Case Studies

Mobile data capture via a SharePoint App creates a cost-effective management control tool

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:30:00 GMT

Summary

The Adactus Housing Group simplified its fire-safety inspections and improved the quality of the resulting data by switching from a paper-based system to one using smartphones and a SharePoint App. In the process Adactus gained a cost-effective, powerful, and open-ended tool for general property management. The data-gathering team – non-technical caretakers – like the App because it saves them time. As well as enjoying more accurate and timely data, Adactus has better control over its property portfolio. It can easily adapt its SharePoint App to gather data on any aspect of property management. The project took just three months and cost less than £10,000.

The challenge of paper-based data capture

Many organisations are still using paper-based forms to capture vital information. Data recorded on paper is not easily accessible, hard to analyse, and prone to error, especially if the staff who complete the forms are not specialists. Paper-based data is also slow-moving: it relies on physical transfers to pass from one person to the next.

The Adactus Housing Group faced exactly this problem. It owns 150 properties with communal areas, and manages a team of roving caretakers who have to report back on the fire-safety checks at each communal area. The traditional method was to complete paper forms for each property, and return them to the admin office. If a caretaker took a vacation, there could be a two-week delay between survey and document filing.

Agile development creates user-friendly interface

Adactus asked Parabola Software to develop a mobile solution that would be easy for caretakers to manage. Although Parabola could see that this was a relatively simple job for Microsoft SharePoint App, the challenge lay in devising a user interface that would appeal to such a non-technical audience. So they stripped back the sequence of fire-safety tests to the basics and redesigned it in such a way that the forms are clear, logical, and foolproof.

Easy to use interface

Parabola's developers went further: they encouraged Adactus to make more use of its SharePoint App – to learn more about the status of its property portfolio by capturing additional property-management information at the same time.

Parabola, which has long practised Agile software development, keeps its clients involved the development loop because that delivers solutions that users are at ease with. At each iteration, the sequence and the interface were refined till everyone was happy that the process was indeed simple and foolproof.

From briefing to go-live in just three months

Agile development doesn't have to take long. From start to finish, the project took just three months, only one month of which was devoted to application development. Adactus found the process quick, painless, and very cost-effective. Working with Parabola was easy.

"The Parabola App was an easy choice for us," says Gary Heaton, Head of Property Services at Adactus, "because we didn't have to buy special equipment or software licences. It took less than a month to develop and cost far less than proprietary mobile-workforce solutions."

Time-saving technology for non-technical users

An initially sceptical caretaking team took to the new technology rapidly. In the words of one caretaker: "Usually you introduce these new things and they take more time. This actually saves me time."

Mobile Caretaker with the App

Since the SharePoint App is device neutral, caretakers can use almost any smartphone or PC. Better still, they no longer have to return to head office to hand in their paperwork. Data is available to Adactus management as soon as the property visits are complete.

As Adactus's , Gary Heaton explains: "This App puts us in control of our fire-safety checks and helps us stay compliant. The software guides our caretaker team step-by-step through the checking process. When the visit's over, we can immediately tell if anything's been overlooked, and if the caretaker found any problems."

A cost-effective route to better control

For an investment of less than £10,000, Adactus has taken control of its fire-safety obligations, its roving caretaking team, and the communal areas properties. Adactus knows where its caretakers are and how long they take to perform the visits because they check-in via the App when they arrive at a property. The data also reveals much more about the properties. Simple data analysis shows, for example, which properties need more maintenance and which caretakers may need better supervision.

Since the App went live, Adactus has requested new fields to capture data on other activities such as cleaning levels. It has also extended the use of the data to provide further management analysis.

By working with Parabola, Adactus achieved much more than it set out to do. It doesn't just have certainty over its ability to meet its fire-safety obligations, it now has a cost-effective, powerful, and extensible tool to support its property management.

A2Dominion Launch New Intranet with Collaboration Features.

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:41:00 GMT

Background

The A2Dominion Group is one of the country's leading providers of high quality housing. A2Dominion now provides over 34,000 homes across London and Southern England with thousands in development.

A2Dominion employs 900 members of staff and is headquartered in London with 67 offices across London and South England.

