The PBS Corporation is an agency that provides individualized services for both adults and kids dealing with autism and related disabilities. The Corporation’s programs are designed to equip caregivers and others involved in the individuals' lives and support them through their natural routines so they can be successful and self-sufficient people.

Although PBS Corp. has a large team, the agency usually works in the form of numerous small local teams. Their Regional Coordinators ensure that the teams are highly-qualified to help those that need their services. Each team is made out of behavior analysts, program managers, and behavior assistants who receive proper support, training, and guidance that is needed to uphold the best practices in applied behavior analysis.

## The Project

The PBS Corp. approached Share IT for a POC (proof of concept) for their Telehealth App. They wanted to build an application that would help them conduct clinical sessions between the client on one side, and the provider (medical staff) on the other side. They needed us to help them lay down the groundwork and build something that would actually work. 

The app needed to be highly-secure since it was supposed to process delicate data. It needed to pass strict policies like, for instance, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). 

In addition to doing a so-to-say “sanity check” of the product, our job here was also to provide the infrastructure for data flows within the app and build a system that could conduct sessions.

## Solution

Since this was just a POC, we decided to properly prepare for the job and do some extra research. We really looked at our options before we decided which technology we were going to use for this particular project.

The system needed to enable video sessions, chatting with clients, and taking side notes that had to be saved and stored within the app after the session ends. The system needed to support users in scheduling their sessions with the doctor. Each session had to be encrypted and fully protected so that no third parties could intercept it - even if they get a hold of the session’s unique URL.

To summarize, we needed to come up with a solution that would allow us to create unique sessions that will be fully secured and HIPAA compliant.

We started the project by taking care of the chatting system: this was the easiest thing to create. We used the Web Socket and developed a chat app that enabled two people to exchange messages in a single session.

After that was done, we created a WebRTC as our third-party library for the video sessions. That ended up being the right choice because WebRTC ensured optimal security. In case you didn’t know, WebRTC requires a certain level of security that you need to set up upfront before you develop an environment where you will host it.

The front-end part of the app we made with ReactJS. We used Redux for state management since we needed to take care of a lot of things regarding sessions (both on the client and the provider side) and enable peer to peer connections.

## Result

In the end, we delivered a working POC to the PBS Corp. that satisfied all their business needs. After it got approved by the client, we started building the actual app based on the above-mentioned POC. We needed to implement the scheduling system and connect the whole business process with the app, which meant that we had to implement a data-sharing system between the app and the client’s SharePoint as the background administration system of the client/provider sessions.


cover_telehealthapp

They wanted to build an application that would help them conduct clinical sessions between the client on one side, and the provider (medical staff) on the other side. They needed us to help them lay down the groundwork and build something that would actually work.

react

React

nodejs

Node.js

webrtc-logo-vert-retro-dist

WebRTC

Proof of Concept and Infrastructure for PBS Corporation’s Telehealth App

ErgomedPLC is a full-service clinical research organization, specializing in the areas of oncology, neurology, respiratory and rare diseases. The company was founded in 1997 and has grown over the years into a globally recognizable brand that operates in 55 countries. 

ErgomedPLC is best known for its work in the pharmaceutical industry. The company develops new drugs that help people in all clinical stages. Ergomed has provided and managed clinical development, trial management, and pharmacovigilance services for over 100 clients: these range from top 10 pharmaceutical and generics organizations to small and mid-sized drug development companies.

As a group, ErgomedPLC currently consists of three separate (but closely tied together) departments:

Clinical research service (CRS)
Co-development service
Pharmacovigilance and Medical Information services

## The Project

ErgomedPLC asked us to build them a custom LMS (learning management system). The role of a Learning Management System varies depending on the organization’s objectives, online training strategy, and desired outcomes. However, the most common use of LMS is to deploy and track online training initiatives. Typically, content is uploaded to the LMS with the goal of making it easily accessible to people who need to learn from it.

Since ErgomedPLC is an extremely popular company that operates in 55 countries and has three different branches, a lot of people want to be part of it. This, of course, creates a lot of chaos for the ErgomedPLC employees who are in charge of hiring new personnel. People of all qualifications keep sending their resumes to the company, which forces the ErgomedPLC hiring team to spend a lot of time picking the right applicants from the pile and adequately training them.

To help them overcome these issues, the company asked us to build them a system that could help them effectively train all those who want to eventually get hired by ErgomedPLC. The company needed a system that could host videos, quizzes, and other learning activities.

