UCLL public website & intranet

Calibrate developed the new public website for UCLL and cooperated with their tech team to optimise the intranet.

This project was realized by

Challenge

Both website & intranet needed a complete remake, where the latter needed a more thorough approach due to the complex structure, individual content and performance goals.

Approach

We started from scratch and used Drupal as fundaments. An intensive cooperation was required between UCLL & Calibrate, and an agile approach was chosen to meet their requirements and goals in the most valuable way.

Result

Thanks to a clear structure, reusable components and a flexible page the new website is very well-arranged. Focus is on the content.

The Drupal backend is secured and UCLL members can authenticate through a single sign-on system called Shibboleth. Because of this UCLL can choose which members can authenticate and even specify which pages or sections that specific member can edit. A very powerful access control and completely maintainable from UCLL main user directory.

The intranet is a platform where students and members from UCLL can find their personal information. Via an Application Programming Interface (API) we retrieve all the necessary data during the authentication process. Data that consists of standard information, such as campus info, personal information, programs…the combination of those data parameters determines what that specific user gets to see inside the intranet platform. Each member therefore gets custom & up-to-date information, but more general info can be explored of course.

The difficult part here was to make sure that members had a good user experience. Because the entire menu structure and multiple sections had to be generated dynamically, based on user parameters retrieved from the API, performance was an issue at first. Based on our experience and some Proof of concepts with DrupalFileCache and Authcache, we managed to speed up the experience and loading times of all the pages. The same single sign-on system Shibboleth was used here, and Apache SOLR as search engine inside the platform.