I will showcase through various projects the different usage and benefits of Plone at our university. I will highlight the core aspects of Plone through different cases: Flexible permission management, overall robustness, content management usability, possibility to integrate to other systems, some TTW-tricks where you don't need programming skills, workflows, content rules etc.

1. JYU. Since 1863. 1
By the Power of Plone - Case
Carousel at University of
Jyväskylä Revisited
Rikupekka Oksanen
University of Jyväskylä
Plone Conference 2020
11.12.2020

2. Contents
1. Intro to JYU
2. 2003-2007
3. 2007-2012
4. 2012-2019
5. 2020
6. Summary
11.12.2020JYU. Since 1863. 3
Rikupekka Oksanen
University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 2001 ->
Team lead, agile enthusiast
Plone-user since 2004: Site builder, trainer,
foundation member, marketing team
Co-founder of AgiNotes

3. University of Jyväskylä
• 15 000 students + 15 000 in Open university
• 2700 staff
• 6 faculties, science, IT, humanities, education,
sports, business
• Digital services – we maintain, support and
develop digital solutions for the university
• https://www.jyu.fi/en
11.12.2020JYU. Since 1863. 4

4. JYU. Since 1863. 7
In the beginning: Zope sites 2003
11.12.2020
• It all started in Virtual university project that
had a mandate and possibility to explore
new ways of doing stuff through internet
• Jussi Talaskivi found Zope and Plone for us
• In 2003:
Couple of sites built on Zope
Content editing through a browser (-> Netscape
navigator)

5. JYU. Since 1863. 8
Moniviestin 2003
11.12.2020
• Moniviestin = multimedia
• Video publishing platform,
live streaming and recordings,
text, images, files
• Built on Zope
• Content editing through
browser
• Concept: Channels,
programs, media pages
• Build time: few months

6. JYU. Since 1863. 9
TUTKA 2003
• TUTKA is a
research and
publication
data system
• Built on Zope
• Still running 
11.12.2020

7. JYU. Since 1863. 1011.12.2020
Moniviestin 2003
• Killer feature: PUBLISH
and HIDE videos
Zope Private state and so
called pathkey feature

8. JYU. Since 1863. 11
First Plone sites: virtuaaliyliopisto 2004
11.12.2020

9. JYU. Since 1863. 12
www.jyu.fi 2005 - faculties
• Faculty public
websites
• 3 faculties at first
who wanted to
renew their sites
• Other faculties:
“We want that too!”
• Plone 2.05
11.12.2020
Images from Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/

10. JYU. Since 1863. 13
www.jyu.fi 2006
11.12.2020
• University
main website
• LDAP
integration for
editors

11. JYU. Since 1863. 15
Koppa 2009
• Learning Management
System (LMS)
• Super simple:
1. Show course material
to students on a course
2. Show public material
• Integration to study
information system
Korppi
• Plone 3
11.12.2020

12. JYU. Since 1863. 16
Avoimen Koppa 2010
• LMS for Open university
• Show material to students,
permission and group
integration
• + Students can return
assignments
• Build time: 3-4 months
• 1st and very important step:
just deploy an empty Plone
site, so editors can create
content, while we develop
other features
• Plone 4 (Beta)
11.12.2020

13. JYU. Since 1863. 17
Moniviestin 2010
• Video
publishing
platform
• Plone 4
• Mobile playback
support
• HTML5 video
11.12.2020

14. JYU. Since 1863. 18
Moniviestin 2010
• Other universities to use it too
11.12.2020

15. JYU. Since 1863. 19
Eportfolio 2010
• Student portfolio
• Skills, objectives,
different portfolios
• Drag and drop
tiles, custom
content types,
export etc
• Last developed in
2013, still running
just fine
11.12.2020

16. JYU. Since 1863. 20
Payments 2011
• “We want a shop to sell pens and
mugs”
• But before that: a whole platform
to sell digital products
• Combined with Plone Form Gen
– a flexible way to create custom
enrollment+payment forms
• Integration to financial systems
and payment provider
• Throughout the years:
10 000 000+ € in sales,
100 000+ transactions
11.12.2020

17. JYU. Since 1863. 21
Intranets 2011
• Faculty and departmental
intranets
• Basically: show info that’s
only for that department
• Create a folder and set
intranet workflow there
• LDAP groups and Plone
groups (manual, but
infinitely flexible)
• A natural growth in
adoption, not a strictly lead
one
• Still in use 2020
11.12.2020

18. JYU. Since 1863. 22
kans.jyu.fi 2011
11.12.2020
• Just a public
Plone 4 site
created back in
2011
• Custom content
type with search
• Still running, it
seems

