FPforGoo SHAREPOINT CASE STUDIES.

Transcription

1 SHAREPOINT CASE STUDIES

2 WHO ARE WE? Future Processing is a Polish software development company located in Gliwice, Southern Poland. We specialise in providing offshore software development services, mostly for companies located in Western Europe and Scandinavia, and we have been successfully doing this for over a decade. We currently employ over 600 people and simultaneously run more than 50 projects, using agile management methods. At Future Processing, we believe that a qualified and motivated team is the key to success and we care about our people and their continuous development. We take pride in the fact that our expert team consists of highly skilled, committed people, who have a thirst for knowledge and can add real value to our clients businesses. We re keen on creating long-term partnerships with our clients. We will always do our best to provide you with a model and a solution, which will allow you to make the most of your investment. We also provide IT teams and, if necessary, consult complicated technical problems that the client is unable to resolve alone. As a Microsoft Certified Partner, we constantly increase the number of Microsoft Certificates we hold, covering such areas as.net, SharePoint, Windows Server, SQL and more. Our people are also comfortable with non-microsoft technologies, such as Java, PHP or Ruby. Add mobile technologies and you have a good overview of what Future Processing s team can do. When it comes to SharePoint, we are serious about building strong competencies in this area. We provide continuous development for our internal SharePoint systems. They are also qualified ShP trainers, which ensure a high level of SharePoint development skills at Future Processing. Visit our website and read more about our ShP competencies and certificates we hold. 2

3 SOLID ENTREPRENOR Solid is a Norwegian construction company that has successfully completed many projects over several years. With the growth of the company, there was a need to support its activities through the use of IT systems. Therefore, few years ago Solid asked Future Processing to modernise their current systems, adapting them to rapidly changing environment. CHALLENGE Solid Entrepreneur had introduced a lot of business process changes that relate to changing law regulations in Norway. Some systems had to be upgraded or expanded to support the processes that have changed. The customer has also identified these areas of business, where new IT systems or their fragments, will be able to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of employees actions, thereby improving the quality of services provided and personnel security. During several years of cooperation FP maintained, modernized and developed a number of Solid s systems. These are, among others: ffweb Portal based on ASP.NET MVC (system monitoring progress and quality of construction projects) ffmobile application for Android (documentation of progress of work on the construction site and data synchronisation with web portal) ffintranet for Solid employees and Extranet for subcontractors - both projects implemented based on SharePoint platform (document management, news, alerts, service workflow, custom fields, integration with plugin for Outlook for easy upload of s and attachments to SharePoint, with the possibility of prior configuration of ContentType and metadata associated with it, integration with CRM and Web Portal, migration to a newer version of SharePoint, etc.) ffintegration with Visma (CRM, ERP) and Tempus external systems (access control) RESULT So far cooperation between FP and Solid has resulted in a number of IT systems that support the work of Solid s employees and subcontractors in their daily duties. Close integration between different systems Result in greater productivity and in data integrity. As Solid technological partner, we have always tried to respond to needs arising from changing processes or law regulations, using most mod- 3

4 ern technological solutions (e.g. mobile applications, features of latest ShP versions). Our joint efforts allowed us to keep track of all variations regarding health and safety as well as discipline. This enables the client to stay in control of tasks performed on constructions sites. Another benefit is to have a better overview of quality deviations, so that Solid can improve and make changes, when and where needed. Significant components of the system are valuable time saving contribution to workers at the construction sites, as well as to those working with quality assurance. 4

5 SHAREPOINT EXTRANET MARINE INSURANCE COMPANY One of our clients is a specialist marine underwriter providing Protection and Indemnity (P&I) insurance to world s shipping organisations. It is one of 13 P&I organisations that underwrite approximately 90% of world s merchant tonnage. The IT department of the client is responsible for supporting organisation s business applications, infrastructure and communications systems. Like any services organisation, information is vital for both: day to day operations and the overall success of the business. Well-functioning IT is therefore critical to the company and its partners. In the past few years FP helped the client in the development of many internal systems, mainly based on Microsoft technologies, in order to optimize business processes taking place in the organisation. CHALLENGE In the past, most of International Group club members provided Extranet functionality or secure member areas on their websites. Client s website didn t have this capability. An Extranet solution would enable members and brokers to have secure, direct 24/7 access to information, relating to their entry, such as claim records, cover documentation etc. The main benefit for members and brokers is having up-to-date information readily available for print, or download, without the need to request it from the club and wait for it to be issued. At the beginning of the project, together with the client, we agreed that in order to achieve maximum business value, it is necessary to collaborate closely and on a regular basis. Therefore, we decided to implement SCRUM and designate a multidisciplinary team with the Scrum Master (SM) on our side. On client s side, Project Manager acted as Product Owner (PO). Project started with 3 day workshop, which resulted in exact specification of requirements in the form of a list of User Stories (approved by PO) and mocks of the system, which were presented to stakeholders, showing how the system may look and function in the future. Thanks to this, at an early stage of Project, it was possible to find some inconsistencies, verify the assumptions made and implement changes before developers began their work. 5

