Awesome for content management, very customizible, but workflow needs work.
August 27, 2014

Awesome for content management, very customizible, but workflow needs work.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Standard Enterprise

Overall Satisfaction with Cascade Server

We use Cascade Server at MSU Infrastructure Planning and Facilities. It hosts the website for the unit and will soon host a few smaller websites that fall under our jurisdiction. While the Communications office (my office) is the main user, other departments have contributor access to certain parts of the system to be able to update their own departmental content (but not publish it). The product helps us manage the massive amount of web content in a smart way.

Pros

  • It is very customizable provided that you have a good development team. You can make it work best for your content.
  • Levels of user permissions and workflow allow you to give just enough access to employees in your organization so that they can update their own content, thus taking some work out of the admin's hands, while still requiring an approval process before publishing so that content can meet the Communications/PR office's standards.
  • The system can be used to run multiple websites while your users have the same user accounts for those different websites.

Cons

  • Workflow steps are clumsy. While workflow itself is good, there is a separate screen after the "Submit" button for users to add comments. The screens should be combined or developers should have an option to turn the comment field off.
  • The notification e-mails Cascade sends with workflow steps are horrid. They contain no information about which page the e-mail is notifying you of. Due to this, our office had to come up with a standard for naming workflows after the page we are editing.
  • The default interface text size is quite small. I always hit "Ctrl +" a few times before I start working to zoom the screen in.
  • Definitely increased employee efficiency
  • More consistency with web content/better look for the brand
  • WordPress,mura
Similar to both Cascade and MURA, Cascade needs some initial customization to make it work for you. Cascade allows you to do more with your templates. It breaks the templating process into many layers. Once you learn the system, it makes the content types easier to customize.
I am overall satisfied with Cascade Server. Plus, I know so much about it now that the learning curve is next to nothing, where it would be more work for me to have to learn a new CMS.
How many types of content (page types) do you plan to have on your site? If many, do you have a developer on staff that is either trained in Cascade or willing to learn it?

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