Easily Manage Your Workflow Milwaukee WI

When putting a jigsaw puzzle together, it seems the last few pieces are always missing. The same thing can happen to the pieces of content needed to produce a publication. Pieces of art or text once thought to exist magically disappear. Maybe the project manager never received them. Did they get lost in production? Who was the last one to edit them? How can these pieces be tracked in a more effective way to save the time spent searching for them? Project management can be improved significantly using a single-source content management system (CMS) to store, organize, and track content pieces as well as monitor a project's status.

Tracking Content

When a piece of content—whether it is a text chunk or a graphic file—is stored in a single-source CMS, certain information is automatically captured by the system that can help a project manager track down missing content. Details such as the last user to edit the content, and the date it was last edited, are stored in the system and are readily available for any authorized user to view. This information provides a quick and easy way to get the status of a piece of content at a glance.

CMS systems typically display content in a tree view, with icons or flags that alert users to the status of the content. A quick scan down the tree will indicate if content is approved, in a draft status, or incomplete. So, when a user is ready to publish a document, she can scan the tree view and within seconds know if all the content has been approved, or if some of the content is missing or still needs attention.

Designing a Process

For in-depth tracking of a production process, CMS' have a workflow feature that allows an entire process to be easily managed. Workflow helps a project manager ensure everything is on schedule, and that all tasks are completed by the appropriate users so nothing slips through the cracks. A workflow can be built to accommodate any process or tasks that are important for a given project. If "Approve all art" is an important task, this could be built into the workflow as the step prior to "Assemble catalog" to ensure the art program is complete before beginning the assembly of the catalog.

Workflows can be built as an outline of general tasks or step-by-step, detailed tasks to suit an organization's processes and methods of production. Once a workflow is built, it can be applied to multiple projects, even to projects running simultaneously.

When a new process begins, the project manager can launch a workflow that outlines the tasks to be completed, the users who are assigned to work on those tasks, and the dates that the tasks are due. For example, a project manager launches a workflow to edit and assemble content to produce a course catalog for a local college. The workflow consists of:

1. Edit content
2. Review content
3. Repeat one and two as necessary
4. Assemble content
5. Approve catalog
6. Publish catalog

When the first task, Edit content, is launched, the CMS sends an email to the assigned user alerting her that she has a task to perform on the catalog content that is due in three days. The user can navigate directly to the content and begin the editing process. She can also post comments for other users in the workflow. When finished, the user completes her task, and an email is automatically sent to the assigned user of the next task, review content. And the process continues through the end of the workflow.

The CMS provides several ways for the project manager to view the status of the project at any time. Using the graphical workflow view shown above, the active task is highlighted to show the progress of the project. Information about who is working on the task and when it is due (or if it is overdue) displays, as well as tasks that were completed and tasks yet to be performed. A list view is also available, showing similar information that can be printed and used as a status report for the project.

The list view also provides flexibility to search for information about one specific project or across multiple projects. For example, a project manager can look up all tasks in all projects assigned to a specific user; all active tasks for each project; all overdue tasks for all projects; or all projects with tasks for a given content component. The combinations for searching and sorting workflow information are endless, giving project managers the current status of all projects quickly and accurately.

Suzanne Mescan is the vice president of marketing for Vasont Systems. Headquartered in Pennsylvania, Vasont Systems is a provider of content management software and data services. For information, visit www.vasont.com.