6 At this stage of Project, the PO has defined a number of non-functional requirements, which the team had to meet. This led to extending the team of usability specialist, who worked closely with the PO during Project, designing User Interface modules dedicated to different devices (desktop, tablet, smartphone). By using the responsive design approach, the system automatically adapts its layout depending on the device used. One of key elements was safety, because of confidential data that the system provides on specific users. To ensure high level of security, Project was implemented based on Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). SDL is a software development process that helps to build more secure software and address compliance requirements, while reducing development cost. In the course of Project (and after its completion) Security Audit was conducted, to confirm that all of the required standards were maintained. Within Project, during 3-week iterations, the team, together with the client, solved a number of technical challenges. One of them was getting the access and information from multiple data sources (MS SQL, SAP Business Objects, Oracle, other instances of ShP), which stored information from individual systems. We have used the system of distributed jobs and services, which connect to respective sources and retrieve data to SHP. Thanks to this, we have ensured that date is accurate, upto-date and consistent with information issued elsewhere. In order to enable more effective search, the team created a custom search module that uses multiple metadata of processed documents. Thanks to this, the search can be based on several additional criteria. Result are presented in a more transparent and friendly manner, than it is in default ShP search. The final solution has been implemented using the following technologies: SharePoint 2013, MS SQL, SAP Business Objects, Oracle, Custom Web Services. RESULT The first version of the system will be officially presented to users in autumn 2014, which coincides with the start of the process of negotiation and renewal of agreements between clients, brokers and members. The client believes that the current version of the system will significantly improves brokers work during this period, offering them immediate access to the documents they need, regardless of time of day, time zone, place or device. The client estimates that, thanks to this, the number of direct contacts (phone, mail) with support will be reduced and the company will save money spent on traditional form of customer service. At the same time, the level of service will be significantly increased. By using the approach based on conducting workshops with stakeholders at the beginning and the use of an iterative approach during Project (the possibility of obtaining the opinion of end-users on the current version of the system, after each iteration), the chances of final success of Project were significantly increased. Also, the risk of introducing many corrections was minimised. Eventually, it allowed reducing the cost of the entire project and avoiding delays in implementation. 6

7 Thanks to SharePoint platform, it was possible to create a dedicated solution that fits customer s infrastructure and systems. During Project, many built-in SharePoint mechanisms (e.g. authentication) were used, which allowed reducing the development time, compared to traditional solutions based e.g. on ASP.NET or traditional native application on ipad. Using responsive design, it was possible to support multiple types of devices. With slightly increased effort, customers were given an application that is comfortable to use, regardless the device they use it on. The customer is satisfied and is planning to implement a second phase of Project, expanding the current solution with new functionality. Thanks to flexible architecture, current version of the system is a platform that can be easily upgraded with new modules. 7

8 TRAINING PORTAL At Future Processing it was very important to allow our employees to develop their skills. That is why, we have invested in both: internal and external trainings. Within the organisation of nearly 600 people, efficient analysis of training needs and courses is a huge challenge for the training department. CHALLENGE Over the past years, as the company grew, existing tools that were previously used to support processes in the training department (Excel, ) ceased to be effective. Many areas where efficient tools could assist the work of training department at multiple stages were identified. Since at FP internal systems are mainly based on SharePoint, we have decided to use the platform also this time. Project was carried out following Scrum methodology. In the course of Project (several iterations), the team had finished the following modules of the new training portal: f f Training adding process. The module allows entering to the system which is automatically sent to the person responsible for training approval. Accepted training occurs in the calendar. f f Registration and withdrawal from training. The module allows signing up for training, after which an invitation is sent to the calendar. There is a possibility of signing up on a reserve list, from which our employee is automatically subscribed to the selected group, if a participant resigns from training. f f Verification of presence. This module allows the trainer to check the presence during training. f f Automation of training evaluation. The module supports the process of training evaluation by automatically assigning a survey to training, sending questionnaires to the participants and sending reminders. f f Library of training materials. The module supports managing published training materials by sharing them in the system and assigning them to a specific edition of the training. The participants are automatically informed about published materials. f f Statistics. The module supports evaluation and monitoring of ongoing training, through collecting the data related to ongoing training: leader, date, number of hours, number of 8

