Case Study: Real Estate Intranet
Executive Summary:
A California real estate company, with three offices, needed a place for all its employees to access for company data and sales/project status. The previous intranet had been written in .asp and the code to some of the modules was long gone and the database was inscrutable. Read how the team designed a new normalized database, created a sales/project management portlet, migrated the data from the old platform and trained the in house users to update and maintain the Liferay portal.
Project Statistics
Technologies Used
▪ Liferay for Mockup
▪ Eclipse, Java Development
▪ Photoshop and YouTube
Team
▪ 1 Lead
▪ 1 Sr. Java Developer
Duration
▪ 3 months
The Problem
The previous intranet was developed ages ago, not only was the code long gone but the database was a mess and the person updating the site was changing HTML manually. This was not sustainable and did not encourage the collaboration that this real estate company wanted. Not only that but the old server, running Windows 2000 and IIS, died - we manged to retrieve the HTML pages from a tape backup and the Database was luckily on a separate Microsoft SQL server.
The Solution
Hosted Liferay Implementation: We found a hosted Liferay provider for our client and set them up with their own unique instance of the portal. We configured backup, access controls, navigation, and Portal pages. We also migrated the content, some of it by hand on critical pages and automatically for pages where content could be extracted. Finally we trained a new administrator to update pages, manage access controls and upload pictures and PDF content. We also decided the $40/month was worth the cost of having someone else host and backup the Portal.
Sales/Project Management Tool: This client had an extensive amount of project and sales data in a poorly designed database. We migrated the data into a normalized database and created a Portlet application to give the users access to view, modify and add data.
The Outcome
Usable Data: The client had usable data in a normalized standards based database. They had access to their source code. The administration and backup were all outsourced for a very low monthly fee.
Collaboration and Self Service: Our client could now manage their own content. Each office could contribute and update phone numbers, policies and project/sales related data without any bottlenecks.