Challenges

As part of an on-going SharePoint programme, which has included automating business processes for all staff. Parabola continued to work with A2Dominion (A2D) on a new SharePoint intranet to replace the widely used intranet running on an out-dated Content Management System.

A2D wanted the new intranet to provide better communications for project work, document management and ensure consistency in practise. With over 900 staff A2D’s intranet is fundamental to communication within the organisation. The Intranet provided staff with the means to keep informed, find contacts and communicate with each other. As a result of this dependency it was imperative that the transition to the new SharePoint solution happened smoothly for staff at all levels.
A further business challenge for A2D was the desire to delegate control of the content on the intranet to users across the organisation whilst maintaining its standard and quality.

Solution

The company intranet was migrated and redesigned in SharePoint in May 2012. All content was transferred allowing users to engage with their content and SharePoint’s new features straight away.
To increase user participation and to keep staff fully informed, Parabola helped A2D employ the SharePoint social computing features. Now staff have blogs, a blog feed allows everyone to stay in the loop and they can use alerts to find out if their favourite content has changed. SharePoint makes it easier to write news articles with a consistent look, resulting in a relevant, easy to use and aesthetically pleasing news section with contributors from across the business.

The introduction of SharePoint search as well as new information architecture practises give staff the capability to drill down search results. For example, a document search can be filtered by author or department making search more efficient for A2D. Finding a subject expert is made easier with SharePoint 2010’s People Search. People Search now includes detailed profiles of staff, organisation charts and the ability to search by expertise such as ‘Prince 2 Qualified’ or ‘First Aider’ ensuring A2D staff can find the right person across their 67 different offices.

Parabola fulfilled A2D’s needs using a two-pronged approach. Firstly, harnessing the value of SharePoint’s out-of-the-box features wherever possible and secondly building custom web parts and tailoring the styling to fit A2D’s needs. By engaging with Parabola, A2D could take advantage of the company’s extensive experience and expertise developing SharePoint to get custom web parts built to spec and to their deadlines.

SharePoint comes with vast out-of –the-box capabilities, such as document management using workflows which allow users to collaborate on documents wherever they are. Staff can now collaborate on documents with colleagues in other offices for review or editing which results in a single version on the intranet and avoids “email Ping-Pong”. These workflows also allow the marketing team to delegate control of intranet content because team members can send new content to them for approval.

In addition to the above, a number of special features were built specifically for A2D. Customising the styling of SharePoint with new menus, master pages and templates in keeping with corporate branding provides an informative and appealing user experience their staff are familiar with.
To help staff harness social media, a custom web part was configured for the intranet front page which pulls information from RSS and twitter feeds. This provides a quick one-stop-shop for the latest in the social housing world. Wikis and profile pages in SharePoint allow staff to interact and share knowledge in the same way they do outside the work place.

Summary

The new intranet went live in May 2012 following a successful implementation. Feedback from across the organisation has been positive, with staff loving the new look and feel.

“This is much easier to navigate around. I particularly like the events section on the home page and the quick links at the bottom to help me access the information I need. Well done.”

Applications System Manager

“Looks great and a marked improvement from previous version.”

Applications Team Manager

More Information on SharePoint Intranets

Mark Bull Golf Swing Analysis Software

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:11:00 GMT

Background

Mark Bull Golf use the latest in golf biomechanics to analyse the movements in a golf swing and provide physical assessments to help golfers improve their game.
As a golf biomechanist Mark Bull uses real-time sensors to analyse the swing of a golfer; working with golfers of all levels ranging from European tour professionals, national squads to recreational golfers. His work is highly respected in the industry. Mark came to Parabola for a new solution because the software available on the market no longer suited his needs due its limited functionality.

The Biomechanics of Sport

Sports Biomechanics is described as the physics of sport as it studies the structure and function of biological systems by means of mechanics. Biomechanics are used in many sports, not just golf; examples include analysis of the movements in a tennis serve or penalty kick. The skill that biomechanists like Mark have is to take quantitative data from instruments, analyse it and present it to a sportsperson in a qualitative way they can use to improve their game. Data is produced from measurement devices attached to a golfer’s body and could include angle of movement, movement speed and body rotation, which enable the golfer to function and move in the optimal way for them both physically and technically, therefore reducing the chance of potential injury and allowing for efficient and repeatable movement patterns. This data analysis, together with Mark’s knowledge produces better results from each golfer’s swing. The software Parabola created helps Mark do exactly that.

