Check out the new features and enhancements....here are a few of the highlights. If you've been looking for any of the below features in a content management solution, give us a call today at 800.940.3087. We'd be delighted to talk with you about your Web content management needs and how CommonSpot can help.
Download a PDF of What's New in CommonSpot 4.5.
Major New 4.5 Features and Enhancements
New Browser Authoring Options/Mac Support
In addition to the ability to author content using the Internet Explorer browser, support for authoring under the Mozilla-based browsers including Mozilla 1.7, FireFox 1.0 and Netscape Navigator 7.2 is now available in CommonSpot 4.5. As such, full authoring and administrative support is now available on the Mac and Linux platforms, including a fully featured WYSIWYG editor that has equivalent functionality as provided on Windows.
Taxonomy Module
It is common for organizations and industries to have their own unique vocabulary that is used to classify content. The new Taxonomy module provides a way to formally record this vocabulary and the relationships that exist between words and concepts. Existing taxonomies can be imported as an XML document, and the new Taxonomy Classification custom metadata field can then be used to classify content to the terms in the taxonomy. The advanced filtering options in the Page Index and Custom Element have also been updated to filter results based on the associated taxonomy terms.
Collaborative Authoring
A new group authoring mode has been added to enable more collaborative authoring. Content that is ‘Work in Progress’ for one author can now be edited by another author. The “Edit Mode” option allows users with “Edit” rights to view all changes on the page - even if another user has implemented the changes. While in “Edit Mode” on a page, an author can see content that has been modified by other users, and if desired, take ownership of the content. This feature is extremely helpful for sharing the content contribution between multiple users.
Email Review
Many times it is necessary to have content approved by someone who is not a content contributor. CommonSpot 4.5 now provides an option for “Email Review”. This feature allows content contributors to send a “Preview” of a page via email. The preview can show the content from either the ‘read-mode’, ‘author-mode’, or ‘edit-mode’ view. Reviewers will receive an HTML attachment of the page containing the content. This provides a convenient mechanism to include other participants in the publishing process.
UTF-8 Support
CommonSpot. 4.5 is now fully UNICODE compliant, supporting content in any language including multi-byte languages.
Content Import/Web Services API
Over a dozen new Web Services-based API calls are now available, allowing for the programmatic creation, updating and deletion of pages, content objects, images, uploaded documents and external URLs.
Context-Sensitive Help
CommonSpot 4.5 now includes context-sensitive help through a comprehensive on-line help system. Both technical administrators and non-technical contributors can instantly access relevant documentation, tips and/or techniques from within any CommonSpot dialog - putting help right at their fingertips.
Transaction Logging
In order to better support emerging regulations regarding audit trails, and to enable tracking of contributor actions and events, a configurable transaction logging facility is now available. An interface in the Administrator allows you to configure which events/actions to track, and the duration for keeping the log data. Transaction log data can be easily exported to Excel for further analysis.
Performance Improvements
Enhancements have been made to improve overall performance, allowing for faster rendering and publishing of content in both 'Author' and 'Read' modes. Additionally, several new guides have been included as part of the re-structured documentation which focus on system performance and configuration options. These guides provide best practices for achieving optimal site performance.
User Interface Scalability
Numerous dialogs across the product have been enhanced to better accommodate the display of content for larger sites that have many authors, pages, subsites, etc. Filters have been added to the dialogs for Page Finder, My Pages, Page Gallery, Image Gallery and Page & Image Management Reports to limit results displayed. Limits for the number of pages to be displayed can be set in the CommonSpot Administrator.
