News Archive

Parabola joins forces with Telerik by becoming a Sitefinity partner

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 15:30:00 GMT

We recently researched the market place of CMS products for .NET solutions which support the development of web sites which support mobile, tablets PCs. Our client didnt want to pay a fortune for licencing but they still wanted a great Mobile First web site with an easy use content editor. After weeks of research and experimentation we decided on Telerik's Sitefinity.

Mobile First CMS

Parabola have being using Telerik's suite of .NET tools for many years. We've used many other 3rd party tools but Telerik have consistently provided the best quality and the most inuitive interface to speed up development for our customers.

Partly, as a result of our confidence in the Telerik brand, Parabola have now become a Telerik Sitefinity partner. Being a partner gives us access to Sitefinity demo sites and pre-sales techinical support as well as access to training materials for our developers.

City of Westminster College take their application process online

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 10:57:00 GMT

With the new online application solution, applying to study at City of Westminster College (CWC) has never been easier. Parabola have delivered a solution that seamlessly integrates with CWC's existing website and student management system, Compass ProSolution. Further integration with WorldPay will allow for online payments to be taken.

Online Learner Applications Process

Previously prospective learners would need to complete a paper application or visit the college in person to apply. With over 7000 news learners per year, processing the applications was a mammoth task for CWC.

Now prospective learners browse and apply for courses via CWC's existing website. Choosing to apply will add the course to their basket on the online enrolment system. The prospective learner is free to add more courses and then enter their details to complete their application.

Prosolution Integration

The online enrolment system connects with CWC's website to display the contents of a learner's basket. To them, the integration between the two appears seamless.

Taking applications online has completely removed the need for paper applications, improved data quality and staff can now process the applications more efficiently. Learners enter their details online and the data goes straight into CWC's student management system, Compass ProSolution.

WorldPay Integration

The project will be expanded to manage online payments via the payment gateway WorldPay, further reducing the administrative burden and learners would then know immediately that their application was successful.

Integration with WorldPay means that CWC can now receive online payments for courses, reducing the task of chasing payments and improving financial control.

College Benefits

During Open Days, the college's computers are made available to visiting prospective learners who can now complete applications on site, encouraging them to apply when they see how simple it is and immediately staff can answer any queries.

The new system has clearly been popular with learners. Over 500 applied online within the first week of the system going live. The solution have greatly simplified the application process for both CWC and their learners.

Parabola continue to build on their successful relationship with CWC delivering a solution that achieves many business benefits to the college and continues to show the college embracing technical innovation.

Three very different SharePoint 2013 migration projects landed

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 17:20:00 GMT

The Parabola SharePoint team has been busy over the summer and completed 3 different SharePoint 2013 projects. All 3 involved working with the client on a migration from an existing portal/intranet to SharePoint 2013. In each case the start point and therefore the resulting solution was different.

Project 1 – NESCOT migration from 2007

Challenge:

NESCOT had a large Staff Portal in SharePoint 2007 used for document management and online forms. The 2007 solution ws originally delivered by Parabola and was widely used. The migration required a new IA structure to be added with miminal downtime.

Solution:

A new SharePoint 2013 farm was designed and implemented with scope for continued growth and extension. The metadata required for the new IA was added during the migration of content using ShareGate.

NESCOT SharePoint 2013 Portal

Benefits:

The new design includes a Responsive home page so that the portal can be accessed by staff on their tablets and mobiles. The migration process was completed with minimal impact on the NESCOT staff at the same time as a clean-up and restructure of the content.

Project 2 – New Responsive Bracknell and Wokingham College portals

Challenge:

A small staff and student portal in SharePoint 2003 had been used for document management for many years. The need was for a portal that both staff and students could use to access curriculum materials and collaborate on assignments as well as a separate portal for college admin and management.

Solution:

A new SharePoint 2013 farm was designed and implemented with scope for future growth and extension. Two new portals (one for staff and one for staff/students) were implemented including an integration of staff/student portal with QL Agresso to create SharePoint sites based on current course information.

Responsive BWC college 2013 portal

Benefits:

The major benefits of the staff/student relate to the ability for staff and students to work together effectively as well as the ability to communicate across the whole college with ease. The staff portal provides efficiency savings for the college administration through the more effective use of Document Management.