Parabola built the solution on the Microsoft .Net Framework, using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to show the graphs, and the software is compatible with PC’s running Windows 7 or 8. Mark takes the data in a custom built measurement suite or out on the golf course (albeit with less accuracy). The software runs on his laptop so he can use it wherever his clients are.

“Using Parabola's agile approach to software development suited my needs exactly and allowed me to work with the software and adjust and customise as I worked with it. This helped me tremendously as working with it I discovered new ideas, identified future solutions, whereas operating within a rigid approach would not allowed for this to happen. I cannot recommend Parabola enough and I for one am very excited about the projects that we are currently working on, as I have total confidence in their ability to provide me with all the solutions that I require”

An Agile Approach

Parabola took an Agile approach to the project, using iterative development which involves breaking a project down into iterations or increments and appraising after each one. There are alternative methods of Software Development but for this project the benefits of Agile were ideal for the client:

Minimum up front analysis
No technical knowledge required
Feature driven
Minimal upfront cost
Pay as you go
Able to stop, slow down and accelerate the project.
Requirements and focus can change
Fosters communication between parties

The diagram below summarises how our approach works.

In this case there were six iterations defined at the start of the project and after each iteration the software had fully functioning features which were used with Mark’s clients. Using the Agile approach also resulted in a closer working relationship between Parabola and Mark. Regular meetings, emails or telephone calls with technical staff and managers meant Mark Bull could give Parabola the right information at all times to produce software perfect for his needs. The iterative approach meant change could be incorporated easily into the development by enabling and welcoming modifications and adjustments. No sacrifices had to be made because of cost.

One of the key factors of an agile approach is continuous testing; testing early and often enables Parabola to stay on top of any bugs or snags that needed fixing. Another efficiency made from using the Agile method was cutting out management time. Mark could come to Parabola with questions or ideas at any time and avoided the normal necessity of in-depth analysis at the start of the project.

A Graphical Output

The software Parabola delivered parses the data files the hardware creates and analyses them in order to make the data readable and accessible. The next step the software takes is to produce graphs representing different parts of the swing.

The graphical output is interactive, enabling users to view the same aspect of different swings, different aspects of the same swing or a combination of the two side by side. Users can click on the graphs to see the exact angle/reading at a certain point or drag and drop the graphs to see different views. This interactive element is what we come to expect from modern software and was missing from the software Mark was using prior to working with Parabola. This allows Mark to identify problems, relate to the customer and tailor exercises quicker than before.

The Swing Analysis Software records this data in its system so it is available for peer to peer comparison or historical comparison. This allows Mark to have all the information about his customers to hand at any time. Another customer facing aspect of the software is that it produces PDF reports for the player to take away which Mark can adapt by highlighting problem areas for discussion and adding comments to a notes field.

Customising this report was not part of the original scope and came about as a concept during iteration, showing just how flexible the approach is. The iterative approach allowed Parabola to build a better product for Mark. You can see part of a report in the image below:

Next Steps

After six weeks of working with Parabola, Mark had received a number of successful iterations of the software, with new features at each stage. Mark was so confident with the software that it was unveiled to National, Regional and County coaches at the English Golf Coaching National Conference at Woodhall Spa on January 10^th 2013.

Find Out More

If you are interested in having your swing analysed you can find more about Mark Bull Golf here. If you are interested in Parabola’s Software Development services give us a call or email today.

Case Study: A2Dominion build a SharePoint workflow solution to automate their DoI process

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:07:00 GMT

Background

The A2Dominion Group is one of the country's leading providers of high quality housing. The A2Dominion Group now provides over 34,000 homes across London and southern England with thousands in development.

The Group offers a wide range of housing options including affordable rented, temporary, student, care & support, and key worker accommodation, as well as homes for sale and shared ownership through its A2Dominion New Homes brand.