9 participants, average evaluation of the training (generated on the basis of surveys conducted in the system), the extent to which training met the needs (expressed in percentage). f f Archiving questionnaires. The module supports the management of data from questionnaires assessing training by creating a mechanism archiving questionnaires, which allows the user to select polls for archiving. f f Integration with training needs. The module supports the process of analysis and implementation of training needs through integration with employee evaluation system. It RESULT also allows downloading the data concerning training needs. Additionally, it enables data analysis. f f Training base. The module supports collecting data on types of training offered. The user, on the side of the organizer and trainer, will have the possibility to view: proposals for trainings, training in progress, trainings completed. It will also be possible to search for trainings by category: technology, competence. The above modules were implemented using the following technologies: SharePoint 2013, MS SQL, Power Pivot, Knockout. Implementation of Training Portal allowed us to better adapt the offer to our employees. As a result, the training department can effectively respond to the needs arising from Challenges that employees are faced with in their projects. According to the feedback we ve received, new system allowed for 40% time saving during collecting and addressing training needs and above all, enabled a quick and rational decision-making on its implementation. 9

10 GERMAN CRUISE LINE CABIN BOOKING AND COMPLAIN MANAGEMENT SYSTEM The core business of the company is managing cruises that are equipped with a number of internal systems based on Share- Point technology CHALLENGE The main objective of Project was to create a new system, available for some of employees and external users, which would allow them to interact with existing systems, such as changing workflows, status updates, uploading documents, etc. Our team also had to solve a problem resulting from the need of having large number of licenses for SharePoint. The solution proposed by FP, based on ASP.NET MVC technology, allows secure sharing of SharePoint content items outside, through ASP.NET applications. We ve reduced the number of ShP licenses to minimum, thanks to External User Licensing model, available in SharePoint This model is applied to client s employees, who use Internal ASP.NET web pages and also to external users and web pages available from outside the organisation. TECHNOLOGY APPLIED C#,.NET 4.0, ASP.NET MVC 3, ShP 2013, WCF, MS SQL Server, SSL 10

11 SAPIENZA CONSULTING - SHAREPOINT ECLIPSE INTEGRATION Sapienza is a leading provider of space mission and project support through people, software and services The company has been a supplier to European Space Agency since Eclipse (Sapienza s flagship product) is the only web-based, collaborative suite of integrated applications. It was designed based on invaluable experience of space industry professionals, to be used by European space sector organisations, ranging from SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) all the way to International Agencies. Eclipse helps space project and mission teams achieve higher efficiency, better control and compliance to ECSS standards in key project and business areas, such as: ffproject Management (PM) ffproduct Assurance (PA) ffconfiguration Management (CM) ffquality Assurance (QA). CHALLANGE ESA is implementing solutions based on SharePoint. Since ESA currently uses Eclipse, there was a need to provide the integration of the two systems on the level of document synchronisation. Documents added to ShP library, after being approved by supervisors, are transmitted in an appropriate status to Eclipse system. Changing metadata of previously exported document causes its update in Eclipse. The following mechanisms of SharePoint were used: ffdocument libraries where documents with metadata are added. A possibility of custom configuration has been implemented ffcontent Approval and versioning one of import strategies is based on a built in SharePoint functionality, approval and versioning of documents ffevent receivery after changing a document, the mechanisms check whether it meets the conditions necessary for its transmission to Eclipse and move the document to a temporary library fftimer job retrieves documents from the temporary library and exports them (including metadata) to ECLIPSE via web service ffcustom logging of errors to ULS client required logging errors in a special format, so ULS logger was written. 11

12 TECHNOLOGY APPLIED only SharePoint 2013 THE RESULT Our team met client s expectations and created a solution that allows ShP documents synchronization with Eclipse system, in line with client s objectives. 12