Project 3 – Custom solution for large UK Housing Association

Challenge:

Large staff intranet using the obsolete Umbraco 3.0 CMS. The brief was to deliver a replacement solution in SharePoint 2013 to meet the same needs whilst enabling the adoption of other SharePoint features in the future.

Solution:

Custom software solution to automatically migrate content from Umbraco 3.0 into SharePoint 2013. Custom workflow solutions to provide room booking and pool car booking systems via SharePoint.

Benefits:

The new visual design with an interface which works well on any device including tablet and mobiles. Existing Umbraco content was migrated to a new Information Architecture. As a result so the intranet benefits from a much improved site structure and search facility.

Parabola is now an accredited Growth Voucher Advisor

Mon, 18 Aug 2014 11:15:46 GMT

We’re delighted to announce that we’re now officially a Growth Vouchers Accredited Adviser. This means that those who’ve been awarded a Growth Voucher may be able to claim up to £2,000 funding on a match funded bases towards strategic digital technology advice from Parabola

The Growth Vouchers program is available to small businesses in England who have been trading for at least one year, have 49 employees or fewer, and have not sought strategic business advice in the last three years.

Do you know anyone who could benefit? Drop us an email and we’ll point you in the right direction, or you can read more about Growth Vouchers here.

Mobile Fire Safety and Property Maintenance checks with SharePoint Online

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:19:00 GMT

Adactus Housing learnt to stop worrying about what SharePoint ‘is’ and with Parabola’s help instead started to think about what it could do for them. Working with Parabola in this way they found a solution to a problem they were having with fire equipment checks at properties with communal areas.

The Old Way

Adactus’s Mobile caretakers recorded 5 different fire safety inspections a month at 150 properties on paper...

PROBLEMS: What happens if there is audit of the fire safety check? Where is the paperwork when they need it? How can we monitor staff when they are offsite and ensure the necessary visit and checks are done on time?

The New Way

Mobile caretakers can now use their Android phones to complete their property checks. Supervisors can see where there staff are, the results of the checks and also track performance of each caretaker.

Solution

With menu driven inspection SharePoint App which provides date and time stamping of tests, recording of GPS locations, and an inspection database accessible to central office staff and supervisors, Adactus staff are all happy about the new App and the new way of working.

Tony the caretaker said “usually you introduce these new [systems] and they take more time. This [app] actually saves me time”

Once the possibilities were realised, further functionality was added to enable the caretakers to record more detail about their visits to property including testing completed, faults found, actions taken to resolve faults.

To find out more about how SharePoint Online could solve problems for your business give us a call on 0208 339 4380.

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Parabola’s clients move to Azure

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 15:46:00 GMT

Here at Parabola we like to be at the forefront of technology. Currently it’s technology in the Cloud which is forging ahead, progressing in leaps and bounds. We’re keen to take full advantage of the Cloud where it can benefit our customers. On the application side SharePoint Online has opened lots of new possibilities and enabled us to develop SharePoint Apps. Another example is cloud hosting, so we’ve moved our hosting to the cloud with Microsoft. There will be no obvious changes for our clients, but some benefits in terms of performance and reliability of their web applications.
Now we are hosted on Windows Azure, we can…

Run important jobs related to the websites (such as indexing to improve search performance, or producing a daily email summary of transactions) in the background either continuously, on schedule or on demand
Safely deploy updates in the background minimising downtime
Rest easy knowing that websites are hosted on a secure server that is always up to date with the latest security patches
Be more agile with the ability to scale up and down the server resources

If you are interested in Cloud solutions for your hosting, get in contact to find out more today.

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The Longest Day Golf Challenge

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:15:00 GMT

Surbiton Golf Course

Parabola Managing Director, Richard and Business Analyst Ralph (plus 2 other friends) are taking on a monster of a golf challenge for charity.

Here’s more about the challenge from them:

What Are We Doing?

On June 20th we'll be trying to play 72 holes (4 rounds) of golf in a day. Our first round will start before 5am to ensure we can get through all the holes before we lose the light at about 10pm. Playing golf all day, may sound like a lot of fun, but we'll also be walking approximately 24 miles (nearly a marathon) carrying our clubs and competing in a national competition. If you've ever played 36 holes in a day you'll appreciate why 72 is a real challenge.