The Challenge

The Group, as a Registered Provider with charitable status, requires employees, board members and other individuals related to the organisation to complete a Declaration of Interests form once a year, as well as on any occasion when their DoI information changes.

However, with around 900 employees in 67 offices across London and southern England, A2Dominion’s governance team began to find that keeping track of these and other forms using a paper-based system was a significant administrative burden, and sought to move to an electronic system to record, track, approve and retain DoI forms without the need for manual scrutiny.

SharePoint 2010 was already in the pipeline as the replacement for the Intranet and there was a realisation that SharePoint could be used for much more than just web pages and document management.

Richard Gray, Managing Director at Parabola, explained:

“As well as being a great staff collaboration platform SharePoint is very extensible. When organisations are using SharePoint as the platform for staff communication or HR processes, there is often a good business case for a purpose built application on the SharePoint platform”

The Solution

A2Dominion, which had made use of Parabola’s considerable SharePoint experience before, turned to them once again to implement a solution to this process automation and records management challenge. The new online process was built upon the existing SharePoint platform, in line with IT strategy and is accessible to all staff in the group.

The content of the DoI form and approval status for each employee is now completely handled by the application which makes extensive use of SharePoint workflows and tasks. Every employee’s Active Directory account is used by SharePoint to authorise their use of the application, and email alerts are used to remind those who have not yet completed their DoI form to do so. DoIs must be completed at least once a year, so the system is configured to remind staff in each department on a nominated week each year. This results in a situation where most people will complete the DoI without any need for managers chasing them. If the alert is ignored for a certain amount of time, a further reminder will be sent, and eventually the issue will be escalated to the direct manager of the individual, or finally the Governance team, who if necessary will talk to them personally.

Retrieval and reporting of the DoI information are hugely improved by the application. Completed DoI forms are held in a database so they are very easy to retrieve and generate reports from. For example; it is now easy to view both an employee's most recent DoI and the previous versions in the database.

Records Management obligations are much easier to meet. After 6 years of retention DoI records will be eligible for deletion, although the organisation is able to retain them for longer if necessary. Security is also much improved. In comparison to the previous paper-based system where a form left on somebody’s desk it could be read by anybody who happened to see it, the new solution restricts access to each staff member and their manager.

The new process has been found to be considerably more efficient than the paper-based system it replaced. Tracking of employee completion of the form as well as the creation and retention of records of them was significantly simplified.

Trevor Whittaker, Head of Business Systems at A2Dominion Group, commented:

“The use of intelligent workflows has the potential to improve additional Group processes as demonstrated by our success with the Declaration of Interest management. Taking the cumbersome burden of paper management processes out of the loop simplifies and significantly improves the way we work. SharePoint 2010 is delivering efficiencies across our entire organisation.”

Results

Feedback from A2Dominion staff has been very positive. Employees recognise the advantages of using SharePoint to automate the DoI process over the previous paper-based system, especially given the efficiency savings gained by reducing the administration required. The Group is now investigating how they might benefit from automating other similar business processes using SharePoint.

Case Study: Smooth upgrade to SharePoint 2010 for City of Westminster College

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:23:00 GMT

Background

City of Westminster College is a leading Further Education institution based in central London. Offering over 250 academic, vocational and professional courses to students aged 16-18 and to adults wishing to re-train or improve their skills. The state-of-the-art Paddington Green Campus, a world-class £102m building designed by leading architects opened in January 2011 and has the capacity for over 3,000 students. An inspiring location providing formal and informal learning spaces for studying in the heart of the capital.

The Challenge

As a leading academic institution with a Microsoft Campus Agreement, using the latest versions of Microsoft software makes good sense. The College wanted to upgrade their current installation of SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 to not only keep up with software releases, but also to take advantage of some key new features within 2010. SharePoint provides an essential collaboration platform for staff and students as well as providing central file and record management across the College. Prior to implementing SharePoint all student correspondence was paper-based and stored in filing cabinets, the resulting ‘paper mountain' was creating a storage problem coupled with the difficulty of trying to locate particular documents. The College uses SharePoint as a document repository for all student correspondence and this is linked to their central student database. For example, student data stored securely on SharePoint can include documents related to prior qualifications where the original is scanned and then held on SharePoint electronically. This makes finding the documentation in future a lot easier as it is fully searchable by name or reference ID because of the links to the central database. It removed the need for keeping paper records and the physical storage space required.