The LMS they requested from us was supposed to work in SharePoint and operate on SharePoint’s infrastructure. This enabled them to both store and access all their learning courses and employee data on the platform.

## Business Challenge

Storing huge amounts of data in SharePoint lists and libraries is never an easy task. Especially when that data comes in the form of videos. For instance, ErgomedPLC created a training course that had over 80 sections. Each of those sections had at least one video, one quiz, and other types of “activities” (as the company representatives said) that they added under “n”. The “n” files, a.k.a “activities” were usually documents that the applicants needed to download, fill in, and then re-upload; something like tests. 

In addition to this, ErgomedPLC requested from us that we create a system where those who were going through their course were unable to skip questions and fields and move forward through the material without completing each step. So, no skipping through the video, no jumping from one scene to another, etc. This is how they wanted to ensure each applicant goes through all the materials and fully learns the lessons. 

Only after the applicants have seen the video in total can they move forward and unlock the quiz. And once they complete the quiz, they can move to the last and final part of the learning course. In order to progress through the sections, they need to pass the quizzes with more than 70% accuracy.

After they complete all the tasks, the applicants receive their certificates that serve as proof that they’ve mastered their training. The certificate is supposed to be sent to applicants’ email directly once they pass the course.

With this certificate, there are eligible for a job in ErgomedPLC. This document serves as proof of their competence and expertise, and it plays a significant role in the hiring process. 

## Solution

We decided to build this particular LMS as an app. We thought about it as a Web API that could save and retrieve data back and forth from different SharePoint lists.

We built the entire app in VueJS. That was our presentation layer under which we utilized APIs we built to save and retrieve data from SharePoint lists.

Once again, as you have probably guessed if you read our previous [case study](https://www.shareitsolutions.com/case-studies/interview-app-pbs) - the hardest part was to include video materials in SharePoint lists. SharePoint has a storage capacity limit. 

The file size of videos has to be somewhere between 5MB and 11MB for SharePoint to accept them, which is hardly possible if you want to preserve the quality of the videos. So, we needed to think outside of the box for this one. 

We ended up using Vimeo and its API for controlling the video and how they’re played. Vimeo also gave us the ability to remove all options from its video player, except play/pause. With the help of Vimeo, we were able to develop a system that detects when a person has finished watching the video. Only then can they save their progress and unlock the quiz.

As for the certificate part, we used an out-of-the-box SharePoint document library template that has the ability to make documents and replace placeholders in the documents with the metadata we saved in the document library item. Once that was done, we created a workflow to send an email notification to the participant once he or she accomplished the required steps.

## Final Results

In the end, we came up with a very complex LMS that soon started to be of great use for  ErgomedPLC. Even though the company has a lot of applicants that demand different types of training, our solution ended up being a great fit for them. 

In addition to satisfying our client’s needs, LMS we built started to show value to people outside of ErgomedPLC as well. Most of the applicants were really pleased that they got a chance to go through the course, learn something new or polish their skills and build their knowledge. The chance that they got to earn a certificate from a company like ErgomedPLC meant a lot to them. 

Our system served more than 3000 participants and enabled them to enjoy different courses the client added in its LMS. More than 80 courses were created and the solution proved to be very fast, easy to use, and reliable. The app was great both for the company and its partners.



study_prvi_cover

the company asked us to build them a system that could help them effectively train all those who want to eventually get hired by ErgomedPLC. The company needed a system that could host videos, quizzes, and other learning activities.  The LMS they requested from us was supposed to work in SharePoint and operate on SharePoint’s infrastructure. This enabled them to both store and access all their learning courses and employee data on the platform.

vuejs

dotnet

.Net

csharp

sharepoint

SharePoint

Learning Management System for Ergomed that Supports the Training of Their Staff

As we already mentioned in one of our previous case studies, The [PBS Corporation](http://teampbs.com/?fbclid=IwAR2mfpnTwOgtOsqZvr44JXPXSTF_c33Msfl0W-c7yI55nI7f2xI2Dr6buhg) is an agency that provides individualized services for both adults and kids dealing with autism and related disabilities. The Corporation’s programs are designed to equip caregivers and others involved in the individuals' lives and support them through their natural routines so they can be successful and self-sufficient people.

Although PBS Corp. has a large team, the agency usually works in form of “small local teams”. Their Regional Coordinators ensure that the teams are highly-qualified to help those that need their services. Each team is made out of behavior analysts, program managers, and behavior assistants that receive the proper support, training, and guidance that is needed to uphold the best practices in applied behavior analysis.

