Case Study :: The Personal Transformation Group

Background

When Ken Buist founded the company, he had already developed several 'instruments' that allowed individuals and teams to analyse their temperament and character styles.  Initially these instruments were in the form of paper based questionnaires or simple Visual Basic™ desktop applications.

Ken's vision was to further develop and deploy these instruments as web based applications (web apps) as this would allow him to develop the business on a truly global basis.

In addition to presenting the web apps, Ken also needed a convenient mechanism for creating and publishing the documentation associated with the instruments and the various development programmes in general.

As an essentially 'web-centric' organisation, choosing the right web development solution was a key factor in the future success of the business.  To help them in their decision process, the Personal Transformation Group used their own instruments and analysis tools to make sure they not only found a good technical fit, but a good relationship fit too.

The Personal Transformation Group chose Web Management Studio.

The Requirement

The Personal Transformation Group wanted to develop a number of specialist web sites - each focussing on a particular area or market sector of their business.  It was important for them to find a solution that would allow them to grow their web sites as their business and products and services portfolio developed.  In this respect, their Web Content Management System (WCMSWeb Content Management System) requirement was typical of many organisations, i.e. they wanted to develop their own content and present it in a professional manner on their company web site(s).

The Personal Transformation Group's additional requirement from their WCMSWeb Content Management System was that it needed to support the development of their instruments and tools and allow those web applications to be seamlessly integrated into the rest of their web site. 

The Solution

One of the core concepts of the Web Management Studio framework is its hierarchical, object-orientated design.  This approach allows the application framework to be readily extended without compromising either the features or security of the system.

For the Personal Transformation Group, the Web Management Studio Embedded Control technology proved this principle.  Each of the required instruments were fully specified and developed as Web Management Studio Embedded Controls.  Each Embedded Control could then be referenced (i.e. embedded) as required from the pages of the web site - effectively 'wrapping' the web application within its parent page.

Embedded Control Technology

Embedded Controls provide the developer with two important facilities:

1. They provide secure access to the core Web Management Studio services (user profiles, user security, environment and page configuration settings...), and...
2. They do not restrict or constrain the developer.  The developer can use any ASP.net code methodology to create the required functionality.

Item #2 is particularly important.  For example, the Personal Transformation Group had a requirement to generate their various reports dynamically in Adobe PDF format.  Using a commercially available PDF Generator component, the Web Management Studio design team were able to couple the report generation with the standard Web Management Studio Download Manager to achieve a smooth and transparent delivery of the end user report.