Upgrading to 2010 was a daunting project because so many of the College's services depend on it and around 450 staff members access it on a daily basis. The Online Services Manager knew they needed some IT consultancy for the upgrade and so evaluated a number of SharePoint specialists to allow them to showcase their skills and expertise. With so many people depending on the system, it was imperative that downtime was minimised and that the upgrade could take place at a time convenient to the College.

The Solution

Staff Portal Homepage

City of Westminster College selected Parabola to provide the technical consultancy necessary to upgrade the SharePoint installation. Yves Bozzo-Rey, Online Services Manager, commented:

"It was immediately clear from our meetings that the Parabola team has an in-depth understanding of the academic environment and the differing requirements from a purely commercial organisation. Their technical competence is outstanding and we found the team to be very responsive."

Working with Parabola, the College planned for the SharePoint 2010 upgrade to take place over the Christmas period when it was closed and the least disruption would be caused. The initial review and fact finding of the current landscape, the planning of the upgrade and the design and build of the new farm took place in the three months prior to the Christmas period. To further minimise disruption the first step taken by Parabola was to freeze the current SharePoint 2007 deployment, this allowed ‘read only' access to files and information during the upgrade process and as such reducing the downtime window. Having worked with the College and meticulously planned and tested the upgrade process, Parabola was able to complete the migration over the Christmas period, in fact the upgrade was completed within just four days.

Richard Gray, Managing Director, Parabola explained:

"In an organisation of this size people become heavily dependent upon SharePoint and its therefore vital to design the new 2010 farm for their future needs and to mitigate the risks to minimise any downtime. However, having been through the 2007 to 2010 upgrade process several times before, we knew what to expect and how to resolve the issues that inevitably arose."

Results

Parabola supports City of Westminster College's SharePoint 2010 which includes both staff and student intranets and the College public facing website. Having worked with Parabola since 2009, the College is delighted that they have not had one day of downtime in over three years. This remarkable record provides insight into the meticulous planning, robust approach and technical understanding the Parabola team has to ensure the system was implemented optimally and continues to run at its best.

Since the upgrade, College staff members are enjoying a faster system and many have commented positively about the new interface found on SharePoint 2010. In the coming months, the College team is aiming to implement intelligent workflows to continue to make current processes even more efficient and continue to get best value from the system.

Case Study: Esher College augments MR 2010 with an integrated ILP and UCAS management system

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:41:00 GMT

Introduction

Esher College is a leading sixth-form college serving North West Surrey. The College has some 1500 students on its role and was awarded Beacon status by the Department for Education in 2006.

Context

Parabola has been working with Esher College since 2005 as its preferred ICT partner.

Parabola delivered one of the UK’s first FE SharePoint Portals for Esher in 2006 and has worked in partnership with the College to develop the student management and collaboration system MR 2010; a flexible mark book, progress recording and ILP application integrated with SharePoint. The application, which is now installed in three UK FE colleges, is used by Esher to enable students to manage self-assessments and to see their progress against their own targets and those of their tutors.

The Challenge

The college has maintained student information on UCAS applications, gap year and employment prospects on paper and spreadsheets for many years. Having this information enables staff to help students with their UCAS applications and to focus on helping on helping students make successful choices for their university or employment plans.

Parabola’s challenge was to provide an easy-to-use and intuitive system integrated with the existing systems. The additional functionality had to be able to be accessed by all staff in the College, and be easier to use than a paper-based system. It was also important that the students could view their records and be able to collaborate with staff whilst setting action points.

The Solution

The existing MR 2010 application, developed by Esher in partnership with Parabola, was chosen as the platform for delivering the new ILP functionality because:

Screenshot of Application

Staff find it easy to use and it can be accessed from home
It is already integrated with Esher’s existing student records system and SharePoint
The College needed to be able to view student progress information alongside UCAS and ILP data

The solution includes automated emailing that alerts students and (where relevant) teachers when actions have not been completed by their due date. For example, the system will flag up omissions, such as the ILP not being updated and will alert tutors if futures information on UCAS, employment or gap year options are not fully recorded.

