Improving the collaborative editing process with the new degree finder admin system
With the launch of the latest edition of the undergraduate degree finder, the Prospective Student Web team has also launched the new degree finder admin system. This blog compares the new system to the methods we have used to date for our collaborative editing process, highlighting some of the new features that will improve the efficiency and self-sufficiency of our collaborative work with colleagues across the University.
Introducing the new degree finder admin system
The launch of the latest edition of the undergraduate degree finder marks some major positive changes to our content review cycle for undergraduate programmes. These changes have been made possible by features in our new degree finder admin system, which has been designed collaboratively and iteratively over the last four years, with input from several teams and departments.
Read Neil Allison’s project update blog from October 2024
Read other blog posts about the new degree finder and prospective student web estate project
While this blog focuses on our content review cycle for undergraduate programmes, the new system will also have benefits for the postgraduate content review cycle in due course. Editors will be introduced to the new system when we begin preparing the 2026 entry edition of the postgraduate degree finder in the coming months.
Our collaborative editing process to date for undergraduate programmes
For the past few years, our team has used multiple web-hosted applications to collaboratively review, edit and publish programme content; namely the legacy UG DF (undergraduate degree finder) admin system, where an edition is published and in-cycle changes are made, and ContentWorkflow, a third-party web platform where content can be reviewed and edited by multiple users.
Although this multi-platform approach met our requirements in the short term for a collaborative editing process, it highlighted inefficiencies for our team resource. Content that has been edited and reviewed can only be added to the legacy admin system for publication by manually by copying and pasting it from ContentWorkflow into a programme’s individual text fields in the admin system for hundreds of individual programmes! This task is time-consuming even when shared by multiple team members – often taking up the entire month of February for the Content Ops team – and is repetitive enough to create lots of room for human-error typos.
Legacy admin system
The legacy UG DF admin system will be retired in Autumn 2025 when we complete the switch to the new admin system. In the meantime, it continues to host the degree finder edition for 2025 entry, so that the edition’s programme pages remain published until the academic year begins.
Having reached “end of life” status, the legacy admin system has several limitations:
- various bug fixes and workarounds over the years have made it impossible for developers to make any changes to its features without accidentally creating additional bugs
- most programme editors have no access to the system due to its limited options for user permissions, meaning that the system cannot facilitate collaborative editing
- text formatting options are limited and require editors to manually add Markdown or HTML syntax
- limited infrastructure does not allow for incorporating automations or uploading files for bulk content updates
ContentWorkflow
Our team has used ContentWorkflow (formerly GatherContent) for several years alongside the legacy admin system, enabling colleagues across the University to collaboratively review and edit programme content.
ContentWorkflow has worked well overall as an interim solution for the legacy admin system’s limitations, streamlining the collaborative editing process in many ways, but also brought its own limitations:
- working with content in the application requires extra steps of setting up content templates, exporting the latest degree finder content from the legacy admin system, and importing data into ContentWorkflow
- its many bespoke features created a learning curve for new users and required additional training and guidance documentation provided by the PSW team – some users found this too much of a barrier to engaging with ContentWorkflow and chose to use Word docs and spreadsheets instead as workarounds
- dependency on a third-party service and its pricey annual subscription created data privacy and budget concerns; our team had no option to propose changes to the system that might improve the user experience (such as improvements to the revision history feature)
Our new and improved editing process
Many of the new degree finder admin system’s features were developed to address limitations of our previous multi-system approach to the content review cycle.
It has several key benefits when compared to the soon-to-be-retired admin system, including:
- a user interface structured for more intuitive navigation; visually similar to the University’s EdWeb 2 CMS
- secure access for editors via myEd authentication; no need to create a new user account
- various options for a user’s permissions, including editor, viewer and publisher levels
- a text editor plugin with built-in formatting options, allowing a user to preview formatting applied to text while editing
- all users can preview a draft version of an edited page before changes are published
Other features of the new admin system meet our collaborative editing needs in lieu of ContentWorkflow. These include:
- progressive workflow stages for the annual review cycle allow users to edit and comment on a draft version of a programme page, and to compare revised versions of the draft across workflow stages
- comment functionality – allows editors to discuss edits and revisions within the admin system
- development and maintenance of the system is provided by internal resource, making the system affordable and customisable
- improved efficiency for our overall team resource; no more repetitive copy-and-pasting task
An all-in-one system for reviewing, editing and publishing
In a broad sense, the new admin system will allow our team to complete our content review cycle work more efficiently and self-sufficiently.
The degree finder content’s collaborative editing workflow can now be managed from start to finish within the new admin system, meaning that we no longer dependent on a third-party platform to meet our process needs.
Our team will also be very glad to leave behind the annual monotonous task of copying and pasting between systems, and to put team resource towards other content operations projects alongside our streamlined collaborative editing process.
Flowcharts visualising the legacy multi-system approach and the new all-in-one system approach to the collaborative editing process for undergraduate programme content
Plans to introduce editors to the new degree finder admin system
Undergraduate degree finder editors will be granted full editor access to relevant programme drafts when we begin the content review cycle for UG 2027 this summer.
In meantime, our team is planning to share system “sneak peeks” in the form of a series of blogs over the coming months, showcasing the features that are most relevant to reviewing and editing programmes.
We will also be preparing training materials and user guides for editors over the next few months, and will share these to support users as they become familiar with the new system. We’re looking forward to working together with editors in the new admin system and to receiving your feedback about how it’s working for you.
Contact the Prospective Student Web team via email: cam-student-content@ed.ac.uk
