FAQ on aalto.fi and Drupal

There are five different types of webpages at aalto.fi: Article, News, Event, Hub and Research group. They fulfil different purposes and should be used accordingly.

• Article pages are used to present any type of information or content. The topic can be, for example, collaboration options, a certain research area or architecture in Otaniemi. Here's how to create an article.
• News pages are used for news and news only. Current news will be shown on other pages where news are lifted up. Read more about creating news.
• Use the Event category for an upcoming happening such as staff trainings, exhibitions, dissertations and open lectures. Events will be shown on other pages where events are lifted up. Learn how to create an event.
• Research group pages are used to present research groups at Aalto, learn more on the instructional page.
• The website is based on hubs and content is centralised under them. Only the Digital Communications team can create them since they have a specific purpose for the site structure. Read more in the answers above.

The site is based on hubs and a considerable amount of content is centralised under their respective hubs which enables showcasing content from one hub on another hub by the use of liftups. The creation of hubs at aalto.fi is centralised to the Digital Communications team only, who evaluate hub requests versus the overall coverage of information that the hub might have. Aalto University is an example of a hub that covers the organisation, history, annual reports, rankings, and many other aspects under the university umbrella. Other large entities which are justified the use of a hub are, for example, schools, departments and Research & Art.

Make sure that you're editing the article in its original language, i.e. the language version used when first creating the article. You can check this under the Translate tab. You can only rearrange, add or delete components in the content's original language version. If there's a component that doesn’t need to be shown in a language version (original or its translations), uncheck the box "Show this component in this language". However, to show a component in a language which is not the original one, the component still needs to be created in the original language and then hidden.

Yes, you can. Link to instructions below.

Duplicating content

No. Not at the moment.

Yes, you can go back to a previous version of a page at aalto.fi by clicking Revisions in the editor menu at the top of the page. There you can find a list of earlier versions of the page, called revisions. You can view them by clicking the time stamp on the left to find the desired revision. Then, by clicking Revert button on the right side, your page will turn into the old version that you chose.

Click on "Content" at the left corner when you are logged in to aalto.fi and you will enter the content finder view.

To find content you have created or edited, just start typing your name either to the "Authored by" or "Edited by" field. See the instructions and the screen shot.

To find articles on a specific hub: click on "Content type" and choose"Article". Then you can either filter on hub ID or title, read more at Articles: how to find, create or edit?

The summary will be shown when the page is lifted up elsewhere, it is not shown on the actual page. The lead text is the first paragraph beneath the title on a page.

Tagging will primarily help to filter content in advanced searches and automatic liftups. Read more.

A ribbon is a type of navigation menu at the top of the page, as seen here. A ribbon can be added to any obvious page except News and Events. Ribbon links can also contain any URL, including external pages.

Ribbons are made by the Digital Experience and Analytics team only. Send an email to [email protected] with your request.

Descriptive headlines serves the reader, who quickly gets an overview of the page content.

Using headlines instead of making the text bold will rank your webpage higher in online search engines. Using a hierarchical structure for headlines will also improve the ranking: going from bigger headlines (Heading 2) to smaller headlines (Heading 3) as you scroll down the page. Learn more about headlines and article structure.

Also if an e.g. visually impaired user is using a screen reader to access the site's content, the screen reader will read the heading formattings out loud, thus providing information on the structure of the page to that user.

Your content receives better attention and the reader is more likely to click on a liftup than linked text. Also, an important thing to remember with linking is that URLs can change over time and in those cases the link is automatically updated in liftups, but not in linked text. If you still need to use regular text links, make sure to check them frequently so that they still work.

Manual liftups can be used to display several pages, including external ones. They require users to manually lift up the content.

Automatic liftups are primarily based on tagging where content is automatically displayed based on a number of metadata fields. Automatic liftups can only be used for articles, news and events.

Learn more about liftups.

Make an automatic liftup for news or events and use the tag function to filter according to the content on your page.

You can also use a manual liftup, but in that case you will have to add the content yourself every time. Thus, it's only advisable if you want to curate news or events more specifically than what tags can do.

The metadata might not match in the corresponding fields. Check that keywords, visibility settings and role restrictions (internal/public content) in both the automatic liftup and the piece of content to be lifted up are complementary. Learn more about automatic liftups.

Yes, you can. For more information visit Components: how to create content for aalto.fi and go to 'Media gallery".

