Cloud Services Solution Drives Down Costs While Increasing Capabilities
Project at a Glance
RDA migrated our client’s existing platforms for collaboration and document management to a Microsoft cloud-based hosted services solution, significantly reducing overhead costs associated with equipment, IT support, resources, licensing fees and software upgrades necessary for corporate applications. In addition, SharePoint has provided our client with increased functionality related to collaboration, workflow, and content management.
About Our Client
Our client is a global retailer of home improvement and related products.
Background
Our client decided to migrate from their existing platform for authentication, email, collaboration and document management to Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) in order to take advantage of the inherent cost savings associated with cloud computing and also to gain additional functionality around collaboration, workflow and content management through Microsoft SharePoint Server. (They were previously using a Websphere portal and project sites created with Documentum eRoom.)
Solution Detail
Prior to the migration to BPOS and its initial setup, RDA worked with our client to define their global requirements and governance plan. We analyzed and defined the information architecture for their intranet and also defined overall development cycles – the necessary steps for any custom development that would be needed to tailor the BPOS platform to suit all of their business needs.
Once the requirements phase was complete, RDA moved on to design, development, testing, defect fixing, and production support for the creation of SharePoint team sites and “my” sites for our client’s internal project portal system for their IT units. That portal is a pilot implementation of BPOS SharePoint for our client that will serve as a governance model for additional sites throughout the organization. Custom coding was necessary so that each SharePoint subsite can be unique in its branding and graphically distinct, while maintaining a consistent overall theme for sitewide content.
As part of this effort, RDA had to correct numerous coding deficiencies from another service provider that RDA ultimately replaced.
Benefits
Moving to a hosted services environment using BPOS has enabled our client to benefit from substantial cost savings. Instead of managing all of their IT infrastructure internally, Microsoft manages the equipment, resources, licensing fees and software upgrades necessary for all corporate applications.
In addition, using SharePoint for their project sites has provided increased functionality related to collaboration, workflow, and content management, in comparison to Documentum eRoom.
Technically Speaking
This project leverages Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Hosted services include SharePoint, Exchange, Office Communicator, and Active Directory. RDA provided custom .NET code to tailor the BPOS SharePoint platform to fit our client’s specific business needs in three areas:
- Governance
- User Experience
- Project Management
In addition to helping our client define their SharePoint governance rules and processes, several components were developed to integrate with the BPOS SharePoint environment to support and enforce the governance. This included a “Site Request Wizard” that could be used to create and route requests for new sites within the various portals. Additionally, several SharePoint features used to tailor the out of the box SharePoint Site Definitions to fit our client’s needs for departmental, team, process and project sites were developed. These features performed actions such as:
- Configuring the site look and feel.
- Establishing default security settings.
- Creating custom site content.
RDA developed master page, CSS and theme updates for SharePoint to implement a design for our client’s portal. RDA worked with a design firm selected by our client to develop and choose comps for the design. Several user interface “widgets” were developed to fit the designed user experience, including a custom calendar and custom navigational components that targeted navigation to the specific user. This allowed users to easily see and navigate to sites and communities within the portal that they owned, were a member of, or were tagged specifically by the user as a site of interest.
Lastly, RDA developed SharePoint features that were activated on project sites within our client’s portal that would configure the site to implement the Solution Review Board for projects. This solution included content types to represent standardized forms in the process, workflows to implement the various approvals and reviews, and creation of separate “Review” areas where documents could be vaulted away periodically once they were reviewed and approved.
The BPOS platform enforces dozens of code and architecture constraints that are specific to BPOS. Among others, constraints include:
- No custom Site Definitions
- Features must be “self-cleaning” so that uninstalling them also deactivates them (this doesn’t happen by default)
- Guidelines as to exactly how the SharePoint API is used (and not just disposing of SP objects appropriately)
- An enforced process and guidelines for how deployments are tested, packaged and delivered to the BPOS team.
RDA worked closely with the Microsoft and BPOS teams to learn and implement these coding guidelines and deploy systems in the cloud . As part of the project, RDA assisted other vendors in reviewing and updating their code to fit these guidelines.
The following screenshots depict a sample portal site UI and the Site Request wizard interface:
Figure 1: Portal UI
Figure 2: Site Request Wizard