Summary:

Summary search results

• Develop a centralised personnel system for a medium sized financial asset management company of nearly 800 staff in 10 countries.
• Support change control processes to enable the self-management of personal data.
• Publish summary and detailed information on each individual in a directory.

Business background:

Detailed search results

• Legacy system written in Lotus Notes.
• Nearly 800 staff based in multiple locations and in 10 countries
• Different business and legal requirements
• Company intranet based on Microsoft Sharepoint
• Single sign-on using Windows networking

Challenge:

Main person details

• Develop a single centralised personnel system with easy access by all staff from all locations via the company intranet
• Store all basic information for each employee, including photographs
• Support different business requirements in different countries
• Enable each member of staff to maintain their own details
• Enable administrative users to verify and approve changes before publication.
• Provide a single-field search facility to find anyone based on any of their attributes such as name, department, extension number, initials, location and so on.
• Migrate existing data from Lotus Notes into the new system.

Solution:

• The application went live after 20 days development.
• Personnel data in the developed application is now used by a number of other kinodb applications, removing the need for data duplication whilst maintaining modularity of design.

Techniques:

• Actions are used to send emails to administrative staff to inform them of changes requiring approval.
• Reports are used to format the individuals' details into a brief summary report like an online business card, as well as a more detailed report including their photograph.
• Workflows are used to control the process of change and approving data.
• Single sign-on using Windows authentication (i.e. no login screen for intranet users).
• Tight integration with Microsoft Sharepoint:
  • Content is served directly from the kinodb application into pages of client's Sharepoint intranet.
  • Clicking on embedded links in the Sharepoint content navigates directly to kinodb forms and reports.
• Some application security rights are conferred by domain membership (allows different menu options to appear for users at different sites as appropriate.