Requirement

To develop a secure global Microsoft SharePoint intranet solution to allow company staff to have easy access to confidential information about highly sensitive clients and deals combined with a user friendly interface to encourage use and build a sense of community within the organisation.

Key functional elements included:

• Full integration with the clients existing authentication and employee data based around Microsoft Active Directory
• Secure document library with the ability for users to post documents and comments for users of the site to access with differing permissions levels controlled by the site administrators
• Ability for site users to post news, files, images and content into a workflow, approval and editing system before administrators make it live on the site
• Page creating tools to allow local offices to create their own sections on the site
• A moderated system of commenting on news and general information content
• The integration of interactive Rich Media elements to enrich user experience

Technical Solution

The foundation for the application was SharePoint 2007 64bit edition integrated with a MS SQL 2008 database.

Given the functional requirements of the project it was decided to only use SharePoint core components for approximately 60% of the build and develop custom web parts and other .net based functionality for the remaining 40%.

Additional elements were created by integrating JavaScript and Flash with both the frontend and the underlying application and database.

Project Mechanics

The first phase of the project ran for approximately six months from initial scoping to launch and involved very close cooperation with the client at all stages of the project. Some key stages of the project included:

• Developing a full functional and technical specification in conjunction with the client’s IS department and an internal development environment that exactly replicated the client’s proposed live platform to ensure compatibility of the final site
• Key delivery milestones where we delivered and installed releases directly to the clients live environment
• Final configuration of the client’s live environment and delivery of the final release for the first phase
• Providing global ongoing support of the live site from a technical and administrative perspective

Conclusion

By working closely in partnership with the agency and by collectively choosing the best areas of the site that would effectively use SharePoint’s in-built features and other areas where the best option was to develop new functionality from scratch we were able to build upon the strong foundation provided by SharePoint whilst creating functionality and look and feel that provided a very rich and interactive user experience.

The site has been extremely well received and has been successful both technically and through meeting its organisational goals and we are now working with the client on phases 2 and 3 to expand its functionality and reach even further.

Requirement

To develop a 200 plus page product site promoting the end client’s new international business product targeting the senior management of global companies as users.
Key functional elements included:

• Developing bespoke user administration modules and functionality to integrate with parts of the end client’s customer data
• Developing Flash/XML components to pick up XML driven data from multiple third party stock market indices and displaying the information as graphs on the site.
• Creating and populating 200 plus pages of content and assets without a CMS
• Building the site to have a JavaScript and non-JavaScript version and for the site to be AA accessible compliant

Technical Solution

The site was developed as a non-CMS editable HTML website with functionality being developed using PHP integrated with an Oracle database to create all the bespoke functionality required.
Additional elements were created by integrating JavaScript, Flash and XML with both the frontend and the underlying application and database.

Project Mechanics

The initial phase of the project ran for six months from initial planning to launch and involved working closely with both the agency and end client throughout the project. Some key stages of the project included:

• Working with end client’s IS team to understand their coding and security standards and to replicate their hosting environment as the site is hosted on the bank’s own servers
• Developing front end HTML to meet the agency’s rigorous design requirements and the end client’s need for a very high level of accessibility
• Creating Flash functionality drawing data from XML feeds and that worked when the feeds were down whilst meeting the end client’s security standards for writing data to servers
• Developing bespoke functionality using PHP and Oracle to manage user access to the site and to integrate with some of the end client’s existing systems

Conclusion

The project required that we and the agency worked very closely with the client particularly in order to meet the end client’s very specific coding and security standards.
Heavy preparation at the start of the project ensured that we were able to meet a quite aggressive launch deadline to coincide with the global offline launch of the service whilst satisfying the rigorous standards of the end client’s internal IS team.
The project was extremely well received by the end client, being cited as one of the best they had recently worked on and has moved to further phases which we continue to develop and support.