Elcom CommunityManager.Net 7.5 Sneak Peak: Improved Web Publishing

Australian based enterprise content management provider, Elcom (news, site), has a released a super secret (well not that secret) preview of what’s coming in its 7.5 release of CommunityManager.NET at the end of August. We couldn’t resist the urge to look.

What’s Coming in CommunityManager.Net

CommunityManager.NET is an enterprise application framework for content-centric web applications. The platform is module based, which allows organizations to add features as needed using one or more of the 50 enterprise modules Elcom offers. Using CommunityManager.NET organizations can create multiple types of web applications from portals to online training.

Version 7.4 has just released in July with enhancements to multilingual capabilities, offering centralized language management across an entire website. Also included in that release was URL flexibility and some nice .NET caching.

CommunityManager.NET is used by over 500 clients, primarily in Australia. The next release of the platform has an impressive number of new features such as:

• Browser-Based Publishing: Allows users to create content without using the administrative tools. The platform includes a new ‘Add Article’ button, which allows users to specify a title and description for the new content and then edit the article using a WYSIWYG editor.
• Print to PDF: This was previously in CommunityManager.NET, but was removed due to several issues with the feature in 64-bit environments. 7.5 brings the feature back, minus the bugs. Now a PDF can be generated using any page by clicking a single button.
• Delayed Publishing of Edits: Allows edits to content to go live at a later date instead of just new content.
• Improved Form Management: Improvements have been made to the user interface to make it easier to re-order forms.
• Alerts for Forgotten Check Outs: The platform can now alert users that haven’t checked content back in after an extended period of time. In addition, administrative users can take ownership of an article so that the publishing workflow can continue if a user is unable to check-in an article.

In addition to these features, Elcom is also promising several other enhancements like Campaign Monitor email marketing integration, YouTube integration, a new element for listing people, SEO improvements, simpler application of security settings from within folders, a login/logout tag that knows its state, editor switching and a few other surprises.

The addition of these features should be welcome enhancements for users of CommunityManager.Net. We will be watching for the 7.5 release.