Wintec Portal Case Study
Links
Wintec
Project Included:
Website Design
Website Development
Intranet Development
.NET Programming
About
Wintec is currently the fifth largest institute of technology/polytechnic within New Zealand with approximately 24,000 full-time and part-time students, 1,200 full-time and part-time staff, more than 150 programmes and 2,500 modules.
The Waikato Institute of Technology has its main campus in the city of Hamilton (population 140,000) and serves the major catchment area of the greater Waikato, from Coromandel Peninsula to Te Kuiti. The institute attracts significant numbers of students from the Waikato and throughout New Zealand. In addition, the number of international students is an expanding component of the institute's educational activity.
Waikato Institute of Technology has three campuses in Hamilton. The main city site sits on the hill overlooking the city centre and accommodates programmes in Media Arts, Communication, Health, Education & Social Development, English Language, Mäori, Pasifika & Indigenous Studies, Information, Communication & Electrical Technology, Business & Administration, Science, Engineering & Architecture and Retail & Services.
The Problem
Enlighten were contacted in 2006 by Wintec to design and develop their internal intranet and extranet Portal for staff. The initial objectives of this project were:
- To have Portal content managed via an enterprise level content management system.
- To give the staff intranet a fresh new look in line with Wintec’s current branding.
- To increase usability via new breadcrumbs, DHTML menus and improved search functionality.
- To have a front page split into separate areas of content that could be delivered to users depending on the roles assigned in Active Directory.
- To pull in content from other sources like Wintec weather, SEIC knowledge base and to display this within the portal.
- To be highly secure.
- To allow staff and students to access files from home.
Accessing files remotely had the following requirements:
- Users can log into Portal.
- Users can browse to files via an interface like Windows Explorer.
- Double click to open a file. The file then opens via an application running on the user’s Computer.
- Users will be able to map their associated Wintec network drive as a mapped network drive on their computer if their computer’s operating system is Windows XP. This would be for staff first and then students.
The Solution
The application stack that Enlighten selected to provide this solution is as follows:
Content Management
One of the core applications selected to deliver the key functionality required, was Microsoft Content Management Server 2002.
Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is Microsoft’s enterprise content management product, based upon Microsoft’s .NET framework and ASP.NET technology.
Version 2.0 of the .NET framework was recently released. This has multiple development, performance and usability enhancements and due to this Enlighten applied service pack 2 to CMS, extending Microsoft Content Management 2002 to support the .NET framework 2.0.
Using .NET 2 Enlighten were able to take advantage of master pages. Master pages allow a common base master file that provides a consistent layout for multiple pages in the Wintec Portal. Enlighten were also able to implement output page caching, cached by role, that resulted in dramatic performance increases.
Another advantage of the upgrade to .NET 2 was that the solution could now be developed in Visual Studio 2005 - Microsoft’s latest integrated development environment. This has significant improvements over its predecessors. For more information on the recommended development environment for Wintec, please see the Wintec portal document ‘Development Enviorment.doc’.
Another advantage of utilising service pack 2 for Microsoft Content Management Server was the support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005. By using Microsoft SQL Server 2005, developers can take advantage of the latest client tool for Microsoft SQL Server. The solution also saw a significant performance increase due to performance enhancements in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 such as the SQL native client.
Previously the Wintec staff intranet had been maintained manually using an HTML editing program called Macromedia Dreamweaver. Using Microsoft Content Management Server 2002, roles and groups that integrate with Active Directory are in-built allowing content authoring to be delegated to various Wintec business units.
An additional benefit was Microsoft Content Management Servers workflow. The team at Wintec that previously maintained all intranet content are notified when content has been added and can approve the content to go live, or undertake any final edits necessary for release.
The server that houses the Wintec portal has multiple websites loaded into its IIS webserver. There is a website for CMS, where CMS channels are used in conjunction with Microsoft Content Management Server and host headers to bind channels to virtual websites.
There is also a separate website for CMS’s administration and a website for SharePoint portal server that is discussed more in the search section of this document.
Microsoft Content Management Server also exposes web services that can be used for content aggregation. Content can be ‘pushed’ and ‘pulled’ from the product, allowing dynamic content updates in other devices such as a mobile applications. Alternatively content can be pulled from applications like external news feeds etc.
Wintec Intranet Search
Search was a major part of the Portal deliverables. The idea behind search was that it would be accessible via the staff intranet on all pages and when users searched only results accessible to the user are returned.
This was achieved by integrating the MSCM solution with Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 has a powerful search engine built into the product that can only allow for the return of search results t user has access to.
