CALmessages was originally built in 2002 by the Web Applications group in IST for the Chancellor's Communications and Resources Center. Five years later, it was in need of modification: it needed to be more robust, the user interface needed to be streamlined, and it needed to be moved off of aging hardware.
The goals of the upgrade were to:
- Move the application to a more robust environment capable of sending campuswide messages in a timely manner.
- Add new features requested by the administrators.
- Provide additional security through CalNet authentication.
- Take advantage of open-source systems to reduce ongoing costs.
- Provide faster access to LDAP and the CalMail services.
To reduce costs and take advantage of open-source systems, CALmessages was rewritten in Ruby on Rails. The site was secured using CAS, the new open source Central Authentication Service that is part of CalNet. Previously, only sections of the site were secured and administrators needed multiple logons to send emails to different groups. Now, the entire site has been secured behind CAS and administrators have a single sign-on to send multiple emails to different target audiences.
CALmessages was moved to IST's Unix webfarm, and all code for the website is now under source control using the campuswide repository based on the Subversion source control service. This provides better tracking of website and application changes and will make maintenance smoother and more reliable.
While the primary audience for CALmessages is campus administrators who need to send broadcast messages, all campus community members can take advantage of the subscription feature to sign up for specific group emails such as the Campus Administrative Memos.
Further information can be found on the CALmessages website.