19. JYU. Since 1863. 23
www.jyu.fi 2012
• New theme
• Plone 4
• Responsive
design
11.12.2020

20. JYU. Since 1863. 24
Opiskelijan kompassi 2012
• Student wellbeing service
based on psychology research:
Material on coping with anxiety,
depression, stress, feeling down
• With 2 main functions
Self study material for
logged in users
Coached courses, with
anonymized user id’s for
students and coaches
11.12.2020

21. JYU. Since 1863. 25
Opiskelijan kompassi 2012
• Security very important,
students writing personal
journals about their
wellbeing
• Multilingual (FI, EN, IT,
DE)
• Plone 4, then migration
to Plone 5 in 2017
11.12.2020

22. JYU. Since 1863. 26
Forms 2013
• Thousands of Plone Form
Gen forms over the years
• Form = First step of
digitazing/improving old
(paper) processes
• Created by users, no tech-
wizardry needed
• We developed much used
export options to data
(Excel, text, HTML, Open
Office)
11.12.2020

23. JYU. Since 1863. 27
Sivuaineet 2014
• Portal for selecting minor
subjects
• Faceted Search Add on
• Custom content type
• No programming needed, all
through the web -editing
• Build time couple of days
11.12.2020

24. JYU. Since 1863. 28
Moniviestin 2014
• Video publishing platform
• Lecture capturing in
certain rooms and halls
• Integration to study
information system to
automatically schedule
capturing
• Touch screens for manual
use
11.12.2020

25. JYU. Since 1863. 29
Koppa 2014 ->
• 2014 Students can
return assignments
• 2015 Electronic
exams –
(development time
2 days)
• 2016 Plagiarism
detection
integration #1
• 2019 Plagiarism
detection #2
11.12.2020

26. JYU. Since 1863. 30
Humantechnology 2015
• Scientific article peer
review system
• 15+ different and
combined workflows
• Content rules,
combined with 150+
different automated
messages
• Many roles
11.12.2020

27. JYU. Since 1863. 31
Humantechnology 2015
• Using Plone portlets for
showing state/role –based
instructions that can be
easily edited
• Using Plone comments for
discussion
• Using every other Plone
feature too :)
• 45 977 content objects, with
a “paper trail” of every
message sent
11.12.2020

28. JYU. Since 1863. 32
Plomino 2015
• Needed customized
forms to collect data in
a phone survey and
then export it
•  Couple of clicks in
Plomino
• Thousands of
responses collected
• Very robust
11.12.2020

29. JYU. Since 1863. 33
EOTO 2012 and 2016
• Each One Teach One - pair
programme for students
from different countries to
learn different languages.
• Plone 3 at first, then Plone
5.
• Custom content types,
custom workflows,
permission management
11.12.2020

30. JYU. Since 1863. 34
FDPE.fi 2016
11.12.2020
• Multi-school
course listing
and enrollment
system
• Integration to
HAKA, a
Finnish identity
provider
• Custom content
types

31. JYU. Since 1863. 35
www.jyu.fi 2017
• New visual
theme
• Mosaic
11.12.2020

32. JYU. Since 1863. 36
www.jyu.fi 2017 and Mosaic
• Drag and drop free
form grid layout
• Lots of customized
tiles: hero banner,
embeds, content
listing, TOC, etc.
• Responsive
• Ready made, more
rigid templates at
first… but then
users were let loose
11.12.2020

33. JYU. Since 1863. 38
www.jyu.fi 2017
11.12.2020
• Plone 5
migration
• Amount of
content:
100 000 ++
• (Maybe we shouldn’t
have migrated
_everything_ since
2005..?)

34. JYU. Since 1863. 39
Uno Intranet 2018
• Intranet for staff (and
students)
• News, events,
instructions, memos,
search, occasional
commenting
• Ultimate news/events
generation machine
• Mosaic, bilingual
• Integrations
• Automatic groups
11.12.2020

35. JYU. Since 1863. 40
Ohjausasiakirja 2018
• Supervision
document for
doctoral students
• Full-featured digital
workflow
engine/solution,
based on Plone out
of the box –features
• Collective.flow add
on
• More info at
Ploneconf 2018
11.12.2020

36. JYU. Since 1863. 41
Palkkiolasku 2019
• Salary claims for short
term employment
• Digital forms
• Workflows
• Roles, permissions
• Robot Framework –
generate and send PDF
to external salary system
and insert data there
using a robot
• 1800 claims submitted
and delivered so far
11.12.2020

37. JYU. Since 1863. 42
Multilingual 2003-2020
• Absolutely a mandatory
feature!
• Finnish & English
• Sometimes more
• UFT-8
• Translations:
Separate language
folders
Lingua Plone (RIP) or
plone.app.multilingual
for 1:1 translations
11.12.2020

38. JYU. Since 1863. 43
Plone, a Content Management System 2020
11.12.2020
• Add content in
2004…
• …Come back in
2020 to see its still
there, still working.

