Technical Specification

This page is intentionally very heavy on the acronyms and less on the sales jargon. Read through this and you will gain a nice overview of the technical capabilities of the Unify Content Management platform. So dig in and enjoy.

Infrastructure

• Unify is a Java EE application and is platform and database independent, which means it provides maximum flexibility as it runs on an extensive range of operating systems
• It is developed using proven design patters and open standards (JavaEE/J2EE, XML/XSL, Java portlets JSR-168), lowering total cost of ownership and enabling the quick deployment and management of highly scalable and reliable websites
• Unify uses XML for data portability and XSL for transforming content to various formats (thereby providing a clean separation of content and presentation)
• Unify has a web service interface to the content repository, and has full support for Java portlets (JSR-168)
• The inclusion of Java portlets provides greater autonomy from the vendor, as portlets are an open standard and can be added by the vendor, developed in house or purchased from other sources. Furthermore, portlets are easily customized to fit business specific needs and they can aggregate XML feeds from external sources. The inclusion of web services greatly enhances connectivity between different information systems
• Unify has developed an authentication and authorization library that abstracts all the details of the implementations, and allows users to achieve single sign on. This library exposes its functionality through a set of interfaces. Unify comes with a number of implementations, such as: Database mapping, LDAP and JAAS

Content Management

• Unify provides full support for Metadata schemas including e-GMS, Dublin Core and IPTC. VYRE metadata schemas are flexible and tags can quickly and easily be added or removed
• As Unify is an XML based solution, which includes bulk upload tools, metadata can quickly and easily be uploaded saving considerable time and effort
• Unify organises and classifies enterprise content using a rich, multidimensional taxonomy. Custom taxonomies can be imported via XML, or created through the Unify web interface
• Unify enables keyword searching but also includes full text searching capabilities. Full text searching greatly enhancing results by allowing searches throughout text as well as the metadata
• Unify has an advanced, fine grained permissions structure, which enables the creation of unlimited groups of users with different user privileges
• Unify also allows user privilege allocation for items, portlets, pages, templates and even portlets within pages
• Unify keeps a detailed audit trail over all actions performed in the system. This includes the type of action performed, the user ID, the date and time, the IP address, etc. All the information is searchable
• Advanced version control exists for both unstructured and structured content within Unify, meaning users can easily check track and reactivate versions of content and rich media assets
• Unify enables site rollback to older versions as well as scheduling for future versions
• In addition to standard workflow for publishing, collaboration and approval, Unify offers an additional business process management module, which enables the implementation of linear and nested workflows
• Native support for the localisation of content enabling translation workflows

Publishing

• Content syndication & aggregation - Unify can provide controlled XML feeds (RSS, RDF, custom) of content from the repository. These feeds can then be used by external sites or systems
• Unify has a number of navigation portlets, which can automatically generate site navigation through menus, eliminating the risk of outdated or broken links
• With Unify templates can quickly and easily be added without any vendor support. Templates can be imported from your favourite editor
  
• Unify also offers full support for cascading style sheets and XSL for clean separation of content and presentation
• A high level of accessibility is incorporated into Unify allowing an organisation to attain W3C AAA rating and meet all accessibility / legislative requirements such as the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)
• Built in functionality includes: XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets, hot keys, semantic mark-up of content, multi-lingual functionality and multiple navigation and search capabilities
• The Unify interface is web based and can be accessed through Internet Explorer version 5.5 or above, Mozilla Firefox and Safari
• Powerful caching engine enables separate caching of content and presentation. All content is cached for optimal performance
• Unique and advanced interface for content reporting and analysis, site performance and tracking