
students applying for and registering for programs and/or courses. The
particular calendar I am referring to can be viewed at
http://www.royalroads.ca/Channels/for+learners/admissions/calendar+2004/default.htm

Thank you.

Kenn

"Spencer Harbar [MVP]" wrote:

Spencer Harbar [MVP] · Guest

Hi Kenn,

Ahh, I see!
I see no reason why this kind of material couldn't be developed with MCMS
with the program and course information being based around regular
templates, postings and potentially connected pages. The actual appplication
/registration elements would need to use some form of extension such as
Acheive Forms
(http://www.businesswebsoftware.com/AO/anon/default.aspx/AO2.1/View/?Doc=3201&Site=689).

hth
Spence
www.mcmsfaq.com

"Kenn" <Kenn@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:8209A0A6-EA46-42B1-8E36-4A2E1CE3F4E9@microsoft.com...

Kenn · Guest

Hi Spence,
Thanks for your encouraging response. Can you go a little further in walking
me through the process and the steps that I need to look into? We have an
academic calendar already published and being maintained through MCMS 2000.
We're upgrading to v 2002 in April (I hope there will be no issues for the
published content relating to this migration). Then what would be next: do we
somehow set up print-ready templates in MCMS, or can we set up templates in
some other word processing or graphics application and publish from MCMS into
those? Ideally it would be great if we ended up with a PDF version of our
calendar, which could be posted for people to download, or sent to the
printer for printing.

Just so you know, what's been done historically (I'm new here) is that the
print publishing process is completely separate from the online calendar.
It's very onerous and time-consuming and leads to conflicts between the
information in the online version and the print version. Ideally it would be
great to maintain and publish all the information through MCMS, with the
ability to repurpose it for print. That's what I'm aiming for.

Thanks for your input on this issue. I appreciate your insights.

"Spencer Harbar [MVP]" wrote:

Spencer Harbar [MVP] · Guest

Hi!

The migration from 2001 shouldn't cause you any great problems, check out
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnmscms02/html/cms_2002migrationnet.asp
for the few gotchas.

Generating a print version of your content can be as simple as creating a
printer friendly 'version' of a posting
(http://blogs.msdn.com/luke/articles/94644.aspx)

Producing a PDF will require quite alot of development however and will be
tightly coupled to the specific publication.

One approach would be to create a windows application, which uses either the
CmsApplicationContext or Web Services to retreive placeholder content and
then generates a PDF in code using a tool such as ActivePDF
(www.activePDF.com). This app could then add the PDF into a resource gallery
for it to be made available for download on the site - or just save it out
to the file system.
The amount of work envolved here is primarily driven by how
complex/arty/fancy the PDF design needs to be etc.
This approach once done would allow the use of just MCMS for the content
contribution/approval process - and you would only ever need a single
content source - the MCMS repository.

Bear in mind that any images with your content will usually be low
resolution and look pretty rough when printed - you may need to also add a
print version of the images to the resource galleries.

If you are not that picky about the final PDF design asthetic, you could
also investigate dynamic pdf generation from html
(http://www.activepdf.com/products/serverproducts/webgrabber/), or printing
to a PDF from within MCMS workflow. The disadvantage of the worflow approach
is the PDF generation can be a large bottleneck.

Whilst the above can be done, it's not an industrial strength solution by
any means :) - if you need high quality robust and flexible print
publishing, you need to look at exporting XML content from MCMS into a
product like Adobe Framemaker or some of the Adobe server software.

hth
Spence
www.mcmsfaq.com

"Kenn" <Kenn@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E9B4242F-8799-4770-B57D-DF7E353CF70A@microsoft.com...

Guest · Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 3:09 am Post subject: Re: CMS for academic calendar

Kenn, a rock-solid solution for publishing material such as your
calendars is Datazone's Miramo. Miramo uses Adobe FrameMaker as the
document / page layout engine, and can handle large and varied catalog
production runs. Input can be XML or almost any other DB-generated
format; XSLT or Miramo's built-in scripting language can be used.

PDFs could be produced for users on-demand, as well as any variation on
sections/full catalog for print production purposes. Any number of
templates could be created; data-driven formatting can easily be
accommodated, as well.

More info is available at http://www.miramo.com
[disclaimer: AxialInfo is a Miramo reseller]

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