Right off the bat, I’m not going to go through a technical explanation about doing what the title suggests. That would take, like, more than this one post. Instead, I’m going to talk from more of a conceptual perspective.
The problem.
Our organization is no different than probably any other. We have really old systems, really new ones and everything in between. The level of integration that exists between all of them is never enough, despite anyone’s best attempts. We needed to find a way to deliver information to our customers via the web in an easy to use, intuitive way AND to re-consume some of that information along with much, much more for internal use. In short, we needed a one-stop shop that was role based, highly integrated with lots of back-end systems and had direct connectivity to additional detail which resided in the source system, regardless of what that was.
The technical problem.
From a software perspective, we were dealing with AS/400 (or iSeries, or SystemI or “I” – whatever you want to call it today) data in six different software environments; three major Notes applications and a number of other data sources, mostly Notes/Domino based. The data would present information to multiple countries and thus have to support multiple languages. Also, the security structures of most of these systems are unique and not highly integreated. — So… when we first started talking about this project, we often sarcastically said “good luck with all that!”
The solution.
Ext.nd! If you haven’t seen this, go check it out. In short, we’ve been able to ask our AS/400 developers to set up data warehouse tables that help consolidate some of the information across those systems. In the other areas, we’ve worked with them to use LEI activities to directly access the information. The Notes databases have all been “ext.nd enabled” and we’ve used a lot of XML to organize the data exactly how we want it. In short, there were plenty of ways to access the data needed in each unique system – we just had to carefully step through the process, organize it and get it ready for presentation in Ext.js or Ext.nd.
The result.
Ext.js starts (and ends) with a very nice, intuitive user interface. I feel strongly that the UI is part of the secret sauce to the project. We started putting together our application’s interface by looking through the gallery of examples that ext.js and ext.nd had to offer. We printed off many of these examples and drew lots and lots of whiteboard pictures to work on the layout.
The value-add.
Since the products we’re using have an established (and contemporary) UI, even some more boring reports (last screen shot) look really nice and updated. We’re able to show reports that previously printed in a standard AS/400 kind of style, on the web, with colors, and inside a layout that allows the user to turn on/off columns, change the sort behavior and move each column to a new position dynamically. Oh yeah, they can also search and page forward/back with the navigation at the bottom – or jump directly to a specific page in the report.
The icing on the cake.
What really put us over the top was integrating graphics from FusionCharts. These are Adobe Flash based, XML driven graphics which look outstanding. There’s just enough animation and interactiveness to them to make them interesting as they render on the screen. We re-consume the XML we’re presenting in tables and forms into these charts to represent the exact same data into different visuals. In the end, “yes” the data may be on the screen three times, but the three repsentations have very different purposes – and everyone agrees they all have value.
Attached are some screen shots of our new application. We branded it, purchased a logo for $35 from PixelLogo and launched it at our international sales meeting yesterday. The biggest compliement about the success and power of the application was when I overheard someone in the crowd say “this feels like something Steve Jobs would launch!”
… and I wasn’t even wearing a black shirt and jeans!
Tags: domino, ext.js, ext.nd, fushion charts, old systems
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