Inspiring teamwork & communication with a content management system

Content Management Systems (CMS) take may shapes and forms and most are familiar with them. CMSs include everything from portals to blogs and wikis. Many organizations use CMS as websites to collate and organize information in readily available chunks. However, in a lab environment CMSs can increase teamwork and communications as well as stopping the knowledge drain as student employees graduate. Before attending SIGUCCS '05, I led the development of many new online systems for the CIRCA computer labs at the University of Florida. We were missing a central reference point and had many troubles with student employees consistently checking their emails. During SIGUCCS'05, I watched a presentation by Doug Simpson on using a CMS as a personal organization system. The CMS seemed the perfect solution to these problems and in August 2006, I launched our system based upon the e107 CMS system. After launch this system performed as expected, but had several unintended consequences. All of these have been positive such as a central repository for employee knowledge, being able to communicate easily with co-workers, and being able to announce major policy changes and know that employees have read them. This paper will examine the challenges and resources for selecting an appropriate CMS, how well the CMS has performed, the unintended consequences of the CMS, and how the CMS will expand in the future.