Our thanks go to Surbiton Golf Club for allowing us to use the course for this event. Nobody is certain just how difficult it will be to play 4 rounds in one day. The club history reports a claim that Peter Holford played 108 holes (6 rounds) at Surbiton in one day during the Second World War. He did use a bicycle however!

Who For?

We're raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support because we've all had personal experience of the fantastic work they do providing Macmillan nurses, bereavement support, supporting patients, friends and family and raising awareness of how to support someone with cancer.

If you’d like to sponsor them you can do so here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/Surbiton72

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SharePoint 2013 ticks all the boxes for Motability’s new intranet.

Thu, 13 Mar 2014 12:36:00 GMT

Motability is a national charity, established over 36 years ago and employing just over 100 staff at their offices in Harlow, Essex.

Motability directs and oversees the Motability Scheme which enables disabled people to use their government-funded mobility allowances to lease a car, powered wheelchair or scooter.

Motability originally launched their Intranet, ‘Pulse’ in 2007. A staff survey in 2012 provided positive feedback on the site generally but that it was in need of a facelift. The SharePoint 2007 platform was limited in functionality, particularly regarding search tools and this was becoming frustrating for users.

In late 2012, Motability sent out a tender to refresh the ‘Pulse’ look and feel and to improve overall functionality. Parabola won the tender and persuaded Motability to upgrade to SharePoint 2013 which would tick all their required boxes and help future proof Pulse.

A fresh new look to complement SharePoint 2013’s modern styling was designed especially for Motability, taking inspiration from the Microsoft Metro design used in Windows 8.

The whole project was managed using the PRINCE-2 methodology, which both teams were already trained in prior to the project. Using PRINCE-2 allowed any potential risks to be carefully managed and kept the project on the correct path for everyone involved. Over the next few months, Parabola worked with Motability’s Marketing and IT teams to deliver the new Pulse in November 2013. A SharePoint Online collaboration site was used to share the project schedule and risk registers.

As the upgrade from 2007 to 2013 was a big step up, there were a lot of new features that the Communications team needed to learn how to use. Onsite training to end-users in the Marketing team at Motability was provided as the project neared completion.

With a new, fresh look and improved functionality, Staff feedback to the new Pulse has been extremely positive.

Parabola managed to deliver the project within agreed timescales and importantly within budget.

Parabola deliver their first SharePoint App

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:02:00 GMT

This Mobile App has been built to fit a specific need for on site testing of fire safety equipment. The App launches from SharePoint Online and works with any mobile device including iOS and Android.

Key Business Features:

The App can be easily accessed by any offsite member of staff such as an engineer or caretaker
The test results are immediately visible at head office. In future, alerts may be created to notify a member of staff if immediate action is required
The GPS location of the device is recorded so the team knows where each mobile worker is located
Reports are compiled direct from the App database and the data synchronised with central management system
Later versions will include the ability to take photos of a problem and to record notes

This particular application was also tested on Windows Phones and iPhones, our client then chose to use Android devices to go live.

To find out more about our custom app development service or to find out how we can make a SharePoint App that works for your business get in touch.

Peabody Appoints Parabola Software as SharePoint Consultants

Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:34:00 GMT

Peabody appointed Parabola Software as their SharePoint advisers after completion of a tender process.

Peabody is one of London's oldest and largest associations and has 150 years of experience in providing affordable housing. Peabody currently owns and manages around 27,000 homes across the capital made up of social housing, leasehold, shared ownership, supported housing, key-worker accommodation and commercial units.

Parabola and Peabody started working together in partnership in October 2013 and this is expected to last at least 18 months.

Peabody is the latest housing association to work with Parabola allowing them to take advantage of Parabola’s specialist knowledge of SharePoint as Microsoft Gold Partners. Parabola will be tackling a number of projects as Peabody’s SharePoint consultants:

Advice and guidance in the development of a strategic plan for taking advantage of SharePoint 2013
Replacement of the current intranet with a SharePoint 2013 solution
Creation of fully compatible mobile views of the intranet

Parabola are delighted to have won the contract and are looking forward to placing SharePoint at the heart of Peabody’s systems over the next 18 months.