39. JYU. Since 1863. 44
Avoimen Koppa 2020
• Remote exam
• Integration to
plagiarism
detection software
• 67 000 returned
assignments
(since 2015, older
ones removed)
11.12.2020

40. JYU. Since 1863. 45
Koppa 2020
• Accessibility?
Sure. Its been
there since 2012
• Integration to
new study
information
system in 2019
• 7 600 courses
• 67 000
assignments
• 109 000 pages
and files
11.12.2020

41. JYU. Since 1863. 46
Moniviestin 2020
• Integration to automatic
Finnish speech
recognition and subtitle
generation
• Various workflows for
public and internal videos
• Edit generated subtitles
in the browser
• 19 200 videos (mostly
long lectures)
11.12.2020

42. JYU. Since 1863. 47
www.jyu.fi 2020
• Another theme
revamp
• Accessibility in
focus
• More mosaic
11.12.2020

43. JYU. Since 1863. 48
Volto 2020
11.12.2020
• One public microsite and
one major installment:
• Used as a backend for
Open university study
guide
• Fast, easy to use
• Look at other
presentations for more
info

44. JYU. Since 1863. 49
Summary
11.12.2020

45. JYU. Since 1863. 50
Some hurdles throughout the years
• Internet Explorer
• Too much content on public website – old content is never deleted
• Too good SEO – “Why do these people from Australia keep
contacting me about my venomous spider research?”
• “We need a small pretty website with a carousel”
• Sometimes heavy transactions have made sites slow -> caching
• Just being able to say “no, its not possible” might have saved us
from some work 
• Learning curve for new developers can be quite steep
11.12.2020

46. JYU. Since 1863. 51
Plone excels in
• Content management – Plone folder/page structure is
easy to understand and very powerful when combined
with permissions and workflows, editors have been easy
to use
• Flexibility – as demonstrated earlier, Plone can be
integrated to anything and DO anything
• Robustness – start the service in 2011, come back in
2020 to see that it is still running.
- Want to integrate something to Plone 4 from 2012 in
2020? Sure.
11.12.2020

47. JYU. Since 1863. 52
Plone excels in
• Granular permissions – any, and I mean ANY
combination permission of role, group, workflow state,
content type or field is possible.
• Security – The whole model of how Plone runs is
inherently secure and Plone is being kept secure with
very active community commitment
• Workflows – Any combination of workflow transitions and
states and permissions is possible. Any number of
workflows can be used together
11.12.2020

48. JYU. Since 1863. 53
Plone excels in
• Accessibility – Plone is very accessible OTB
• Through The Web (TTW) editing and configuration without actual
programming. You (and even I) can do pretty much anything in a browser
through Plone and Zope (and some CSS)
• CSS classes on body - every page has excact class for folder structure,
role, content type etc. - makes customizing the views just as you need
very easy
• Readable URL’s. Not like
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/file/D65AE649-C64A-9876-33666-50C4EE70EB18?tenantId=e9662d58-caa4-4bc1-
b13c8b1acab5a11&fileType=pptx&objectUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fjyu.sharepoint.com%2Fsites%2FTestMH%2FJaetut
%20asiakirjat%2FGeneral%2FPI10%20%2010.%20kehitysinkrementti%2FDUO%20start%202020.pptx&baseUrl=ht
tps%3A%2F%2Fjyu.sharepoint.com%2Fsites%2FTestMH&serviceName=teams&threadId=19:f6bd5af867ff45df8ee0
e0ee915826f0@thread.skype&groupId=417828de-d48b-419c-93ed-72a48a627df8
11.12.2020

49. JYU. Since 1863. 54
Plone excels in
• Licence costs
• 17 years, 100+ services and sites and digital solutions,
tens of thousands of users, hundreds of thousands of
content, every imaginable integration and customization
Licence costs 0. Just plain old 0.
11.12.2020

50. Thank you!
11.12.2020JYU. Since 1863. 55
Rikupekka Oksanen
University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 2001 ->
Team lead, agile enthusiast
Plone-user since 2004: Site builder, trainer,
foundation member, marketing team
Co-founder of AgiNotes