Scenario
A new site needs to be developed in GovCMS SaaS. It will need to have content from the previous legacy site migrated into it. During the migration, the content needs to be processed, altered, uplifted and healed. This process will tend to be quite intensive and will involve the site structure to be settled and migrations and custom scripts to be implemented and tested.
Challenge
GovCMS SaaS includes the Migrate module which does allow for the import of content. However, the inability to add custom code to process the data in other ways will be too limiting. It is common for an ETL pipeline to be designed. This pipeline will generally need to be automated and will contain custom code. Finally, there will generally be the need to post-process to content to "fix" links, paths, classes, styles and other aspects. GovCMS SaaS doesn't provide an environment conducive to this workflow. There is the option to move to PaaS but this would be cost prohibitive.
Solution
The initial site development can be done outside the GovCMS platform where there will be a richer environment to develop the migration. Once the site structure is in place and the migration has been completed and tested, the site can then be forklifted to GovCMS where normal development can continue there. The development of the site will therefore be broken into two phases: off and on platform. Each GovCMS supplier will likely have their own preferred environment for development.
Outcome
This is one case where it is possible to go off the platform for a short period of time. Making use of an external hosting environment is a workaround that gets you out of a bind early in the project.
