What is Adobe's Project Franklin?

Project Franklin is the new name for Adobe’s Project Helix. While it’s still in its early stages, Project Franklin is generating buzz in the web development realm because of its new approach to content management. But it all comes down to one question: what is Adobe’s Project Franklin?  

Project Franklin is a new content management system (CMS) concept that allows users to populate their website content directly from common word processors, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. As partners with Adobe, Hoodoo Digital (now Rightpoint) was invited to beta-test Project Franklin in its early stages to learn more about it and examine its capabilities. 

The idea with Project Franklin is to help companies increase content velocity by allowing their teams to populate a website from templates made in programs like Word, Excel, or Google Docs. This is an intriguing new concept that has the potential to remove steps in the content management workflow.  

Instead of relying on one person to copy and paste approved content into a website, the content can be pushed live from the template, entirely removing a step in the publication process. Project Franklin will allow users to create, edit, and publish all from the same document. This is not only more efficient as a whole, but it reduces the margin for error by removing the copy/paste step from the workflow.  

For team members who have never worked with a CMS, this can allow them to easily push their work to the website without relying on someone else’s schedule to publish, increasing content velocity. Additionally, businesses can more easily create redundancies on their team because they won’t have to teach numerous people to understand an in-depth content management system. 

Project Franklin can also immediately render content – thus when the system is synced, the site’s content and functionality will immediately update. This will allow users to avoid rebuilding processes that can become lengthy.  

It may seem peculiar that Adobe chose to rename Project Helix to Project Franklin, however, they chose to rename the project after Rosalind Franklin. She was a scientist whose work and research formed a critical foundation for understanding the molecular structure of DNA – the double helix (among her other impressive and critical scientific contributions).  

Project Felix is making strides toward simplifying and expediting the content authoring process without hindering content velocity or integrity. Much like Rosalind Franklin laid new foundations for science, Project Franklin is laying foundations for a new perspective on content management systems.