Testing Contribute Publishing Server 1.11
Well, here is the promised follow-up on my evaluation of Contribute and its buddy CPS.
I had some initial trouble getting it configured so that it would tie in to our ActiveDirectory server (that way we don’t need to manage users aside from in ActiveDirectory). The problem was that I couldn’t establish a connection between CPS and AD.
My assumption at this point was that CPS as actually seeing AD, but I was providing incorrect credentials. Well, the CPS documentation states that you need to enter your user DN as follows: uid=username, ou=group, dn=server, dn=com. This never worked for connection to AD using Windows Authentication Method, eventhough I customized it to use our schema (meaning instead of uid I used samAuthentication).
Making a call to Adobe Support also proved fruitless, as they will not support unregistered (speak trial) versions of their software. When I mentioned that I was evaluating the software for a company with the possibility of a future purpose, it didn’t even phase them; *Indian accent* “I’m sorry sir, we can only support registered versions of your software.”
Back to the drawing board. Luckily (after hours of searching) I stumbled accross a post that mentioned that the user was connecting using the folliwng user DN: user@server.com. This worked like a charm!
Now that I was up and running, I ran contribute and began administering the users (I could now search active directory) and was able to establish a writer > publisher > admin workflow process. Exactly what we are looking for.
Contribute really is the optimal solution if you want to give your content writers as little or as much leeway as they need, while not sacrificing versatility (which is often lacking in CRMs with admin modules). Our users can now create whatever content they wish withing the parameters we allow them, without fear of them breaking site funcitonality; all the appropriate checks and balances are in place.
The downside is, that is is divorced from your Microsoft development path that comes with using Visual Studio. In our case that is not a real big deal, as we will simply use Adobe line of software for our public company site, and continue using Microsoft line of software for our intranet. This is a clean division of applications that corresponds to the division of responsibility (meaning that the users creating content for the public site aren’t the users managing the intranet).
What CPS provides is a tie-in to AD (user management), change control (versioning up to 99 changes per page), and mist importantly process workflow.