For more than 30 years, AIS has developed complex software solutions based on the Microsoft stack, maintaining a reputation for successfully developing and deploying custom solutions on many of the IT giant’s applications - SharePoint in particular. Our work with the MyAvendra project is another example of our many projects that demonstrates our extensive experience with SharePoint. The result is a collaborative resource that combines multiple sites for a faster and more secure experience.
Background
Avendra’s main mission is to “redefine supply chain management through strategic procurement processes, the use of technology and the counsel of world-class subject matter experts.” The organization is one of the nation’s largest professional supply chain management entities serving the hospitality industry. The company has nearly 5,000 customers and manages more than 750 supplier agreements. Avendra utilizes a collaborative social site, called MyAvendra, to manage day-to-day workflow and operations for approximately 10,000 users. However, the application was troublesome due to static content that was difficult to manage and resulting in low usage.
Challenge
Because of the complexity of the organization’s numerous systems, Avendra sought out a qualified Microsoft partner with extensive SharePoint application development experience, enter AIS. The application was split into multiple site collections, requiring custom navigation and user control. One of the biggest challenges was to determine a method to allow the organization to target content to users of the application based on the parameters in the user’s profile. Also, customer service representatives needed the ability to see a real-time view of what each end-user is viewing on their end. This capability needed to be secure in order to prevent users from impersonating other customers. The application also required an intricate security implementation to support a claims-based authentication process. Additionally, performance aspects needed to be addressed to speed the site up. The new site needed to support at least 160 simultaneous sessions.
Solution
AIS began work on the project by developing the application’s provider and user control interface, which included custom navigation. These were included in the site’s master pages – developed to support the client, unit, supplier and root portal sites, as well as search-driven pages. All pages were developed using Twitter Bootstrap to easily facilitate mobile device support of the site in future releases. We created a content-type hub that allowed central management of different content types and managed metadata across each of the different sites. Our team addressed the user content targeting issue by tailoring the application to allow users to create content pages and target them only to users with specific parameters and permissions set in their use profile.
To support the security requirements, our team built a custom membership provider interface, supplemented by a custom role provider system. Now, when a client user accesses the MyAvendra.com site, they will be prompted for their username and password. Once the user submits their credentials, the system will use the custom membership provider to access the organization’s directory and confirm the users identity. The system will then use the custom role provider that AIS built to access the internal CRM system and return a set of roles that the user belongs to (or claims). This includes processes that synchronize data from the organization’s CRM system and SharePoint. Additionally, we leveraged SharePoint Caching to optimize the site’s performance, so that any of the potential 160 simultaneous sessions running will load within an average of 3 seconds, resulting in a better experience for the users.
Business and Technological Advances
Not only was Avendra able to experience increased security functionality, the updated MyAvendra application allowed the organization to see the following business advances:
- The ability to better direct customers to “right product, right source” solutions
- Better engagement and collaboration with the organization through more personalized content
- Updated navigation and enhanced usability
- Increased visibility for a broader organizational value proposition
- Enhanced supplier promotional opportunities via supplier microsites
- Increased efficiencies – particularly in connectivity and tracking
The organization also saw the following technical advances as a result of the new implementation:
- Increased security parameters
- Centrally-managed content
- Supplier microsites
- Email notifications
- Enhanced search capabilities
Technology
- Visual Studio 2012
- Team Foundation Server 2012
- C#.NET 4.5
- SQL Server 2008 R2
- SharePoint 2013 Enterprise
- JavaScript Extensions/Libraries
- Charting Frameworks