13 INTEGRATION WITH PROGRESS BAR With the growth of the company and launch of another building, we decided to build a restaurant and recreational sports facility Progress Bar, which is now available not only to all employees from Future Processing, but also to the public CHALLENGE At Future Processing, most of internal systems that support the operation of 600-people organisation are based on SharePoint platform. Progress Bar Facility is supported by third-party systems, and the need arose to integrate them with internal systems from FP. The main objective was to facilitate ordering of meals, counting discounts for FP employees, optimisation of the process of ordering goods through accurate estimation of demand for specific goods and services and control access to these areas of the facility that are only available to employees. FP decided to implement a S4H system, which is used to support the activities of the Progress Bar. S4H is a popular system for managing catering facilities, hotels or holiday resorts. Another step was integration with Intranet system. At this point, employees have access to the current offer of Progress Bar and may order meals for a specific time and day of the week. The S4H system allows restaurant staff to view the demand for specific dishes, which is automatically updated. Possibility to order meals directly from ShP also allows minimising the queues at the restaurant. Payment information is stored in the ShP and it is then processed and sent to Sage Forte - the system used by accounting. As a result, discounts for FP employees are automatically calculated and the amount is deducted automatically each month from the salary of the employee. All integrations referred to have been implemented using standard and built-in SharePoint 2013 mechanisms. RESULT Result of that project was integration of systems used in the Progress Bar with internal SharePoint systems, Sage Forte and access control system used in FP. Thanks to this it was possible to optimise the ordering process, reduce queues at the restaurant, optimise the 13

14 process of ordering products to the restaurant, avoid increased costs associated with payment and discounts for FP employees and, last but not least, our employees were given the opportunity to use the facility, which is equipped with a user-friendly system. 14

15 CERTIFICATE MIGRATION Our client had a legacy WinForms application for certificate storage. Our goal was to migrate all certificates to a new SharePoint-based portal. Uploading and downloading data wasn t an issue, as an average certificate file in the size of 1 MB took only 7 seconds to load. However, the ShP site structure needed to be created in a relatively short time and without deadlocks, which had proven to be the biggest challenge. The service, running on a SharePoint machine, allows adding and removing certificates and it is also responsible for creating a dynamic structure of the site. The ShP Service manages the structure, depending on certificates that are on it. The structure looks as follows: Certs (Managed path) Club (Site Collection) Year (Site) Country (Sub site) Member (Document Library) A certificate generated in an external application is sent to SharePoint Service with metadata using WCF. Based on the metadata, the service verifies whether the appropriate structure is present on ShP server and then attempts to open it. If the structure can be opened, the certificate is uploaded to the list. Alternately, the structure is created based on the metadata and pre-defined templates. After creating the structure, the certificate is uploaded. ShP Service retrieves metadata from certificates, which should be deleted. Depending on metadata, the appropriate document library is opened and search for the appropriate certificate begins. If it is found, it is removed. After removing, verification is performed to check if any certificates are still on this list. Once the last certificate has been deleted, the document library in question should also be removed. The same situation occurs when the document library, site etc. is removed. THE RESULTS The solution was deployed into client s production environment and is utilized by numerous end users. The deadline was met and the previous web-based portal was switched to a read only version, used to keep track of historical records. 15

16 DYNAMICS CRM 4.0 INTEGRATION A client from financial sector stored a large number of electronic documents (such as meeting reports, agreements and financial statements) in several different systems Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was also used to manage customer data and communications. The goal was to provide a central electronic repository (MS ShP 2010) to replace various systems, where documents were stored and to integrate MS Dynamics CRM with SharePoint. Future Processing first developed a plugin for CRM, which automatically creates a document library in ShP for every Account. This document library is displayed at Account level. As a second stage, the page containing a document library was customized to allow the display of elements for the user to navigate the entire SharePoint site. In addition, further standard functionality of ShP document library was to be maintained, which was achieved by creating a new master page for pages with document libraries. RESULTS Following the integration of ShP with CRM, client users are able to access customer data and related electronic documents, which are stored in one place. They can add, download and view documents in CRM s account window. Furthermore, ShP provides central document repository, removing the need to store documents in several systems. 16

17 STARTERS Due to ever increasing number of projects in development at Future Processing, a new solution was required to gather, publish and share knowledge on projects. This would allow new Project Managers and team members to exchange information and learn from each other. The main objective was to create an accessible and straightforward tool that would allow creating a description of each new project in a generic way, using a custom form to provide basic information, such as: roles in Project, methodology used, tools used etc. To meet this requirement, SharePoint development team designed and implemented the Starter project, which is an advanced ShP taxonomy or tree-based structure describing each of these aspects in ShP. The Starter project was implemented on the taxonomy and included a wiki with built in features, to include advanced bespoke features such as: generating Word documents from SharePoint content and customised page layouts. All ShP social features, such as rating and commenting, were incorporated into the solution, as an additional feature. RESULTS Implementing the Starter project gave Project Management Office the ability to audit and compare information relating to any given project. Team Members benefit from having a central search for Starters, which has enabled faster knowledge share, beneficial to the entire organisation. 17