You can check how the focal point affects the cropping of your image for different components by using Preview mode, which you find below the picture in Edit mode. Read more.

It is not technically possible to add pictures in an accordion. Tables, however, can be added to an accordion but it is not advisable to do so from an accessibility standpoint.

Typically, images up to 1 mb will be enough.

It’s generally not recommended to use GIFs at aalto.fi, because the format is actually not optimised for animations. That means that a GIF file is larger than a mp4 video file with the same content, because the mp4 format is optimised for moving image. GIFs should only be used in special cases, such as looping animations that display well in low resolutions. Generally, an embedded video from Youtube or Vimeo is more user friendly and has a higher resolution and frame rate.

Think of other possible ways of displaying the same visual content without using GIFs. You can go through the online materials to learn more about media components. If you still do choose to use a GIF, make sure to compress the file size as much as possible before uploading it. After uploading it, make sure the loading time of the page is fast and that the quality of the animation is good also on a larger screen, otherwise remove the GIF. Don’t use GIFs for real-life footage, the quality will be too low, only use it for animations. It should not contain blinking lights or other visually disturbing elements.

The profile information is fed from Workday or ACRIS database. If a person has a profile in ACRIS database, some information from there will be shown, e.g. picture, and publications and awards. Updating the profile is done in Workday, and also in ACRIS for the academic personnel. The picture of the service personnel is pulled from Microsoft Office application.

You have to set a preferred name on Workday. You can set your preferred name by clicking on Personal information, then "About me", then "Personal" on the left-hand side. Then on top there are tabs, click "Names". There you can see your legal name and your preferred name. You can edit your preferred name by clicking edit in that box.

At the moment Workday does not support different language versions, but we are looking for a solution to this.

You will see multiple titles in your profile. For service personnel these are pulled from Workday, for academic personnel the source is also ACRIS database. In Workday there are two fields for the titles: "Position title" and "Business title". You need to set one title as the primary one, as this will be shown at the top of your profile. If you want, you can hide the other title(s) or display those in accordance with the visibility options (publicly or to Aalto community).

Prior to the renewal of the profiles, it was possible to group people in Aalto People and then display those groupings at aalto.fi using the Aalto People group ID. That is unfortunately no longer possible. People can be grouped directly at aalto.fi instead; read the instructions here.

Members in a research group in ACRIS database can still be displayed at aalto.fi as before.

It’s only possible to have an address in the style pagename.aalto.fi, e.g. mycourses.aalto.fi, when the content is hosted outside of the aalto.fi communications platform Drupal. The aalto.fi webpages hosted by the communications platform, Drupal, are always in the form of:

• aalto.fi aalto.fi/school
• aalto.fi/department
• aalto.fi/department/researchgroup

Through the Siteimprove tool. You need to have a SiteImprove username and password, read more about how to gain access.

The Google Analytics tool helps you to follow the number of page visits and other key figures regarding your aalto.fi page(s). Follow the link here below for information on the tool. If you'd like to have user rights for the Google Analytics tool, kindly send an email to the aalto.fi project team at [email protected].

Yes. Drupal offers the possibility to create and integrate webforms on any given aalto.fi page in the form of a component. However, this feature is available for admins only. If you want to display a webform, please contact the aalto.fi project team at [email protected].

Some of the content on the aalto.fi website is meant for the Aalto community only. You need to be logged in with your Aalto ID to read such content.

Single sign-on (SSO) is in use throughout Otaniemi Campus, so you are automatically logged-in if working from there.

Yes, click on 'Feedback', available at the end of every page and fill in the form, as required.

You can find all our guidelines and tutorials through Services where you can filter content, for example for Drupal, and search for specific topics.

First, you can ask a colleague for help. Second, ask on our Aalto.fi Teams channel (don't forget to search the channel to see if your question has already been answered). You can also book a time with us on our Drupal support (instructions on the Teams channel), and of course send an email to [email protected].

Trainings will be notified under Events at the bottom of the page for Aalto.fi website instructions.

By following the Aalto.fi Teams channel, aalto.fi website instructions page, the Aalto Info newsletter, and the emails sent to all editors periodically.

There are several guides and articles at Aalto.fi about writing for the web. Read more.

The internal search at aalto.fi heavily weights page titles (headline). Therefore, your headline should include keywords utilised on related searches. Read more about the internal search.

You can also focus on search engine optimisation (SEO) to improve visibility on external searches. Read more about SEO.