## The Project

As a company of such size and magnitude, PBS Corp. wastes a lot of time interviewing and hiring new personnel. 

One of the most common issues a lot of companies face today is directly tied to hiring new personnel. Most brands are struggling to find qualified candidates for their open positions, i.e. to filter the right ones from the entire applicant pool. An increased focus on finding the right talent and not making a poor hire has contributed to extending the hiring process, which usually takes up to 30 days. Despite the challenges that a vacant position presents, it’s even worse to fill a job with the wrong candidate only to have to remedy the situation at a later date.

According to the company representatives that contacted us, PBS Corp. employees spend a lot of time processing job applications. After they manually go through all the resumes, they handpick the best ones and then call each applicant individually to come for an interview. 

According to their data, they invest around 45 to 60 minutes per applicant just to figure out if he or she is a good fit for the company. This is a lot of wasted time.

PBS Corp. people wanted to speed up this operation as much as possible, so they decided to reach out to us to build them an app that will automate a significant part of the hiring process. 

Their idea was to create a system that will allow job applicants to answer some questions before they even send their resume. This system would enable them to record and upload videos by themselves. Their answers were then going to get reviewed by PBS Corp. managers through the SharePoint Portal App. The best candidates were then going to receive a call to come for an in-person interview.

## The Challenge 

The biggest challenge here was to create a system that recorded each question and stored it in an appropriate place. People who were to review the answers and videos had to have access to this database through an app.

Also, the client said that this system needed to work on the iOS platform as well, which was not that simple. IOS is known for very strict policies about the involvement of cameras in non-native apps.

## Solution

To answer these challenges, we first built the React app that worked on both the web and mobile platforms. The app used Media Recording API to capture camera videos. We also set a length limit for the recordings so that the videos from candidates don’t exceed the length defined in the SharePoint’s list of Questions. The list of questions was placed under the SharePoint list, from where we could retrieve it by building a simple, custom Web API. Web API was also developed to save the candidates’ responses on SharePoint.

The main problem we had to overcome here was related to the storage.

The file size candidates upload had to be somewhere between 5 to 11MB. However, this is not really optimal and it implies the videos won’t be of satisfying resolution. In addition, some clients might upload more than one video. Also, there were cases where PBS Corp. had 10 videos per applicant and they wanted to save the profile videos for later use if the applicant gets hired.

So, having these obstacles in mind, it was clear to us that SharePoint wasn’t going to cut it here.  SharePoint storage would get full very quickly. We ended up using Azure Storage with CDN as the middle layer for this particular project. It is very quick, easy to use, plus it wasn’t expensive.

We built the API for storing videos on Azure and then we copied the link of each video to the client’s SharePoint. This is where PBS Corp. could easily access and review all the applications and potential employees’ videos.

Once we got everything up and running, we started working on the iOS integration as well. It wasn’t possible to make the app work under iOS (Safari 13), so we had to build a new Native iOS app (Swift) and reuse all the APIs we previously built for our initial app, just to make the presentation layer in swift. This proved to be a good idea and the final product worked like a charm.

## Result

In the end, we ended up with two apps and a very satisfied client. The feedback we got from the applicants was great. They said that our solution was intuitive and very easy to use. It was very user-friendly, which they said it saved them a lot of time. The client added that our two apps made their hiring process seamless and lightweight. PBS Corp. claims that in just the first two weeks of using our app, 40 applicants got hired.




cover_interapp

Their idea was to create a system that will allow job applicants to answer some questions before they even send their resume. This system would enable them to record and upload videos by themselves. Their answers were then going to get reviewed by PBS Corp. managers through the SharePoint Portal App. The best candidates were then going to receive a call to come for an in-person interview.

azure (1)

Azure

Hiring App for PBS Corp. that Cleans the Clutter from their Interview Process

[The PBS Corporation](http://teampbs.com/?fbclid=IwAR2mfpnTwOgtOsqZvr44JXPXSTF_c33Msfl0W-c7yI55nI7f2xI2Dr6buhg) is an agency that provides individualized services for both adults and kids dealing with autism and related disabilities. The Corporation’s programs are designed to equip caregivers and others involved in the individuals' lives and support them through their natural routines so they can be successful and self-sufficient people.

Although PBS Corp. has a large team, the agency usually works in form of “small local teams”. Their Regional Coordinators ensure that the teams are highly-qualified to help those that need their services. Each team is made out of behavior analysts, program managers, and behavior assistants that receive the proper support, training, and guidance that is needed to uphold the best practices in applied behavior analysis.