Join us for an in depth look at how SharePoint can make a difference in your Housing Association

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 10:57:00 GMT

Join us at Microsoft's offices in London, on 28th March 2014, where you will:

Cardinal Place

Discover how to improve your staff adoption and increase benefits from using SharePoint in your Housing Association
Hear from Adactus Housing Group about how SharePoint Online has been used to benefit their business
Decide whether SharePoint in the cloud or SharePoint on premise is right for you
Find out how cloud business apps for Office or SharePoint can be used to produce Mobile applications
Be able to ask questions of our SharePoint technical experts
Network over lunch with peers from other Housing Associations

To register for this free event https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/harnessing-sharepoint-in-your-housing-association-tickets-5628462884

To find out more contact :
Stephanie Muzzall
SMuzzall@parabolasoft.co.uk
@stephmuzzall

Parabola achieve Gold Partner Level for 2014

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:41:00 GMT

In the past year Microsoft have reappraised and streamlined the partner competencies. They have changed to better represent the services Microsoft provide through partners. Parabola is delighted to announce we have the Gold level in the Collaboration and Content Competency (SharePoint). In addition, Parabola also achieved Silver level competency in Application Development (Software Development).

To achieve this recognition of capabilities our staff needed to pass the requisite Microsoft Exams. We also needed to provide Microsoft with evidence of our success over the past year delivering solutions based on their products.
Thanks to those customers who provided references and completed customer satisfaction surveys as part of the process. Additional thanks to our team for their hard work towards their exams.

To take advantage of our expertise in Collaboration, Content Management and Application Development, drop us an email, or find out more here.

SharePoint in Housing Association Research

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 10:57:00 GMT

Parabola has conducted an investigation into SharePoint adoption in the Housing Association sector and this report concludes the results. “What are others doing” is a question often asked when decisions are being made regarding systems and this research aims to answer that questions with especial regard to SharePoint. This research was conducted after Parabola searched for an existing information source and found none were detailed enough to be useful.

Despite the SharePoint focus, Parabola also surveyed many Housing Associations who were not using SharePoint to provide a clearer picture of the market. 60% of the Housing Associations surveyed were using SharePoint and the other 40% were not. A full list of the questions asked is available in Appendix 1.

The experience of Housing Associations using SharePoint

Of the 60% of Housing Associations (HAs) who were using SharePoint there was a wide selection of versions but unsurprisingly SharePoint 2010 was the front runner (see pie chart). All of them were using Standard (42%) or Enterprise editions (58%).

The software is fairly new to Housing Associations.50% of respondents had been using SharePoint for 5 years or less. A further 25% for less than 2 years. This is in contrast to the wider business market, where 78% of the fortune 500 use SharePoint . In software terms, it’s well established: SharePoint was first launched in 2001 and was Microsoft fastest growing business product .

Most of the Housing Associations using SharePoint had usage rates of 90% or more. Just 2 HA’s had partial implementations where only a small team were using the software. One of these explained that they are test-bedding SharePoint in the IT team before roll out.

70% had a high proportion of active users (where 80%+ of staff were using SharePoint on a semi daily basis) with the remainder reporting low activity.

In terms of implementation 33% had used internal resources, suggesting that there are SharePoint experts already working in the social housing sector despite it being relatively new. The other 67% used IT services companies/consultancies.

58% of the associations surveyed were hosting on virtual SharePoint servers and a surprisingly small 17% on physical servers, perhaps showing impact of the costs of physical servers. There were also some early adopters of SharePoint Online with 17% using Cloud hosting.

The survey asked if there was anything holding the associations backin their use of SharePoint. The most common replies were ‘lack of in house skills’ and ‘poor user adoption’. This suggests that a few associations have fallen foul to bad implementations by third parties, who have not ensured a ‘train the trainer’ program or Poor senior management buy-in which results in no top-down effect for adoption. SharePoint can be a big habit shift for employees so it is vital to manage the change effectively.

There were a wide variety of responses when the Housing Associations described what benefits they garnered from SharePoint and you can see the full results below. The most popular include access to and finding of information. This is a common challenge in business, because using file servers or personal drives leads to information silos. Document management and powerful search capability are expected responses as they are two of SharePoint’s quick wins.

Potential Applications of SharePoint

Housing Associations are forging ahead using SharePoint for a number of different business needs, which are listed above. This confirms that HA’s are using SharePoint for business applications other than just Intranet or document management.

There have been only a few examples of integration of SharePoint and housing management systems (HMS). This could be due to the assumption there is no capability in SharePoint or because Housing Management System providers are not interested in allowing integration.

