Alumni Profile System
Personal statements and stories allow users to connect with web content on a deeper level. To facilitate this content strategy at McIntire, we crafted a flexible framework for collecting, storing, and distributing alumni profiles and testimonials.
The Challenge
In higher education, there a number of processes that seem to be consistently inconsistent. One such process is that of alumni profile and testimonial collection. During the discovery phase of McIntire’s enterprise website overhaul, we met with every internal stakeholder to better understand their individual needs and objectives for the site; there was a lot of overlap, but only two things were requested by every single department: end-to-end analytics, and strategically placed alumni profile content. Ironically, despite the universal prioritization, there was no formalized infrastructure to support either. Analytics is a topic for another day, but on the alumni profile front, we needed a tool that would support both the collection of profile content and the distribution of that content across web properties.
After a series of high-intensity whiteboard sessions, we eventually reconvened stakeholders and pitched the idea of a standardized process for obtaining profiles and subsequently storing them in a centralized repository for shared access. All profiles came through the system, and all departments would be equally entitled to use them. Everyone was 100% on board. Rallying around this enthusiasm, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work engineering something that was flexible, simple to use, and sufficiently robust to support a range of departmental needs.
System Design
Standardized process and content centralization
Since these profiles would eventually be consumed across a number of different web properties in a variety of different context, we decided that the existing WordPress CMS was a logical place for them to live. WordPress’ out-of-the-box features gave us instant support for an editorial workflow with tiered permissions, a flexible content schema that could be easily adapted with changing needs, and an admin interface that content managers already knew and loved. Of course, we added some customary panache, but in this case, opting for an existing system rather than building something bespoke was a good decision that freed us up to focus on the other critical parts of the system: the form where alumni would submit their content upon request, and the flexible data feeds that would pull the published versions into designated pages.
Vue
Node.js
Express
WordPress
Vercel
Composer
CircleCISystem Feature
Conditional inputs
We already had a dedicated alumni microsite in place, so naturally, that’s where we decided to build the profile submission form. The form destination is the same across the board, but the individual inputs are conditional based on a single URL parameter. For example, M.S. in Accounting alums will have different questions from B.S. in Commerce alums - the specific questions are defined inside WordPress and then fetched when the form is rendered in the browser. Another important URL parameter defines the staff member who actually initiated the profile request with the alum; upon submission, that person is stored as the de facto “owner” of that profile (though anyone can leverage the content.)
System Feature
Draft posts
When a form is submitted from the microsite, the data is posted to a proxy API which subsequently sends the request to WordPress, along with the requisite secret keys. If the data is valid, a new Alumni Profile draft is created and an email notification is sent to the profile “owner”. The owner can review and refine the responses, add appropriate taxonomy terms, and submit for final publication. Once a profile is published, it’s instantly distributed to designated feeds throughout the McIntire web properties.
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