Background
One of 37 collaborative school districts in New York State, Putnam Northern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services (PNW BOCE) supports 18 local school districts by offering high-quality, cost-effective programs and services including career and technical education, curriculum and instructional services, guidance and child study, special education and management services. With the support of People10, the client wanted to improve their online application system to a highly responsive and cloud based job portal for educators and schools in the state of New York.
The Problem
When we interacted with the client, we discovered that PNW Boces wanted to change the current Online Application System for Educators (OLAS) to solve the following problems:
Moving to a new Tech stack
The technology that OLAS previously used was ASP.Net. It was not able to support the new user experience. Some of the disadvantages of ASP.Net include:
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Complex pages with performance issues
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Undefined application architecture with lack of Separation of Concerns (SoC)
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Lack of abstraction with least control over HTML
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Limited support for testing and SEO
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Lack of reusability and minimal parallel development
To get a more scalable version, PNW Boces wanted to switch to Angular JS on the front end and .Net MVC on the back end in order to create a more pleasant user experience, and improve overall performance.
The Solution
After reviewing the client’s problems, a team of five proactive developers outlined the following solution:
Switch to a new tech stack
Their current application in asp.net was switched to Angular js on the front end and .Net MVC on the back end. This is more scalable, effective and responsive.Considering importance and reliability, People10 made the server Verisign and SSL for secure processing. We organized each item in the backlog using Agile Methodology.
People10 revamped and redesigned the OLAS applicant portal they did this by enhancing the application to include essential features, such as viewing a summary of applicant profiles, and sending emails to large groups of applicants. Users could also use a single application for multiple districts. By using a single application for all schools that used OLAS (over half of all districts in New York), the process became more streamlined and straightforward.
People10 provided key features for the District Portal, Super Admin Portal & Public Portal, these key features were given to the districts to view applicant information and track their messages.
Other features included better managing the applicants' information and enhancing UI for job posting. Options to create key reports to track new registrations and user logins were also developed.
On the public portal key information such as a directory of participating school districts and regional maps outlining counties and respective school districts are given. New pages were added for districts to view jobs in their regions as well as post their school logos and update their district information. We added an enhanced search feature that could narrow down candidates based off of GPA, school attended, and email.
Project Maintenance & Implementation Support
For better project maintenance and support P10 has provided azure migration to minimize environment issues and mitigate unforeseen circumstances
Results
People10 provided PNW Boces with a New and Improved User Interface which led to the following benefits for both applicants and districts:
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The entire process of application for both districts and future employees became completely seamless, from posting job applications, to sending interview requests
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Applicants can view every job posting in their unblocked districts
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Districts can view every applicant on OLAS, including ones that have not applied to their district