When asked their future plans for SharePoint, virtually all the associations had plans, which shows the increasing acceptance of SharePoint. The answers indicate that some Housing Associations may be struggling with user adoption (“improve staff take up – 42%”, “train staff better – 54%”). The other top answer was to make use of SharePoint’s collaborative features, these features have really come to life in SharePoint 2010 and 2013 so it is easy to see why more and more companies want to start using workflows and document revisions to take their document repositories to the next level.

Experiences of Housing Associations not using SharePoint

As mentioned in the introduction to this report 40% of respondents came from Housing Associations not using SharePoint. This presents a valuable learning opportunity into alternatives to SharePoint, the future of IT systems in Social Housing and perceptions of SharePoint.

Alternatives to SharePoint

There is no single alternative to SharePoint, so those not using Microsoft’s system have a variety of systems to replace the various capabilities that SharePoint provides. The survey asked them what systems they were using if any, for most of SharePoint’s main functionality.

For document management the most popular alternatives were using a file server or having no formal document management system. This is surprising considering the pressures on HA’s to deliver better systems and manage their business records.

What systems are used for sharing information with board members and or suppliers? It seems that many Housing Associations are still using email attachments to share information. There are some widely accepted consumer products on the market such as Dropbox which are being used, but the poor security of these systems compared to enterprise software such as SharePoint is likely to be an issue.

There are some companies who specialise in intranets for Housing Associations but the survey results suggest that no single product is gaining traction here. When asked if they had an intranet and what system they used, half of the respondents had no specific intranet system. The rest were split between a custom built intranet and a few third party intranet CMS solutions such as Sorce and VerseOne.

Tenant portals are likely to be a growth area moving forward as Housing Associations continue to champion digital inclusion for their tenants. There was no leading system for communicating with tenants via a web portal. Some Housing Associations had no solution yet, others had internally developed or bespoke developed systems and the rest were using different third party proprietary products. No two Housing Associations were using the same system.

Have you considered implementing SharePoint and if you have, why did you decide not to implement?

Despite not using SharePoint, 30% of respondents were currently looking at implementing SharePoint which ties in with the earlier finding that acceptance of SharePoint is increasing in Housing Associations. The main reasons for not implementing SharePoint were because it needed too much development or was too expensive (as in chart above). This indicates the potential for SharePoint Online in the social housing sector as it comes at a much lower cost of entry and without the need for investment in servers or development.

Housing Management Systems

Whether using SharePoint or not, most Housing Associations use a housing management system (HMS). Through previous discussions with HAs these often out of date legacy systems are heavily relied on by management and staff whilst being under supported internally and by the supplier. This reliance is one reason for looking into non housing specific software (such as SharePoint) where the market for support and development is buoyant and competitive. A variety of HMS were used from Aareon, Capita, Civica and Orchard.

Who took part?

To ensure a varied and representative view of the whole market of Housing Associations a wide variety of sizes, locations and decision makers were studied. However, as you can see, the survey was biased to London and the South East. It is known that there are a concentration of HAs in London and Parabola’s location in this region probably created the skew. The survey was aimed at IT decision makers and senior management who would be knowledgeable about their systems.

It is interesting to note the diversity of those responding to the survey, many of the systems traditionally maintained my IT are now managed by Marketing, Communications or HR e.g. tenant portal and intranet which is presumably why some HR Managers and Heads of Housing completed the research. As expected with this kind of research and as a result of the targeted approach, most of the respondents were from the IT function but ranging in seniority from IT coordinators to IT directors.

Conclusions

Many Housing Associations are already using SharePoint, but not necessarily taking full advantage of its functionality, the document management, collaboration and potential linkages with housing management systems could be better adopted.

Housing Associations using SharePoint have made training and cost savings because there are less systems to maintain, support and purchase.

Low SharePoint user adoption seems to be a common problem, the housing associations also reported these problems:
• Lack of support
• Low user take-up (poor end user adoption)
• Poor or inconsistent performance
• Poorly managed system
• Too much administration is needed
• Doesn’t integrate with other systems
• Too slow
• Can't find what I'm looking for
• Search results are too numerous/not relevant

17% of those Housing Associations using SharePoint were using SharePoint Online, considering it was only launched in October 2012 shows that there are some early adopters in Social Housing and is gaining traction.

