13 May 2005 in Intergen | Comments enabled

Last Thursday and Friday I was involved in a presentation to inform Microsoft Partners about MCMS.Rapid – a product that sits on top of existing Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) installations.

This was the first time that I had delivered a presentation to people – it certainly was a little scary but I really enjoyed it. It also provided an opportunity to get to know some other people in our industry as well which was great. I also really enjoyed the flight to and from Auckland (been a while since I’ve been in a plane – now I’ve added needing to own my own plane to my list of required toys )

I will hopefully upload my presentation later today.

For anyone who doesn’t know what MCMS.Rapid is, I’ve written a mini-FAQ below.

What is MCMS.Rapid?
MCMS.Rapid is a product that sits on top of an existing MCMS installation and provides significant out-of-the-box functionality over what MCMS provides.

What sort of functionality is added?
There is a very long list so I’ll just run through a few of the key features that I liked:

• Reporting functionality (audited events)
• Template editing with out Visual Studio or SDO export/import required
• Editable site settings from within the website (heaps of them!)
• Common controls that can be added to templates without Visual Studio (again – heaps of controls)
• Extended meta-data functionality
• Heaps more

What’s the cost?
The download is free – the only cost is the time required to train people to use the product.

Is this a Microsoft product?
No – MCMS.Rapid was developed by a UK company called Artemis. Artemis had already developed much of the functionality that is included in the MCMS.Rapid product however Microsoft paid for Artemis to wrap their components up into a product that could be distributed.

Do I still need MCMS?
Yes – MCMS.Rapid simply sits on top of MCMS. It also doesn’t work on any other content management product.

Where can I find out more?
http://www.mcmsrapid.com is the official site of the product. They have great forums – I was impressed to see that the people from Artimis are extremely responsive. Also what I thought was great was their willingness to admit that there were a few bugs but they often fixed a bug within days of it being posted in the forums. Great to see.

- JD