Webinars for Ag work groups

We have scheduled two kickoff webinars for Ag & Natural Resources Extension work groups to discuss next steps and provide resources to help you organize and prepare content for the new OSU Extension website. The same information will be shared on both webinars. Please plan to attend whichever best fits your schedule. We will post recordings on this project website. While all are welcome, the information will be geared toward work group leaders.

• January 3, 3 p.m. (Recording)
• January 11, 9 a.m. (WebEx link)

Webinar for county leaders/office managers

This webinar (Jan. 18, 9 a.m.) is an opportunity for county leaders and office managers to engage in dialogue with the Extension web project team—and with each other. We will post the recording on this project website.

WebEx link

Agenda Feedback, questions, ideas, and discussion about the following topics:

• How to identify and manage non-program content
• County presence (“landing pages”) on the new website
• How to best support you, as you receive questions from faculty, staff, and others
• The project in general

Season’s greetings to our OSU Extension Colleagues!

‘Tis the season for wrapping up (no pun intended) 2017 activities and planning for 2018. And the Extension web upgrade project is no exception.

Thank you!

It was great to connect and visit with many of you recently at Extension Annual Conference. Thank you to the program leaders and other group leaders who welcomed members of our project team to join your meetings, or otherwise used some of your valuable in-person time to discuss the website project. Thanks also to everyone who chatted with us during meals and breaks. It was helpful to hear the ideas, feedback, and questions.

After the conference, our team took a moment to celebrate the demo (a major milestone), and then got right back to work.

What’s next

Here’s what’s happening over the next few weeks:

• Two kickoff web meetings for Ag & Natural Resource Extension work group leaders in early January
  • You’ll be able to pick which to attend based on your schedule, and we’ll record them.
  • Purpose: provide specific next steps as well as tools and process suggestions to help your groups organize and prepare content
  • We are working to schedule those meetings week and will send calendar notices and emails with the details.
  • In the meantime: If your work group has already started to organize and work together, that’s great! If you have initial questions, please contact us and we can provide quick answers to help you keep on track and moving forward.
• Web meeting for office managers and county leaders in January
  • Purpose: Feedback and questions about (1) project in general, (2) any content that’s not being managed by a program/topic content team, (3) county presence on the new website
  • We are working to schedule the meeting this week and will send calendar notices and emails with the details.
• Continuing to meet with content teams
• Continuing programming, development, and site planning
• Finalizing position description and forming search committee for content strategist. This position will be a liaison between program/topic-based content teams and EESC’s web and content strategy team.

The recording from our Nov. 3 overview webinar with the Ag & Natural Resources Extension program area is now available.

Thank you to Program Leader Sam Angima for providing this opportunity.

New site for internal content

Our new internal/employee resources website will launch this week, likely on Wednesday, Nov. 15. The Employee Resources link on the Extension website will be updated to point to the new location. The new address will be https://employee.extension.oregonstate.edu

Tune in to the Nov. 17 Outreach & Engagement Quarterly Conversation for a short demo of our new intranet site.

Highlights

• The organization of the new website and the content is essentially unchanged.
• The site is now mobile friendly and incorporates the new OSU branding.
• The Out of State Travel and Professional Development forms have been recreated, with the same functionality.
• In the future (after our new external website is launched and running smoothly), we can focus on additions and improvements to our internal content.
• If you’d like to share needs, ideas, or requests for an engaging “intranet” site, please contact the project team and we will add them to our growing “wish list.”

Content teams continue to make good progress

• Nine content teams (at least one in each program area) are formed. See the content teams page for team info and progress updates.
• Over the next week, we are looking forward to kickoff meetings with the Food Safety and Home Horticulture content teams, and follow-up meetings with a couple of other teams.
• With each meeting, our project team has received valuable feedback and examples of content that are helping us revise the topic list/menus, and site structure and functions.
• This engagement with content teams is critically important in helping us prepare for an initial web demo at Extension Annual Conference. Thank you!

Content teams are making good progress

• Nine content teams (at least one in each program area) are formed.
• We’ve held content team six kickoff meetings and three follow-up meetings.
• See the content teams page for team info and progress updates.

Keep the questions coming

Thanks for asking questions! That’s how we are going to learn together through this process. Additional FAQs have been posted.