Managing IT Support Requests via SharePoint

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 16:37:00 GMT

PRP is a UK based architects practise who operate in London, Moscow and Shanghai. They are one of the world’s largest practises and have a wide range of specialisms including residential, hotel and healthcare. PRP have been working with Parabola for three years to improve their SharePoint 2010 intranet and increase the benefits they receive from using SharePoint.

With Parabola’s help PRP have recently introduced a logging system in SharePoint to track and prioritise IT support requests. The solution is based on out-of-the-box SharePoint features such as forms and workflows.

Parabola’s own support logging system is built in SharePoint 2010 and is used to track support logs for all clients. Using the expertise of building this Parabola set about creating a similar system for PRP fitting their requirements.
The solution was built in SharePoint 2010 and will be available to PRP’s 290 staff across 8 different offices across the globe.

Parabola have also built an IT Knowledge Base for PRP, where IT staff can create ‘how-tos’ so that users can solve common and easy to solve problems themselves. There is also an admin page for the support team where they can view support logs per office, assigning the relevant member of staff and judging the workload of each office.

The process is simple with just 5 fields to complete and now all UK staff have access to log support requests in SharePoint. The system will be rolled out to international offices in the future.

The Benefits
• PRP can track all support logs in one place
• IT staff can check the history of support requests and look up previous fixes to a reoccurring problem
• PRP Staff can track the current status of their support request online, without having to call IT support for an update
• IT staff can easily see their queue of outstanding support and prioritise requests
• Resources can be allocated easily using the workload per office view
• IT staff can now collaborate on support issues across the offices via a discussion board
• Senior Managers can quickly see outstanding and resolved support requests

If you would like to get more out of SharePoint and automate your business processes give Parabola a call today.

Parabola receive Healthy Workplace Award

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 13:18:00 GMT

Last week three of the Parabola team went to City Hall, London to receive our Healthy Workplace Charter Award. It was taken us a few months, and a nerve wracking assessment day but we are pleased to be receive this award.

The award cements our commitment to have a healthy workplace with happy employees who are supported by us to look after their wellbeing.

One of things that made us stand out to the judges was our SharePoint Intranet which gives our employees access to information, advice and an events calendar on a host of wellbeing topics. The site also has an anonymous feedback form, where employees can ask for extra information to be posted, make suggestions about activities or give us feedback on what we’ve been doing.

The Greater London Authority commissioned a video to feature some of the winners, and we are lucky enough to have a starring role, you can see the video below.

Read more about our efforts to become a healthy workplace or if we’ve inspired you to become a healthy workplace (with or without going for the award) get in touch to find out how SharePoint can help.

We’re moving our hosting to the Cloud

Tue, 05 Nov 2013 11:29:00 GMT

Over the past month Parabola have been moving our hosting services to Microsoft’s cloud service, Windows Azure. This move was driven by a desire to improve our hosting service and ensure the reliability and robustness of our web applications. In addition, we recognise Microsoft's development of Azure as a Cloud solution is very significant and that Parabola needs to keep up to speed with the technology.

Why are we doing this?

Using the cloud gives us:

A very secure, stable host for our client’s web sites and web applications
Potential cost savings as the costs are purely usage based
Guaranteed service up time
Configurable automated backup and recovery
A lower environmental impact as we are using less hardware and energy compared to our previous dedicated hardware
Scalable storage capacity that can increase at any time without us having to make large hardware purchases
Support for popular non-Microsoft technologies such as node.js and php, databases such as MySql and Oracle.
Increased flexibility, we can use Azure in many different ways, from dedicated virtual machines to simple website hosting
Location choice, we can choose where we want instances to be deployed, e.g. if one of our clients expanded their operations in Asia, we could add a second instance of their server there.
Servers are automatically kept up to date whenever Microsoft issues a new release.

To summarise, we are moving to the cloud to provide a more flexible and sustainable hosting service at a manageable price.

After a thorough investigation into DNS providers we’re also moving all our domain name management to GoDaddy. They provide a more manageable DNS control panel than our previous hosts, allowing us to provide an improved service to our customers.

If you’d like to hear more about cloud hosting or the potential of Microsoft Windows Azure for your business, please get in touch.

