Item: Jadu CMS
Rating: 9
Author: Rachel Hannie

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Jadu CMS is being used for our main home page for our college. We have a Marketing Web Team that manage the CMS and approves all content changes, among other duties, but we have users throughout our campus using it as content editors. We had previously used a Luminis (Ellucian) product to edit our web pages, but support for the product was being dropped by the company. It was also a very clunky and hard to use system. The decision was made to go with Jadu CMS over other products.

Pros and Cons

The interface to edit content is simple and resembles word processing programs with its editing abilities.
If you do not have a separate form creation program/application, Jadu has its own form module.
Jadu gives the ability for users to sign in on your webpage and have different options for logged in users.
Even if you haven't used the system in a long time, it's easy to get reacquainted with the user interface.
The Jadu team we worked with kept constant communication with us throughout the different stages of switching to a new CMS.
Jadu has a great support website that will allow you to search problems, submit your own, and receive responses from the support team.

Sometimes when copying/pasting content, there hidden HTML elements that don't show up on the WYSIWYG when an editor makes the changes, and it requires the administrators to go back in and edit the HTML to get it to look the same.
If users are allowed to add pictures to the system, they're also allowed to delete photos. There's no middle ground on that.
Since Jadu is not geared toward educational use, Jadu has a great potential for the future.

Return on Investment

Jadu has allowed us to allow more users to edit their own content, and in a much easier format.
Compared to our old CMS, there are more features available through Jadu that helps us make our website better.

Alternatives Considered

Luminis CMS

I was not part of the team that evaluated other products during the CMS search. I did however use our old CMS from Luminis, which was not a great product. It's almost not fair comparing the two products because Jadu blew it out of the water. I do know that our company researched several companies and felt that Jadu was the company that would suit our needs the best.

Likelihood to Renew

I decided not to give it a 10 because I don't know what else is out there in terms of CMS products, and there's a bias when you've only been exposed to one product. At my current job, I used Jadu sparingly but it's easy to get reacquainted with the software and the look and feel of the CMS.

Likelihood to Recommend

Jadu CMS is not currently geared toward the academic side, but more of the business/government types of organizations. Things can be tweaked to suit your needs, but sometimes there are limitations. The programmers are very helpful in assisting with that.

If you have some in house programmers, and you can get developer training, they will be able to program their own custom widgets to use on your website. We did not have programmers but managed to create a few simple widgets.

There's also a marketplace to look for other widgets that you could use on your site.

Users and Roles

110 - Because we're an educational institution, our users are representatives across different departments across campus. We have both faculty and staff using the program.

Support Headcount Required

2 - Our web team is a part of the marketing department. They have backgrounds in graphic design and web development (HTML, CSS). To completely utilize Jadu, it would be good to have someone that knows Javascript and PHP.

Usability

For the common user, Jadu is very easy to use and to understand. For the more complex user/administrator, there's a lot of power to be harnessed in HTML editing, creating widgets, editing styles, creating workflows, and other advanced features Jadu can work up for the customer.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar	None

Easy Tasks

Creating a workflow for approving submissions.
Adding users and setting permissions for what users can do.
Creating a homepage template to use on other homepages.

Difficult Tasks

Moving groups of downloads into a different order instead of just by date of creation.
Uploading a large group of downloads.
Finding hidden HTML elements when copying/pasting to the editor window.

Jadu in an Educational Setting

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Jadu CMS