Case Studies
Case Study 
SharePoint Intranet Portal
Q3's global sourcing model gives the maximum benefit to customers in terms of cost savings, improved quality, access to highly talented professionals, flexibility of operations and reduced time to market.
Company Profile
The Client is based in the United Kingdom and has a retail chain all over the country.
Business Situation
The client had a requirement to build a SharePoint Intranet portal which could be used in office and company environments. The requirement was to build an intranet site that could act as a document repository and also allow for a rich interface which could manage data and documents with unique permissions. It included the ability to view and annotate the documents from within the application and also to provide a versioning system to store the documents historically. There were different pages in the application for different shops for which client wanted to provide an ability to the shop manager to design them on their own. There was also a need to integrate Facebook/ Twitter and many custom web parts in the application. Implementation of Key Performance Indicators & Business Intelligence reports was also part of the application.
Q3 came up with the dedicated team of developers to understand closely the Client's requirement by studying specifications sent by the client. To meet all the client requirements, Q3 used SharePoint foundation server 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 (ASP .Net with C#) to develop the application. The application was developed providing all the features required by the client.
The application mainly included 6 departments/ modules namely:
Home Page: The home page was having different web parts which included web parts showing Announcements, Links, Event Calendar, Twitter feeds, Facebook Feeds and a Quote of the week web part which showed different quotes weekly.
Operations - The operation module was created as a sub site which included a central repository which gave users a privilege to store the data and documents. It could only be added/updated/deleted by the users having unique permissions for it. Operations also included a Visual Merchandising module, which was used to view and upload the training videos.
Human Resource – The HR module was created as a sub site which included a central repository which gave users a privilege to store the data and documents. Users having permissions for this document library were only able to Add/Update /delete the documents.
Buying – The Buying module was created as a sub site which included a central repository which gave users a privilege to store the data and documents. Users having permissions for this document library were only able to Add/Update /delete the documents.
Merchandising – The Merchandising module was created as a sub site which included a central repository which gave usera a privilege to store the data and documents. Users having permissions for this document library will only able to Add/Update /delete the documents.
Press – The Press module was created as a sub site which includes a central repository which gives user a privilege to store the data and documents. Users having permissions for this document library were only able to Add/Update /delete the documents.
Shops – The Shops module was created as a sub site which included many shops. For every shop a custom page was created having different web parts and customized form section. Each shop had a Manager for it; addition/ updation and deletion could only be done by Shop Manager.
Some key features of the solution are summarized below:
- Announcement web part is having a flag, the color of flag describes whether the announcement is read by the logged in user or not.
- Twitter and Facebook Feeds Web part in SharePoint site.
- Section for "View and upload the Training Videos", a single click will start playing the video.
- Shops Pages are custom pages as per the requirement of client. It included a form section and web parts to show and edit the data.
- The user given permissions for each department’s repository are only responsible to upload the documents.
- The users having admin permissions can only give other users the permissions to do a task in the site.
Technologies
| Architectural Component | Technologies/Frameworks |
|---|---|
| Language |
|
| Application Server |
|
| Database Server |
|
| SharePoint |
|
| Tools |
|
Customer Speaks
In this difficult economic environment, Symfo decided to outsource one of its most critical developments to Q3 Tech. We were definitely reluctant doing so at the beginning of the project. But rapidly we understood that Q3 had the necessary skills and professionalism to bring the project to a successful realization. It was not always easy primarily because of the differences of culture. However once we understood each other, things went much better. We also understood that such a difficult project needed intense communications between Q3 and our company. Our company works on two time zones (Europe and East Coast North America) and we were amazed by the availability of the Project Manager and his team. It really contributed improving communications between us.
Phase I of our product is now ready and we are quite happy with it. We are definitely ready to start Phase II with Q3 and we highly recommend them.
CEO, Symfo SA, Belgium.