SharePoint Deployment and Customization for Law Firm Increases Capabilities
Project at a Glance
RDA developed custom Web parts and mentored the internal development team at one of the top 10 largest U.S. law firms. The customization and deployment of the new SharePoint portal solution integrated the portal with Active Directory, increased overall functionality, and reduced development and maintenance efforts.
About Our Client
RDA’s client is a leading international corporate law firm headquartered in Philadelphia. Our client is among the top 10 largest U.S. law firms, with 1,200 lawyers in 19 offices worldwide.
Background
Our client was migrating from an outdated, disorganized intranet environment to a SharePoint portal solution. RDA was brought in to provide assistance in SharePoint deployment and customization.
Solution Detail
RDA provided mentoring to our client’s IT staff for SharePoint administration, customization, and Web Parts development. In addition, the RDA team provided development support for various technical requirements.
Benefits
Moving from a Lotus Notes-based intranet portal to a SharePoint portal allowed our client to increase functionality, reduce their development and maintenance efforts, and integrate their portal with Active Directory. RDA was able to assist in this transition by providing both mentoring of existing developers and development of components to be used within the portal site.
Challenges
The main challenges to this project included:
- Mentoring developers of varying skill levels and varying backgrounds in SharePoint development, .NET development and SQL Server programming.
- Developing many SharePoint custom Web Parts which duplicated the functionality that currently existed in a Lotus Notes database.
Technically Speaking
RDA’s role on the project included the following:
- Mentored our client’s developers in SharePoint best practices for Web Parts and SharePoint ASPX pages.
- Provided oversight and instruction to the rest of the team on SharePoint development details.
- Defined an approach to hiding functionality based on user permissions in SharePoint ASPX pages and implemented functions for retrieving user permissions from SharePoint.
- Deployed custom code access security and trust settings to lab and provided instructions to our client’s staff.
- Defined an approach and implementation of proper code access security for Web Parts and other assemblies built for our client’s portal environment.
- Implemented Web controls to add the conditional functionality based on the current permissions.
- Deployed exception management application block to our client’s lab environment.
- Created BasePart for use by Web Parts to provide a common way to handle exceptions in Web Parts rendering. Demonstrated to team and explained how to use it.
- Added exception management application block for use in logging exceptions to the event log.
- Discussed exception management application block use with members of other teams.
- Documented configuration modifications for exception management.
- Implemented Web Parts to wrap Office Web components pivot table and pivot chart controls.
- Implemented TimePart Web Part for displaying time in a specified time zone.
- Implemented Client Matters Data View Web Part using Web service.
- Implemented hyperlinks in Client Matters Data View Web Part.
- Provided instructions to client staff for configuring Data View Web Part and creating new Data View Web Parts.
- Discussed deployment and built Web Parts packages for deployment of Web Parts to lab.
- Instructed team on how to deploy various pieces of the system.
- Developed application to parse through SharePoint log files in order to determine usage information.
- Developed various Web Parts that duplicated functionality that previously existed within a Lotus Notes database.
- Implemented a SharePoint interface which would allow administrators the ability to obtain a list of stored procedures/tables, a list of all their parameters/columns, the text of procedures, and the ability to execute the stored procures within a given SQL Server Database.