The ILP and UCAS information is automatically published on the College SharePoint Intranet which students and teachers can access securely from on-campus or remotely from home.

Parabola’s Approach

Parabola has worked in close partnership with Esher College for several years and has developed a detailed understanding of its needs – from educational, administrative and technology perspectives.

Initially, the ICT team at Esher wrote a short specification of requirements and agreed this with senior staff at the college. This was then used to brief Parabola. After agreeing a cost for the project Parabola produced a detailed functional specification for the system including mock-ups of new screen designs.

Mockup Screen produced during Design phase

Parabola’s functional specification provided Esher with a design and full details of exactly what data would be input, stored and displayed. It also included a set of business rules that govern how business logic of the system works.The enhancement to MR 2010 was delivered within eight weeks.

As Parabola MD Richard Gray explained:

“We have established a way of working with Esher that means that we are able to complete projects effectively and efficiently. Our awareness of their ICT strategy, including SharePoint, and our experience with other UK FE colleges mean that we understand academic and administrative requirements and can turn these into a solution quickly and effectively”

Results

Once the requirements and the costs were agreed, the project was delivered in 8 weeks
The new process has improved management of ILPs for teachers and students
There is now a single system for all ILP, UCAS offers, employment and gap year opportunities within the College
Students became more engaged in their progress by setting their own targets.
Staff and students have access to ILP information on-campus or remotely via the internet
No new hardware was required and SharePoint continues to be the portal for all college systems

David Lloyd, Director of ILT at Esher College commented:

“This extension to MR 2010 is another example of the successful partnership approach between Parabola and Esher College. It gives us a real edge in being able to easily capture, maintain and use the wide range of information needed to produce and manage students’ ILPs and the more challenging area of capturing future information about University, work and gap year opportunities for every student”

Technology Used

SQL Server 2008
Microsoft .Net 3.5
ClickOnce deployment
SharePoint 2007

Case Study: Reading College SharePoint 2010 Staff Portal for communication and management collaboration

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:01:00 GMT

Background

The transition from being part of a University to being a standalone Further Education college provided a significant challenge for Reading college staff, and the College Management team felt it was essential to maintain good communications with staff throughout. They envisaged a Staff Portal being an information hub for everyone at this critical time and commissioned Parabola to design and implement a suitable SharePoint application.

A successful Oxford and Cherwell Valley College SharePoint 2007 solution was a key factor in choosing Parabola at the new college, as was the shared vision that SharePoint could provide wider benefits long term e.g. with document management and collaboration.

Requirement

A Portal by start of term to replace the TVU intranet and to enable quick and easy communication with staff
A Staff Directory to enable contact details and profiles of all staff to be easily found online by other staff
A working area for senior management to share and collaborate
The ability to filter information by group or department, reducing information overload
The ability to efficiently grow and develop the Portal to meet future needs, such as collaboration amongst the senior management team.

The Challenge

Parabola’s team had less than two months to plan, design and create a Portal, to be ready for the arrival of staff on 1st August, including configuration of servers to run the system. The college infrastructure was still being put in place; the college did not have a separate network at the outset and was having to continue to use TVU network services during the transition period, so the technical environment evolved day by day.

Similarly the server farm design had to utilise existing hardware initially to meet the timescales, but also include options for adding new server capacity, as use of SharePoint grew.

The Solution

Parabola proposed that a SharePoint Portal would be the ideal way of managing the short term transition requirements, as well as being an extremely flexible infrastructure capable of offering many other possible future applications at low cost.

SharePoint 2010 was recommended because it offered a broad range of capabilities in one system which could be adapted by the college as it developed. Microsoft’s Campus Agreement enabled an enterprise level tool such as SharePoint to be available at a reasonable cost to the college.

Parabola also recommended a suitable Server Farm to handle the flow of data through the SharePoint Portal. The farm was designed to provide sufficient resilience and scalability to meet the college’s needs for the next 5 years, as well as to make use of existing hardware for the short term needs of the college launch.