18 RECRUITMENT SharePoint Team were tasked with improving access to information relating to recruitment and quality assurance, previously managed from two separate portals. By combining these two portals, and creating a universal Recruitment Portal the recruitment team would acquire a toolset making work and communication more time and cost effective. However, even bigger challenge was to implement the portal without causing any disruption to the ongoing recruitment process. A new portal was created by merging Quality Assurance and Recruitment SharePoint pages. Following the merge, the main development process began. It was necessary to change all the ShP Designer-based workflows and create basic event receivers. Additional workflows had to be introduced to include reminders for the recruiters relating to candidate evaluation or for candidates, to remind them of approaching task deadlines. Existing project data was utilized and integrated into the recruitment solution. The meeting requests functionality sets Calendar Sync, apart from standard SharePoint calendar. FPS Search was also implemented, reducing search times significantly. Integration with Outlook allowed for the development of a plugin, which would automatically upload candidate s assignment to the appropriate section of the recruitment portal. It also allowed editing basic candidate information. This solution is constantly evolving, as we respond to further requests from our users. RESULTS The new, improved and integrated Recruitment Portal had significantly improved cooperation and communication between the Recruitment Team and relevant managers. The recruitment processes had changed and now differentiates between job positions, which include software development engineers, quality assurance and non IT staff. Furthermore, it allows additional flexibility in managing recruitment for positions with additional requirements. Other improvements include: adding a reminder for recruiters related to tasks and assignments within the system, to the interview calendar and many other small changes and adjustments. 18

19 EMPLOYEE EVALUATION Continuous growth of the company, where, on average, 15 new people are employed each month, has affected the process of employee evaluation and made it inefficient. Furthermore, it also caused problems in the Human Resources Department, which had to manage the process of drawing up contracts and dealing with all the associated formalities. First, we focused on delegating responsibility for employee evaluation to immediate superiors, namely Project Leaders, which resulted in reduced amount of tasks assigned to a sin person. During the evaluation period, Project Leaders are automatically assigned to evaluate their team members. The managers are to evaluate an employee, set employment conditions and verify the remuneration offered by the Council. Employees at Future Processing receive salaries determined by many factors, among which the most crucial one is employee evaluation done by Project Leaders. At this stage, evaluation results are sent to the Council and then, in most cases, they are automatically processed by a salary calculator. The parameters of this Excel Services-based calculator are estimated on the production server. When all data is collected, the task is reassigned to Human Resources Department, where suggested salaries are calculated automatically. Once complete, the appropriate type of a contract is selected using Content Type and document library housed in SharePoint. The final stage of the process is to print the contract and related paperwork and approve them in the system. The whole process consists of 9 stages and requires the involvement of 3 to 5 people, depending on the parameters. During the evaluation period, the system supports 500 workflows at once. The standard server load per month is approximately 40. RESULTS The Evaluation System made employee evaluation process clear and coherent. Every Project Leader is able to access work history of their employees, providing them with knowledge on changes in evaluation and formal conditions. The managers no longer have to deal with determining salaries, and contracts no longer require manual intervention. All records are stored on SharePoint website, which is also the main data source for our Business Intelligence experts. 19

20 CORE S FP Systems team creates many portals and applications, which are used within the company. A certain amount of repetition of functionality was inherent, therefore the focus was to develop a common framework, which would become the foundation for new projects. Project Common contains our custom controls, WebParts and Helpers, which simplify and speed up the development of ShP-based solutions. This was the first project our software engineers worked on and also the basis for all our products. The main challenge, that was identified early on, was updating implemented workflows. Therefore, we have decided to make our own tool, capable of handling these updates. The Updater project is in constant development. Working on SharePoint solutions resulted in smaller projects, which have been used in bigger workflows. One of them is FPS Search, our version of a ShP search engine. Since it is not based on Crawler, it makes finding information much quicker. We have noticed that a number of functionalities in ShP 2010, such as sending invitations from web calendars, are not properly implemented. Our system enables sending invitations by integrating with Outlook and Exchange Server. The most frequently used solutions are: Scrum, BlogRating, CalendarSync, Web- Tree, TrainingLimiter, Statistics. Currently, the majority of our websites have been created using the Common projects, as well as less significant solutions, which also make work faster. We have recently started the integration of SharePoint solutions with Microsoft Dynamics THE RESULTS Solutions provided by FP Systems are a solid framework that is used by many Future Processing software engineers, allowing them to implement new technologies much quicker, minimise the risk of failure, while working on new projects and simply making their daily work easier. 20

21 Future Processing ul. Bojkowska 37A Gliwice POLAND