The Aviva Stadium Dublin, 21-22 November 2013

The following slides are not just about course search!

It’s about organising and presenting STUFF!

• Projects are not just about “building a site”

• Often get requests for presentation and searching of structured data

• More than just “web search”

• Main examples: Course search / People Directories

• Lots of data of same/similar layout

• Coming from many different sources

• CMS, Student Mgt system, LDAP, Research systems

• Challenge:

• How to automate publication

• Presentation (responsive)

• Provide intuitive search

• Ease of maintenance / update

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• Houston Community College - Multiple external sources, Data & Web Object, Content Syncer , PeopleSoft www.hccs.edu/finder/

• University of St Mark & St John - JavaScript Search http://www.marjon.ac.uk/courses/

• University of Portsmouth – keywords and all data in CMS http://www.port.ac.uk/courses/

• University of Derby – PHP searching XML, all data in CMS http://www.derby.ac.uk/courses/

• University of East London – JSP & XML, data in CMS

http://experts.uel.ac.uk/course-search/

• Sacred Heart Faculty Pages - Content Sync from phone DB http://www.sacredheart.edu/facultystaffdirectory/

• SAIC Profile pages - built from LDAP and CMS http://www.saic.edu/profiles/

• SAIC – Course Search, PeopleSoft & Syncer http://www.saic.edu/coursesearch/

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240,000 course combos output via Site Manager

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• Taking data from both PeopleSoft and a legacy course system in CSV format & via MySQL.

• Syncing this with SiteManager to push out 2500

courses and 300 programs with scheduling. • Requirements and credit information all of which is

searchable and filterable by PHP. • Also combining the content syncer with the data

object to further refine the output of the possible 240,000 course combos!

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All Program information is being published to one file using the Publish to one file Navigation object.

http://www.marjon.ac.uk/courses/

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Classes are added to TERMINALFOUR Site Manager as Content; 1 class = 1 piece of Content. The Content Type has an alternative Content Layout which is used to format the Content Layout as XML.

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The programs are displayed on the page with the text/html layout. This layout links to a fulltext layout when you link on the course name.

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The rest is then is all JavaScript. Notice how the listing changes when you select a filter.

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Type in word in the search box, the listing changes as well.

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When a program is added in Site Manager, there are 2 lists, one for Letter and another for program type – Undergraduate, postgraduate.

http://www.port.ac.uk/courses/

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The program Content Type contains a list which is made up of entries (A – Z). When adding a program the user selects a letter which corresponds to the course.

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On the program page, they have the same list as the program Content Type; which is used to display what is displayed at that point. The Content Type has a Keyword Content Search Navigation object in it.

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Keyword Content Search Navigation Objects Is used to display content which matches set criteria.

17 17 t44u 2013 http://www.derby.ac.uk/courses/

The program Search Functionality is PHP. PHP is used to search the XML produced by Site Manager. Site Manager outputs a Page Layout as PHP this page layout has one function and that is to search the XML file.

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Programs are added to Site Manager as Content; 1 program = 1 piece of Content. The Content Type has an alternative Content Layout which is used to format the Content Layout as XML.

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Filters use a mixture of xpath & filtering through returned arrays.

Predictive text is based off Program Name within the program Content Type, it will match from three letters upwards.

20 20 t44u 2013 http://experts.uel.ac.uk/course-search/

Search function is JSP, this was custom built by Terminalfour and controls the filters and what content is displayed

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Programs are added as content using a Undergraduate and Postgraduate Content Type’s. These Content Types have alternative Content Layout that are used to format the content as XML.

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All Program information is being published to one file using the Publish to one file Navigation object.

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Content displayed on the following page is another alternative layout. http://experts.uel.ac.uk/course-search/ . When you click on program name it takes you to the normal Content Layout text/html.