Reading Staff Portal Homepage

SharePoint 2010 provided an ideal platform for developing the solution rapidly. Easy-to-use List and Announcement web parts allowed news to be uploaded to the Portal home page without delay, whilst a Blog page gave the new interim Principal a voice.

Permissions within SharePoint were used to allocate access to a dedicated Manager's Site where, on a Calendar, meetings were pencilled in and meetings pages created. The new Profile Synchronisation features of SharePoint 2010 enabled a powerful and self-consistent Staff Directory application to be delivered rapidly using Active Directory as the source of staff information.

Permissions control enables administrators to delegate ownership of site content within the portal. Active Directory groups and SharePoint Profile Sync were adopted as the tools to manage the permissions and ensure the administration overhead is reasonable.

Timescale and Approach

April 2010: Initial discussions. Envisioning analysis conducted to analyse scope
June 2010: Specification and costs agreed and project approved
Early July 2010: Capacity Planning survey completed to gauge future SharePoint use
Late July 2010: Initial Portal created for news and announcements to be posted
Early August 2010: Full Staff Portal, including Staff Directory and Management site, created
Mid-August 2010: New Server Farm design, delivered
Late August 2010: Initial training of marketing staff on managing content
Early September 2010: System live with all staff using the Portal

Extremely close liaison, including regular review meetings and use of ‘out of the box’ SharePoint tools, helped ensure time and money were used as efficiently as possible during development.

Results

Once the requirements and the costs were agreed, the project was delivered in 8 weeks
Staff have access to SharePoint on-campus or remotely via the internet
No new hardware was required for the initial launch and the college is now planning to migrate to a larger server farm.

Chris Meunier (Director of Curriculum Development at Reading College) said of the partnership:

“Parabola were proactive and courteous partners who rose to the difficult challenge we set them, and were flexible enough to ensure we could deliver our short term goals whilst opening our eyes to the wider possibilities of SharePoint long term.”

Technology Used

The following technology was used in the implementation of this project:

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition
SharePoint Profile Sync
SQL Server 2008
Windows 2008 R2
VMWare

Case Study: Royal Borough of Kingston - SharePoint Implementation

Fri, 21 May 2010 15:01:00 GMT

Local council replaces their existing intranet and improves staff collaboration with SharePoint 2007

Background

The existing intranet had evolved over a long period and needed to be redesigned and restructured to move it forward to support the Council’s existing and long term goals. It was underused by staff and did not add particular value to their roles through content being difficult to use and find.

SharePoint 2003 had been used in an ad-hoc experimental fashion by some departments but it suffered from an overall lack of strategy, creating inconsistent islands of information which were difficult to support.

The Intranet would be regenerated to provide a new platform to promote and share information, increasing collaboration while engaging staff in the Council’s culture and corporate identity. It would provide a new robust structure designed for ease of use and consistency across all areas and become an effective communication tool to support the Council’s corporate strategies.

This would be achieved by introducing a solution based on MOSS 2007 providing new content management tools including the ability to personalise and target content as well collaboration aids such as discussion boards and surveys.

Nerys Marshall, Website and Intranet Co-ordinator at Royal Borough of Kingston Commented:

"The initial objective was to regenerate the Council Intranet and this has been achieved. However, many other secondary benefits are being realised from the collaborative tools which weren’t even envisaged when the project started."

Parabola’s approach to the project

This initial vision for the project was to replace the Council Intranet and upgrade SharePoint 2003. Parabola’s first action was to run SharePoint training sessions with IT managers and the project team. This helped the team to appreciate SharePoint and project scope and objectives were evolved during this process.

Amongst the objectives identified were:

To ensure that key information required by RBK staff is up to date, accurate, as well as easily available and searchable
To ensure that the RBK Intranet provides a clean, well organised and professional interface which meets communication goals for all staff
All tools and interfaces should be easy to use and require minimal training whilst being consistent with Microsoft Windows/Office interface design
Create clear brand guidelines and standards for producing content on the intranet incorporating accessibility and usability best practice
Devise a new Information Architecture that is suitable for current intranet content but scalable for longer term future use

With the scope and objectives confirmed, Parabola created a test portal on RBK’s test server and provided training in the use and administration of SharePoint to IT services staff. This enabled RBK to test the features and functionality available in MOSS 2007 before deciding on the project requirements. Resulting from this trial period, RBK produced a set of requirements which Parabola used to create a detailed solution.