Using the SharePoint Portal website, multiple search sources can be specified as well as multiple credentials for those different search sources.
Microsoft has released an integration tool called Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 Connector for SharePoint Technologies. We evaluated this connector but found that it was too limited for what Wintec required and also was not extensible.
This connector on closer inspection was only a .NET assembly that consumed the XML web services that had been included in SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
In order to provide Wintec the degree of control and formatting necessary over search we developed custom .NET controls that are integrated into the Microsoft CMS solution by consuming the XML search web service provided.
The custom .NET control delegates the user’s credentials back to the web service so only the correct results are returned to the user.
Like Microsoft Content Management server the latest service pack was used with SharePoint so we could use Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as the data store for improved performance.
Theend result of this integration was that it allowed Wintec to achieve the branding and functionality capabilities of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 while also being able to leverage the power of SharePoint Portal Services search.
SEIC Knowledgebase
Keeping with the project using the latest technology at the time, the SEIC knowledgebase system was developed as a .NET 2.0 ASP.NET application. This application was integrated into the MSCMS solution and housed within the staff intranet website.
Because the requirements of the SEIC knowledge base system were for it to be secured via roles, it was decided to have the security integrate with active directory to allow for more efficient administration.
Another requirement for the SEIC Knowledgebase system was for it to support the searching of multiple sources of information. Because of this we utilised the technology we had developed for the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 search.
These additional content sources were added into SharePoint and the SEIC application reused the .NET search controls that had been developed for the staff intranet.
Like the rest of the solution Microsoft SQL Server 2005 was used as the data store for improved performance.
Staff Intranet Remote Access
The remote access to the staff intranet was secured using ISA 2004 Server. External requests for files and the staff intranet are passed though ISA 2004 in a reverse proxy configuration.
As requests are passed through ISA, ISA also performs additional tasks such as credential delegation so that unauthenticated requests are not passed into the network, SSL bridging and link translation to name a few.
Access files from home
A primary consideration for accessing files from home was to allow users access to their files without needing to install third party applications. It was an aim that the access to these files would not be platform dependent.
The technology that was selected for this is an industry standard technology called WebDav. WebDav client support is built into all current operating systems and the server side support can be enabled in Microsoft Internet Information Server and extends the HTTP protocol to allow remote shares to be accessible.
To allow users to be able to access their files directory from the staff intranet, the portal has a hyperlink with a behaviour associated to it that spawns the WebDav share as a folder.
The IIS server that is WebDav enabled can be housed on any machine and is compatible with Wintec’s current DFS shares.
Security & Infrastructure
Enlighten designed the following security and infrastructure layout:
Development environment
Enlighten designed the following development layout:
The Result
Enlighten delivered a high end enterprise solution that utilised various “out of the box” Microsoft products. Configured specifically for Wintec, additional customisation was undertaken, including the development of tools that streamlined the integration between applications.
The deployment of the Portal has been hugely successful. General staff have enhanced work performance as they can now access files from home and search for documents across multiple search sources.
Security was paramount. Taking full advantage of ISA 2004 Server with link translation and SSL bridging Enlighten exceeded all security requirements defined by Wintec.
The use of Microsoft SQL 2005 has ensured that performance has been optimised for data accessing.
Workflow for Portal administrators has also greatly improved with a development, staging and live environment available to various users based on their administration roles. Working closely with Wintecs Information Services team, Enlighten were also able to assist greatly in moving the web team into a standards compliant development space that allowed greater security, improved work flow efficiencies and that has resulted in the delivery of higher quality content in shorter time periods.
Attractive and highly functional, the new Portal site confirms to the necessary branding guidelines, while focussing on usability and accessibility with the display of content being specific to the user.
The Student Enrolment and Information Centre (SEIC) Knowledgebase application that was developed as part of the Wintec Staff Portal website has been a great success. It’s aim was to provide a centralised communication channel for all Wintec staff to inform SEIC staff of a wide range of information. The application that was developed was very user friendly and simple while still being functionally rich. This has meant that people who aren’t very computer literate have been able to easily learn and use the system. The required level of ongoing technical support is very low.
In terms of the wider Staff portal website, we have received very favourable feedback on the look and feel. It is a very clean and functional design which fits in with our corporate brand and has allowed for expansion of our ever growing intranet content. Internet Explorer users have also been impressed with how easy it’s been to get to their network files through the portal.
The search integrates with various internal and external search sources, delivering content based on user roles in Active Directory. To ensure the solution is easy to maintain, operational documentation and training are provided for Wintec staff to maintain the servers, services and ensure the continued stability of the solution.