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Creating a Faculty Profile Page

What is the SFU Faculty Profile Page template?

This is a special template that allows you to create a profile page for a faculty member, staff, or student with the following elements:

  • Title (name of the person)
  • Pronouns (CLF4 only)
  • Position
  • Contact information
  • Courses being taught
  • Portrait

Why use the Faculty Profile template?

The Faculty Profile Page template provides two main benefits:

  • It can automatically retrieve a person's information (such as phone, email and department) and display it on their profile page.
  • Information in the profiles can be reused and reorganize to create a variety of dynamically generated content. For instance, to create a faculty directory.

Creating the Directory Structure

The following steps will create the directory structure at the top level of your website. This involves copying and pasting a group of existing pages that form the structure.

  1. In the WCM, navigate to Shared Content Library > CMS Tutorials > Pages.
  2. Copy the People page in the right panel.



  3. Navigate to your space and paste it under the home page.


    In this example, the People page is pasted under the Generic Department site.

  4. Move the People page to the where you want it to appear in the main navigation.


    The People page is moved above the research page.

The directory structure is now set up.

Understanding the Structure

The pages in the directory structure, and their purpose is listed below:

  • People redirects to the Faculty page.
    • Profiles contains all the profile pages.
    • Faculty lists all faculty members.
    • Staff lists all staff. The horizontal list and title are referenced from the Faculty page.

Sample Profile

Below is an example profile made using the SFU Faculty Profile Page.

Sample profile in CLF2 (vertical navigation template)

Sample profile in CLF3 (horizontal navigation template)

Sample profile in CLF4 (horizontal navigation template)

Setting up a People Section

Before creating a profile, you must already have a people section. We recommend creating a people section by following the instructions on Creating a People Directory.

Creating a Profile Page

The following steps assume the people section is structured the same way as on the Creating a People Directory page.

1. Navigate to the Profiles page: In the WCM, navigate to the Profiles page located under the "People" page.

2. Create the profile: With the Profiles page selected in the left pane, click the New... button in the right pane.

Title the page: Enter the full name of the person in the Title field.

Name the page: Enter the person's Computing ID in the Name field. If they don't have a SFU Computing ID, leave the Name field blank. The profile page will automatically fill out parts of the page properties and page content based on the page Name, provided it's a valid Computing ID.

Note: There are two versions of the Faculty Profile template. Faculty Profile V2 was created to fix some display issues in V1.

To create new profile pages, use Faculty Profile V2 (do not use V1). If your site uses V1 profile pages, you can manually move them to V2 template.

Select the Faculty Profile V2 template.

Click Create once you have finished. The new profile will appear in the WCM.

A new profile for Rudyard Kipling is created under the Profiles page.

Editing the Page Properties

  1. Import person's data: Open the page in the Editing Window. From the Sidekick, open the Page Properties... A pop-up box will appear containing either the user import message or an error message.
    • User import message: This pop-up box will appear for about second, saying that AEM is importing user data. Once it disappears, you'll notice some of the page properties will be filled out. The more data is available in the SFU databases, the greater the amount of filled page property fields.
    • Error message: If the page Name is an invalid Computing ID, an error message will appear.



      Close it and click the Faculty Profile tab to access the faculty profile fields.



      Enter a valid Computing ID into the SFU Computing ID field, then, click the import button. A pop-up message will appear. Click Yes to import the data mentioned in the pop-up message. Be aware that this will replace any existing content specified in the message.



    • Note: If the person does not have a valid Computing ID (e.g., a faculty member from a different university), you can ignore this step.
  2. Enter the remaining Personal Information: Fill out as much of the Personal Information section as possible. Parts of the page are built from the Personal Information section. So, the more fields that are filled in, the more complete the profile will be when you start editing the page. If any of the imported data is incorrect, replace it.



    The Areas of Interest field should be used for whichever group of keywords you may wish to display in a list. For example, creating a list of faculty members alongside their unique research keywords.

  3. Tag the profile: Click the Basic tab and add one or more of the following tags:
    • Faculty - Enter "faculty" into the Tags/Keywords field and select the People / Faculty tag from the results.
    • Staff - Enter "staff" into the Tags/Keywords field and select the People / Staff tag from the results.
    • For other tags, such as Adjunct Faculty, you will have to create it yourself and then add it.


      The Faculty tag is added to Rudyard's profile.
  4. Insert the portrait (optional): If you have a portrait, upload a high resolution version to the DAM. Search for the image from the Content Finder and insert it into the Image tab. This image will be displayed on the page.

    To keep the image dimension consistent on all faculty profiles, crop the image using the 3:4 aspect ratio. Detailed instructions on how to crop an image is available in the Cropping an Image section.



  5. Click OK to save the changes.


Editing the Page Content

Note: In AEM, the portrait will be located under the contact information. However on the live site, the portrait will move to the top right corner of the content section.   

  1. Create and edit the content: Delete any empty contact fields. Also delete the portrait placeholder if it's not being used. Replace the placeholder text in the Education and Biography sections. Include any additional content in the Biography section, e.g., research interests. Format each new header as h3 to keep the headers consistent.


    In this example, two empty contact fields highlighted in blue need to be deleted, and the placeholder text highlighted in red needs to be replaced.

    An edited faculty profile example with a new section, i.e., Research Interests.

  2. Set up the Faculty Course component (optional): At the bottom of the page, there is a component that displays courses the faculty member is teaching. It displays courses from two terms, starting with the current term. As each term passes, the course list is automatically updated. The course lists will only show if a valid Computing ID is entered in the SFU Computing ID page property field.


    A Faculty Courses component listing no courses. When this happens, a message saying the instructor is currently not teaching any courses is displayed.



    A Faculty Courses component listing courses from two terms with a disclaimer at the bottom. Each listed course links to the course's official course outline. For information on the Course Outlines application, see Course Outline Help.

The profile page is now complete.

Troubleshooting Tips

If any of the auto-generated information on the profile is incorrect, you'll need to update the source information:

  • Staff or Faculty member's first name and/or last name: Contact Human Resources
  • Student's first name and/or last name: Contact the Registrar
  • Phone number: Update it online using SFU's Directory Service
  • Department: Contact Human Resources and Payroll
  • Courses: Contact the member responsible for scheduling courses within your department