The project was split into two phases. In the first phase, the existing intranet would be replaced and staff would be given My Sites. A second phase emerged as RBK began to appreciate the power of SharePoint collaboration. The objectives of this second phase included:

To increase staff engagement and motivation by improving the tools available to RBK staff for collaboration, communication and team working
Create functional and usable social applications to improve collaboration throughout the council

Inside RBK - the council Intranet

Inside RBK

The new intranet is called Inside RBK and is in a separate portal to the collaboration sites. Information is displayed through publishing sites and web pages. Inside RBK displays news and announcements which can be targeted to specific staff groups so staff only receive news that is relevant to them. An events calendar, useful links and for sale/wanted notice boards have also been implemented.

Parabola worked closely with RBK to create an easy to use site structure that stores information such as; forms, policies, meeting minutes, vacancies, health and safety and building services. The powerful search capabilities of MOSS 2007 are now available to quickly help staff find the information they require.

An Inside RBK administration team updates the shared content in Inside RBK whilst each directorate is responsible for maintaining the information in their own site and sub sites. The easy to use content editing tools available in MOSS 2007 mean that staff don’t need to have technical skills to be able to update Inside RBK or request that the ICT team does.

Externally accessible member's Site

Team Sites

The staff collaboration portal is called Team Sites, with directorates, project groups and working groups having their own sites. Staff are able to read all areas of the portal, but may only contribute in their own team site.

Within their sites, each team uses tools such as discussion boards, document libraries and task lists to collaborate with one another. When documents are created that need to be made available to all RBK staff, a process has been configured to publish the document to Inside RBK.

Team Sites are available externally, allowing staff to work from home if required. Local councillors have access to a Members Intranet within Team Sites that provides general news, discussions and information about each neighbourhood.

User profile displaying skills and contact info

My Sites

My Sites were created with the purpose of allowing staff to create an online profile that would provide the necessary details to improve staff interaction and collaboration. Additional profile detail fields such as; job title, department and location were implemented to allow the easy searching of staff members by profile details. Site memberships and shared colleagues are also displayed.

Information is drawn from Active Directory to allow an organisational hierarchy to be displayed in a web part for each user. This hierarchy shows the user’s manager and team members with links to their respective profiles. When working with different teams or departments, staff are now able to escalate issues to the appropriate manger or seek assistance from other team members if required.

Staff are restricted from being able to save documents in their My Sites, so that documents must be stored in the Team Sites collaboration portal. This ensures that all information will always be available even if the member of staff who created the document is no longer part of the team. The Outlook Web Access web parts have also been implemented to allow staff to access email through MOSS 2007.

Benefits

Staff are now able to add content to the Intranet without needing technical skills or requiring the ICT team to do the work.
RBK now have the infrastructure, training and tools to build SharePoint solutions.
Staff can now use document management tools such as workflow, versioning and metadata.
Staff can publish details about themselves enabling them to work more efficiently with each other.
Staff can now easily find the documents they need thanks to the improved portal structure and search functionality.
Team Sites and My Sites are all available offsite allowing staff and RBK associates to easily work from home or from another location.
News and information can now be targeted to staff so that they only receive what is relevant to them.

Further Phases

With MOSS 2007 implemented and becoming an integral tool, Parabola are working with RBK to migrate the server farm to a virtual environment for improved robustness and availability. RBK have also integrated MOSS 2007 with their CRM system allowing tasks to be assigned to staff. This creates an opportunity for Parabola to develop custom web parts to show this information.

Technology Used

MOSS 2007
Office 2007
SharePoint Designer
SQL Server 2005
Exchange 2003
Microsoft Project 2007
Visual Studio 2008
Macromedia Fireworks
Adobe Photoshop

References/Links

Royal Borough of Kingston website: http://www.kingston.gov.uk/
Microsoft Sharepoint