Becoming a Healthier Workplace

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 07:48:00 GMT

London Healthy Workplace Charter and Parabola Software Ltd

Parabola are currently working to be awarded the London Healthy Workplace Charter (LHWC) which “provides a framework to support employers develop good practice by promoting health in their organisation in a practical way.”
Staff are our most important asset and it’s important to us that they are happy, healthy and that we avoid stress so that they can continue doing the best work for you. We hope the award will help us recruit the best people as we grow and retain the great staff we already have. Taking part in the healthy workplace charter is creating positive results for our personal and professional lives.

We’re in good company, Deloitte, Forster and Kingston Borough council have all achieved chartered status. Companies who have already completed the charter have reported that that it provides a discussion point with employers for wider health and wellbeing issues, including difficult topics such as alcohol, and is a useful focus and framework that provides a good way to promote health.

As a technology company, we’ve shunned the leaflets and created an online portal to share our health, work and wellbeing information so it’s accessible to all our staff and contractors, anywhere, anytime.

We’ll be demonstrating the steps we’ve taken to the judging panel in October and we’ll let you know how we get on. If you’d like to find out more about the Healthy Workplace Charter you can find information here. If you would like your own wellbeing portal get in contact.

A 3D representation of the hand and club path during a golf swing.

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 13:12:00 GMT

Parabola continues their software development work on the golf swing analysis product with Mark Bull Golf. The software continues to develop in functionality with Mark Bull adding new features as the software becomes more and more useful to him and his clients. The Agile methodology used on this project ensures that the software can continue to grow as the possibilities become apparent.

The latest version of the Swing Analysis system includes the hand and club path in a 3D image. The hand and club head data for the analysis is captured by the Polhemus Motion Tracking hardware.

The user can rotate the 3D image to compare the hand and club head path with the swing plane. Play the video below to the 3D hand and club path tool in action:

If you’d like to find out more about how software development can help your business, give us a call on 0208 339 4380

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Further Education SharePoint Research - The Results

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:56:00 GMT

Introduction and Background

Parabola has conducted an investigation of SharePoint adoption in Further Education, this report concludes the results. The research was split across two surveys, one for colleges already using SharePoint and one for colleges not using SharePoint. There were twice as many respondents to the SharePoint user surveys, but this may not be representative of the whole sector. Research into SharePoint was always more likely to attract more interest from colleges already using SharePoint.

Parabola decided to conduct this research as we are often asked questions like "what are other colleges doing" by clients. We could answer what our clients were doing with SharePoint but felt it would be more representative if we studied the wider market and had real opinions and examples to show colleges. The Research has a double benefit in that it helps us focus our further research, studies and training to ensure our staff are ready to create SharePoint solutions for the challenges colleges are facing.

We had respondents from 6th forms and further education colleges, large and small from around the country representing a broad spectrum across the sector.

What colleges using SharePoint told us

The research showed that there is a significant level of Microsoft server software expertise (but not necessarily in SharePoint) in the FE market as 46% of the respondents implemented SharePoint internally with no outside consultancy. These findings were surprising as SharePoint server expertise and experience have been quite scarce on the IT market over the last 5 years as indicated by the high rates being charged by agencies for SharePoint contract staff. The other 54% of respondents were split between 47% who used third party SharePoint consultancies and only 7% using a mixture of the two. Continued investment and research by Microsoft ensures that SharePoint is leading the market in functionality and form, not just for education but for business of all types.

Colleges are managing to keep up to date with supported SharePoint versions to some extent. 34% of colleges were still using SharePoint 2007, 60% were using SharePoint 2010 and there were a few earlier adopters, 6% using SharePoint 2013. This indicates that despite budget reductions in the FE sector, SharePoint upgrades are still occurring in FE, suggesting that those colleges who use SharePoint are continuing to do so and are seeing benefits since they would not otherwise invest in an upgrade.

As well as reporting benefits, the research showed some colleges have difficulties with SharePoint and upgrades. The survey identified the most common pains for staff across colleges.Do your staff report any of these problems? If so you are not alone. But there are ways to solve them.

The pains felt by staff were reflected in the overall feeling towards SharePoint in the colleges. Whilst no-one was very dissatisfied, it seems none of the respondents feel they are using SharePoint to its best and no one reported that they were Very Satisfied either. The results were 50% Satisfied, 43% slightly less happy with Somewhat Satisfied and 7% feeling Somewhat Dissatisfied with their current SharePoint situation. The 7% who were dissatisfied came from colleges where SharePoint was implemented internally with no external help.

