Project Title: Genesys Corporate Web CMS System and Genesys Extranet Builder

The Challenge

The web site project was initiated with the Customer requesting to develop a web based content management system (CMS) for a new corporate web site. Current Genesys corporate web site is a powerful marketing tool used by many departments to promote their services, to organize online demos and trainings, to publish financial information, as well as to distribute booklets and manuals, and to announce new services and product features.

The legacy sites as well as other web solutions (Intranet, Extranet Builder, Extranets and others) are currently maintained by Itransition team. For example, extranet sites are used by Genesys to present their services and sign-up forms to its customers. Genesys was managing hundreds of extranet sites, and a possibility to easily create new and maintain existing ones was important to motivate sales people.

An ideal extranet site solution, as initially envisioned by the Customer, was to be able to:

• provide a web site template from a list of predefined templates
  
• choose the best content style from a list
  
• apply the content to the template with a click of a button
  
• choose the forms that needed to be placed on the site
  
• build a Forms page by choosing from a selection of options and adding validation to the selected form fields
  
• click a button to bind the form together

Later, these requirements were broadened to provide as well:

• direct integration with SalesForce.com CRM
  
• direct integration with customers’ IT infrastructure to extract all available information like phone numbers, addresses and also reuse existing Windows Active Directory accounts to log on to the system
  
• leverage previous investments into Microsoft solutions, Microsoft CMS Server in particular

Itransition came up with a proposal of application design requiring less licensing fees to be paid in the end. After creation of the initial technical prototype of the system finally approved by the Customer, the project was started.

The Solution

The corporate web site solution designed by Itransition specialists included the following features:

• Content management services applicable to all web site pages
  
• Access control for all the site pages and their functionality
  
• Easy-to-build web site forms to send e-mails, and to publish data to database, to Eloqua and SalesForce CRM systems
  
• Simultaneous content management abilities: several editors can work on the web site content simultaneously; the administrator can review and publish the made changes
  
• Web site skin management: one-click new web site skin settings without changing its content
  
• Regional web sites content management. The Customer has a number of regional independent sites with a set of common pages (press releases, forms, events information, etc.) and local information in different languages (about sales procedures, contacts, etc)
  
• Creation of web marketing promo campaigns: independent promo sites dedicated to the promo event or special offer with registration form. With any HTML editor can integrate the form built in GCWS Forms Builder with promo site and publish it on the corporate web site
  
• Live financial information publishing (e.g. stock quotes, SEC and AMF filings and historical stock data) on the GCWS web site (integration with shareholder.com)
  
• Web site metadata editing for SEO purposes: default metadata based on basic SEO principles is SEO friendly, including urls, titles, keywords, etc
  
• Advanced search features including finding within the Word and PDF documents published on the site

Itransition came up with an optimized proposal to cut licensing fees paid by using open source products. The web site CMS was based on open source product DotNetNuke which was taken as a system prototype.

The Extranet solution
Itransition’s mission was to develop an easy-to-use content management system suitable for non-technical people (no HTML and programming knowledge). One of the major goals was to integrate this tightly into the existing Genesys business processes and ensure seamless information flows within the company.

During the initial project phase, all critical requirements for the system were gathered from the key people, who were most involved into relevant business processes. This was approved during an initial visit and collaboration with the Customer.

The solution was initially designed to provide the optimal simplicity and flexibility balance, requiring minimal or no technical assistance when creating extranet sites. The entire process, starting from content authoring and until final deployment, is fully automated (except for DNS names creation for final extranet sites requiring additional administration records).

The initial product version was developed in 2 months. It includes deployment procedure, which is fully automatic. An extranet site is created from a set of templates and a centralized content repository with sample pages, styles and forms.

Tools and Technologies

Genesys Corporate Web Site CMS SystemPlatform: Microsoft.Net 1.1
Database Server: MS SQL server 2000
Telerik RAD controls
NHibernate
Applications integrated with: Google Search, SalesForce.com (CRM), Eloqua CRM

Genesys Extranet Builder
Core Platform: Microsoft ASP.NET 1.1 (C# language) + Microsoft Content Management Server 2002
Database Server: Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Application Server: Microsoft IIS 6.0
Additional features:

• Integration with SalesForce.com (CRM)
  
• Active Directory Integration (Single Sign-On)

Related links

http://www.itransition.com/solutions/params/9/
www.itransition.com

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