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Case Studies
MOSS Extranet Enhances Collaboration, Boosts Development Efficiency
Project at a Glance |
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RDA developed a customized, external-facing portal that enables this company to post information, collaborate on documents, and build applications for their managed customers using MOSS 2007. Benefits include new collaboration capabilities, an application framework for the development of new features, and enhanced marketing capabilities. |
About Our Client
GXS is a leading global provider of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce solutions that simplify and enhance business process integration and collaboration among trading partners. Organizations worldwide, including more than 70 percent of the Fortune 500, leverage the on-demand services on GXS Trading Grid® to extend supply chain networks, optimize product launches, automate warehouse receiving, manage electronic payments and gain supply chain visibility. GXS Managed Services, GXS' B2B outsourcing solution, empowers customers with the expertise, technical infrastructure and program support to conduct B2B e-commerce with trading partners globally.
Background
GXS specializes in the integration and sharing of data between companies. Its Trading Grid platform supports the exchange of business documents and transactions for 30,000 companies around the globe. GXS sought to create an external-facing portal called Teambook for its Managed Services customers to review their trading partner networks, collaborate on documents and make change requests.
Solution Detail
RDA assisted GXS with the development of an external-facing portal for their customers using MOSS 2007. The portal includes a role-specific user interface, workflow, business process management with choices limited based on users' rights, and numerous custom lists.
The portal is completely customized to meet GXS's visual standards. RDA assisted GXS by building custom site templates that GXS can reuse as more pages are added to their portal. RDA also customized the portal so that each of GXS' customers could have their own specific web site. In order to accomplish this goal, RDA built custom navigation for the portal. When GXS employees access the portal, they can navigate to all of the companies. However, when users from particular companies access the portal, they only see information for their company. The techniques used to create this level of customization included security trimming and custom navigation elements to change the structure of the navigation for each type of user.
RDA also embedded applications into the GXS portal which enable external users and GXS employees to collaborate on projects that interact with internal GXS data stores. These applications were built utilizing .NET 3.5 technologies and were embedded into the SharePoint Web pages.
Benefits
This project created the following benefits for our client
- The ability for their clients to manage their B2B networks via a portal. This increased visibility to their clients and will strengthen relationships, which could lead to follow-on work for GXS and the companies involved.
- A framework for embedded, external-facing applications on a single portal. RDA architected a system that can be re-used by the internal developers. Development time was cut by approximately 50% when creating new features to the embedded applications.
- Increased marketing capabilities by creating a visually appealing site as well as the functionality that is part of SharePoint. Utilizing custom site templates, the SharePoint site looked like the company standard. This increases branding and recognition as GXS works with their external clients.
Technically Speaking
The Extranet for GXS leverages custom site definitions. These site definitions include custom master pages, custom webparts, custom features and custom lists. Each site definition is branded correctly for GXS and can be used to create sites for any new or existing company. In total, five separate site definitions were created for GXS. Each one utilizes a different subset of implemented features.
The embedded applications built for GXS, which are hosted on the extranet site, utilize a custom Form Builder framework that RDA architected and built. The system dynamically builds a SharePoint webpage by querying a database. The database tells the webpage how to construct itself based upon pre-built user controls. Thus, the developers at GXS can build .NET user controls and then fill in a database to tell the webpage which user controls to use to create itself. This allows for quick building of webpages because user controls can be "re-used." RDA called this concept the ModuleFramework and GXS plans to use it on more .NET construction in the future.
In addition to the ModuleFramework, certain .NET 3.5 technologies were utilized to build the User Controls. These include Linq to SQL, Lambda expressions, Ajax and Linq to XML. All the data access was done through the use of Linq to SQL. And, it was abstracted out to the point that a developer could load or save through a single line of code.
Also, the third party component, DevExpress, was used to quickly build intuitive and user-friendly interfaces. RDA introduced GXS to this tool suite. RDA also built a subset of controls that inherit from this tool suite so that GXS can control the actions from a high level (instead of making changes throughout every page).