The pie chart below shows the pains reported:

What problems do you or your staff report having with your current SharePoint implementation?

Further Education Colleges are getting some great value out of SharePoint, it’s interesting to see the wide selection of SharePoint uses that are being embraced:

Some of the colleges surveyed were using SharePoint for just one area, whereas others were harnessing their investment and using SharePoint for as much as possible. In some cases it may be a question of education, perhaps colleges are just not aware of all the different ways they can use SharePoint and or how best to do so. If you’ve already made the investment in SharePoint why not see if you can start using it for some of the ideas mentioned in the diagram?

Almost all the colleges were using SharePoint for search but no colleges reported using SharePoint as a digital asset library or for prospective student access to information. Both of which SharePoint is capable of.

Another area covered by the research was into perceived benefits of SharePoint. There are some oft stated benefits of SharePoint but what do users feel provides them with value? The diagram below summarises the benefits felt by staff at the colleges surveyed.

Over 70% of the colleges reported that they benefited from having up-to-date information, access to SharePoint from home and access to all their important information. These are key benefits of the features of SharePoint as for any business without collaboration software, lack of information or access to it are common gripes.

It seems that colleges want to take more advantage of the benefits as all but one of the respondents had an idea of where they wanted to take SharePoint next. 100% of those who had future plans with SharePoint wanted to improve staff take up.

What Colleges not using SharePoint told us.

Surprisingly half of the colleges not using SharePoint told us they have no system for document management, the others all used different systems. Unsurprisingly, more than half of them were using Moodle to share information with parents, governors and/or students and others were using an internally developed bespoke system, cementing earlier findings that the IT skills available in education are high.

All but one of the respondents had a staff intranet and the systems used can be seen below, all those colleges using Joomla for an intranet were also using it as a CMS. There were 6 other options as well as an ‘other’ field but these were the only responses, we were expecting to see some colleges using Moodle or Interact as an intranet.

All the colleges but one had considered using SharePoint in their organisation and those that had reported the following reasons for not implementing it. Although price was the major obstacle, there were a few others as shown below. Microsoft’s preferential pricing for education and SharePoint online are both ways to take advantage of SharePoint at a lower price.

“Still to be investigated” is an interesting option, suggesting that time may be a constraint when it comes to looking at new software in colleges

Conclusions

The FE colleges who have implemented SharePoint without external SharePoint expertise are receiving the least benefits and have the most problems.

Those colleges not using SharePoint do not seem to be using Open Source solutions because of the perceived benefits but instead because of the initial cost saving on licencing.

In Summary, the most common benefits of using SharePoint in FE are in the areas of document management (“access to files”), search (“finding information”), collaboration (“sharing information”) and communication. FE Colleges using SharePoint are often benefitting significantly, but poor user adoption is a very common issue and can become a barrier to progress with SharePoint. Colleges with low user adoption often have technical problems and feel they need more support. This can explain why future plans often relate to improving user adoption and trying to realise these benefits.

If you want to start feeling the benefits of SharePoint today drop us an email and we’ll get talking.

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Did you know SharePoint could look like this?

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:00:00 GMT

We’re currently working with a large FE College on a SharePoint 2013 implementation and together we decided to give SharePoint a Windows 8 style makeover to make it more appealing for their students and simple for everyone to find the information they need on any device.

We wanted to share some of our initial screenshots with you as we are pretty excited about how they look and it shows just how much design and customisation can be achieved in SharePoint 2013.

There are applications for this sort of design in many industries, not just education. It would work well for a customer or supplier landing page, allowing them to click through to the information they need.

SharePoint can also be used for websites, and this kind of design would work well if your website is often viewed on smart devices or you want to make it easier for people using tablets or mobiles to access the content they need. Because of this, SharePoint 2013 is a great way to embrace the trend of bringing your own device (BYOD) to work.

Tiles update regularly so they always display relevant information. In this case, each and every student can access their key and current information at a glance and click the tiles to get more detailed information in a particular area.

This simple, design focused look is only possible because of the powerful tools for developing with HTML 5 in SharePoint 2013. These allow us to build a responsive SharePoint web design that delivers an interface to suit the device in use.

If you like the look of this design, why not drop us an email today and find out how we can build an integrated SharePoint with functional design for you and your company.

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