Products \ E.CMF \ Collect Principles Collect Create Display Distribute Workflow Component Library Case Study The Gathering Module supports two modes of content collection. An automated content inflow from outsourced or remote organizational content sources or a self initiated fetching of content from these sources Content can either be pushed into a predetermined place on the system server/s or E.CMF 'server agents' can go to a specified place (in source site servers) and pick up content at specified intervals. The default protocol suggested for this activity is FTP. This would build up a repository of raw content at the system end. This content can then be potentially re-purposed in anyway that the team decides to. It can be automatically routed into the other Display, Archive or Syndication modules of the system for further processing. In some operations, automation might be required only to the level of content gathering, in which case, the E.CMF Gathering Module is all that they would need. Technically speaking, our experience has shown us that regardless of the glowing case studies in product literatures, content suppliers work with fairly sub-optimal systems today. As a result, content received from a supplier often has errors or dropouts. Standardisation, our experience again, at the content format level is critical and has direct bearings on a site's appearance and performance. Typically, we encourage textual or data content sourcing in two standard Internet data exchange formats, PSV and XML. Both of these are widely understood and are suitably flexible for most re-purposing requirements.