The Background
The company, based in the United States, is a leading provider of web-based knowledge and document management applications for organizations around the world. The company serves legal, educational, government, financial, healthcare and business sectors.The company was looking for a technology solutions provider to help revamp its document management product and thereby enable its users to quickly navigate, search, review, modify or tag documents. The pre-existing application was first built on .NET 2.0 with an SQL server 2005 backend database server. Since the application was built using ActiveX controls, it needed to be upgraded to support the latest browsers. Furthermore, the user interface needed to be simplified to better serve the needs of end-users.
The Challenge
The PennyWise team was able to quickly overcome several challenges faced during the execution of the project including:
- User interface redesign: Understanding the complex pre-existing UI and providing a simplified alternative design that made user interaction more efficient.
- Requirements gathering: Understanding a legacy system without any technical, code or requirements documentation.
- Platform upgrades: Deploying the new system seamlessly and without affecting end-customers.
- Document viewer integration: Researching on various viewer components and exploring the features supported
The Solution
After a detailed study of the application and without the aid of technical documentation, PennyWise quickly developed an in-depth understanding of legacy code. The PennyWise team went back to the drawing board and listed down a comprehensive set of user stories. A brand-new and simplified user interface was then developed for users to efficiently find, review, tag and modify documents. Furthermore, the upgraded document viewer enabled users to securely edit documents using a browser of their choice. The legacy platform was upgraded to .NET 4.5 with SQL Server 2012 as the database back-end. A host of third-party plug-ins were also seamlessly integrated into the platform including Oracle Stellant; JPEG compression tools and components from LEADTOOLS that enabled editing of TIFF documents.
The Result
Upgraded technology environment
Rich and efficient user interface and cross-browser support
A server-based document viewer that eliminates the need for ActiveX controls
Improved time on task completion
Technology Stack
- .NET 4.5
- SQL Server 2012
- User experience engineering