If you don’t see the answer to your question, we want to hear from you. Your feedback will help us improve our communication plan and this project blog, and inform our work with content teams.

Program Leader Sam Angima is hosting a webinar for the Ag & Natural Resources Extension Program on Nov. 3 to review the overall strategy, website content process, and expectations for working groups. Jennifer Alexander and Lucas Turpin, from the project team, will join to help answer questions. Refer to emails and calendar invitation from Sam for additional details.

New site for internal content coming soon

• We expect to launch the new internal/employee resources website the week of Nov. 13.
• To start, this will be the same content currently found in the employee resources section of the main OSU Extension website
• In the future (after our new external website is launched and running smoothly), we can focus on additions and improvements to our internal content
• If you’d like to share needs, ideas, or requests for an engaging “intranet” site, please contact the project team and we will add them to our growing “wish list.”

As you heard during the Oct. 13 OSU Extension Leadership Update, our web upgrade is on track for a March 2018 launch, thanks to support from our program leaders and a set of newly-formed, hardworking, and committed content teams.

A quick reminder of what this is all about:

We have established a new approach to digital strategy. It will enhance and support our statewide presence by adding an improved, user-focused website and, eventually a CRM (customer relationship management) tool. See “strategies at a glance” for details.

What’s happening now?

• Program leaders have begun to organize content teams. (Thank you!)
• EESC is holding kickoff meetings with each content team to begin the content strategy process.
• The content teams are coordinating statewide to take stock of existing content, evaluate it, organize it, and enter it into the new website. This includes looking at content on county and program sites.
• EESC is working on technical aspects of the new website. Our responsibility is to build the framework that allows all content to be in one place, and—importantly—how the site allows learners to view and access that content in the ways today’s audiences expect and prefer.
• We are also working to move internal content (employee resources) to a separate site within the next month.

As you have questions:

• Watch this blog and ConnEXTions newsletter for status updates and FAQs.
• Connect with your content team and program leader.
• Contact the project team.

Check out the updated timeline and milestones for the Extension web upgrade project. This will give you a high-level overview of what’s happening with the project–and when.

Project work continues at full throttle, but much of what’s happened to date has been behind-the-scenes planning, research, and early development. We’ve been working on things like server configuration. Super exciting, right? Probably not so much for you. So we didn’t blog about all those details.

Now, the development work and content strategy planning will shift and start to be a little more concrete and visual. In the coming months, we’ll keep sharing status updates via this project blog.

How does this project and timeline affect my site?
Not sure what this means for your site? Review the FAQs.
We will continue to consult with individual site managers, as needed.

Questions?
Please contact the project team. Your feedback will help us improve our communication plan and the project blog, especially the FAQs.

Are you wondering what’s happening with the OSU Extension web upgrade project? Hang in there — we are recalibrating — and will have more news soon, including updated milestones and timeline.

Worth waiting for
There is some cool stuff coming down the pipeline that will make this project better in the long run, including:

• New OSU brand
• New Extension sub-brand (expected early fall)
• New OSU and/or Drupal calendar–a priority feature for the project (expected summer)
• Drupal 8.4–includes web development features essential to this project (expected summer)

We’re hiring
An important part of completing this project is filling a key vacancy on EESC’s web and content strategy team. Here’s the job posting for the web developer position. Please share!

Questions?
Please contact the project team. Your feedback will help us improve our communication plan and the project blog, especially the FAQs.

Project timeline
In consultation with Extension administration, we have adjusted the timeline for Phase 1 milestones from late January to late March 2017. Project work continues at full throttle, to enable delivery of an excellent new user-focused, data-informed web presence and initial content strategy, as planned.

Not sure what this means for your site? Review the FAQs.

Content audit
We audited content on the main OSU Extension website — and identified and prioritized content for Phase 1 based on the project’s guiding criteria.

People/locations directory
We’ve made good progress toward priority features for the people/locations directory. Thanks to Denise Ashley for partnering with us on the current data while we develop the new directory. As usual, please send any updates for the Find Us faculty and staff directory to Denise.

What’s next
– Continue development work on priority features, including the people/locations directory.
– Continue development of initial user-friendly tags/categories.
– Design initial wireframes for page layouts. We will share examples and mockups in the coming weeks.

Questions?
Please contact the project team. Your feedback will help us improve our communication plan and the project blog, especially the FAQs.