Internal Tools & Dashboards

Building Penn State’s Internal Dashboards: Tools That Scaled Content Operations Across the University

When I began designing internal tools for Penn State, our content operations had serious limitations. There was no A/B testing strategy. No way to export or migrate content across Contentful spaces. No system for syncing models between domains. Content quality audits were fully manual and often inaccurate. Even basic platform governance—like validating redirects—required developer intervention.

Large organizations typically rely on a suite of internal dashboards to solve these problems. Penn State had none.
My work focused on building that suite from the ground up.

Using React and Next.js, I engineered a set of custom operational dashboards that unified content workflows, automated migration tasks, improved editorial capabilities, and turned previously manual processes into scalable internal tools.

A Unified Authentication Layer for All Dashboards

Before tooling could scale, it needed a secure access model. I built an authentication system for all internal dashboards that ensures:

  • Role-based access

  • Safe access to multiple Contentful environments

  • Isolation of production workflows

  • A shared auth layer for every dashboard in the ecosystem

This became the backbone that made every tool safe for real production content.

Content Model Syncing Across Spaces

Penn State operates many Contentful spaces—production, staging, QA, sandbox, and tenant-specific environments. Previously, content models drifted apart, causing missing fields, incompatible content, and broken features when deploying new sites.

I built a Model Sync Dashboard that solved this:

  • Compares schemas between any two spaces

  • Highlights missing fields, mismatched validations, or outdated types

  • Provides one-click syncing to correct discrepancies

  • Ensures consistency across the entire ecosystem

This eliminated one of the largest underlying causes of CMS instability.

Cross-Space Content Export & Migration

Content migration used to be:

  • Manual

  • Error-prone

  • Dependent on engineers

  • Extremely time-consuming

I built a Content Export Dashboard that allows non-technical teams to:

  • Export entries, components, or full content groups from any space

  • Transform and validate content structures

  • Import them safely into new environments

This tool turned multi-site content seeding—a multi-hour developer task—into a self-service workflow for editorial teams.

A/B Testing for CMS-Driven Content

There was no A/B testing strategy at all. Marketing teams had no way to experiment with variants of content, messaging, CTA layout, or editorial blocks.

I built a Contentful-integrated A/B Testing Dashboard that supports:

  • Creating variants directly in the CMS

  • Assigning audiences and weights

  • Running controlled URL-based or component-based experiments

  • Previewing variants before release

  • Measuring performance with analytics integrations

This enabled real conversion optimization across Penn State’s digital properties.

Content Audit Tool With LLM-Powered Clustering

Content quality was a major pain point. Large sites had thousands of pages, many outdated or redundant. Editors relied on manual spreadsheets and intuition to audit content.

I built a Content Audit Dashboard that uses LLMs to:

  • Analyze site content at scale

  • Identify duplicate or low-value pages

  • Cluster content into themes

  • Highlight pages needing pruning, rewriting, or consolidation

  • Surface structural gaps in site architecture

This transformed content auditing from a multi-week manual process into a fully automated, insight-driven workflow.

Redirect Audit

Redirects were often broken, out of sync, or incorrectly configured across sites. There was also no unified visibility into redirect behavior or response status.

I built a Redirect Audit View inside the dashboard ecosystem that:

  • Fetches redirect rules from Vercel Edge Config

  • Tests each redirect automatically

  • Flags broken or looping redirect chains

  • Shows response codes and target URLs

  • Provides a health score for redirect systems

This removed guesswork and brought transparency to a traditionally hidden problem.

Conditional Fields System for Improved Author Experience

Content authors struggled with cluttered, inconsistent entry forms. Many fields only applied to certain layouts, but Contentful had no built-in conditional logic.

I implemented a custom conditional fields logic layer that:

  • Shows or hides fields based on selected components

  • Simplifies authoring interfaces

  • Reduces content errors

  • Standardizes UX across content types

This made the CMS significantly easier and less error-prone for authors.

The Result: A Complete Tooling Ecosystem for Content Operations

These internal tools created the operational backbone that Penn State previously lacked.

Impact:

  • Schema consistency through model syncing

  • Fast, non-technical content migration through export tools

  • Real experimentation capabilities with A/B testing

  • Scalable content auditing via LLM-driven insights

  • Cleaner author experience through conditional field logic

  • Governed redirects through automated audits

  • Secure access through the shared authentication layer

Together, these dashboards transformed Penn State’s content operations from manual and error-prone to automated, scalable, and data-driven.

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