## The Project

We worked with PBS Corp. on a couple of different projects. This one specifically was about their system that stores all their crucial data and helps them successfully serve their clients.

The PBS Corp. uses SharePoint for data and task management. After 7 years of running their operation on SharePoint 2013, it was time to opt for a new version. Specifically, to move from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019. 

Why?

Well, as of April 10th of 2018, the support for SharePoint 2013 has come to an end. Microsoft decided it was enough, so everyone that was still using an older version of their product had to come up with a plan on how to move their entire operation to a new version of SharePoint. 

The migration needed to happen fast in order to save all the data. In addition to moving to a newest version platform that has support, there are many sound reasons to move your entire operation to SharePoint 2019, speed and scalability being the most important of them. On the latest SharePoint platform, pages load faster while the scripts and the underlying code are leaner. Everything is more polished and more intuitive. List View thresholds and large-file support have also been improved.

## The Challenge

Even though Microsoft tends to claim that it’s quite simple to move all your data, details, settings and custom-made solutions from an older SharePoint to a newer version of the platform - once you actually begin the process, you will notice that Microsoft’s definition of “simple” is not really the same as yours.

When you have years and years of custom-made solutions, processes, and terabytes of data stored across many content databases, your migration process tends to look and feel like a house of cards. One wrong move and the entire structure goes tumbling down.

This was not something you could do in a single afternoon. We knew we needed to prepare in advance. The thing is, the preparation process actually started years ago.

We were going through different options to figure out how to complete this upgrade process as seamlessly as possible. We started thinking about process just before the release of the SharePoint 2016 version,  but it was too complex at the time. It wasn’t possible to make an easy upgrade without adding Migration tools (Sharegate, Metalogix, etc.) to the mix. 

We kept postponing the migration process for as long as we could. At that point when we couldn’t prolong the inevitable any longer, we decided to proceed with the migration to SharePoint 2019. 

## Solution

First, we went through the recommended Microsoft Upgrade process (Database Attach). Some of our team members had doubts about this process considering the number of custom solutions we had. 

It wasn’t possible to directly jump from SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint 2019. For those who are not familiar with SharePoint migration processes, Microsoft doesn’t allow you to skip a few steps ahead that easy.

We first needed to migrate the entire operation to the 2016 version of the platform, and then to SharePoint 2019. So, we started with the SharePoint 2016 installation. The 2016 environment was used as a so-called “mule” to help us upgrade to SharePoint 2019 and safely carry all the databases and solutions.

Once we got everything on the 2016 version, we started preparing the 2019 environment through the following practices:

- We used the Minrole installation process
- Built three WFE servers
- Two APP servers
- One Search Index Server
- One Distributed Cache Server

To successful complete the migration process, it was imperative that we move all the custom solutions (170 of them), databases, and settings from the old environment to a new one.

In order to do this, we didn’t upgrade our SQL server. Since the 2019 version of SharePoint does not support our SQL Server 2012, we needed to upgrade to SQL 2017 first.

The whole SQL migration process lasted approximately 3 days. We needed to move over 3TB of SQL databases to the new SQL server first, and then to upgrade it for the SharePoint 2016. Once that was done, we could finally move it to SharePoint 2019 database and upgrade it there as well.

## Result

In the end, the whole migration process was completed without a single migration tool. The entire job was done in less than a week. Sure, we needed to tweak a couple of things in the upcoming weeks, but nothing major.

The client’s entire operation was successfully migrated to the new SharePoint 2019 environment. This was a huge accomplishment for both the PBS Corp. and for us because we managed to pull it all off without any significant hiccups.

PBS Corp. now has a faster, more stable environment, and brand new SharePoint ready for more custom work.



cover-01

The migration needed to happen fast in order to save all the data. In addition to moving to a newest version platform that has support, there are many sound reasons to move your entire operation to SharePoint 2019, speed and scalability being the most important of them.

SharePoint Migration for Positive Behavior Supports Corporation

Semper Constantia Bank is a well-known Austrian bank, located in Vienna. As of 28 September 2018, Semper Constantia Bank has become part of the Liechtensteinische Landesbank (Österreich) AG. The acquisition of Semper Constantia enabled the LLB Group to establish Austria as its third important home market and grow its range of services across another border. 

With its strong position in the private banking sector and the custodian bank, investment fund, and real estate business - Semper Constantia has proven to be a smart investment for the LLB Group. The takeover has provided the Group with a golden asset that can only be described as “well-oiled machinery”.

## The Problem

Last year, we were approached by a couple of representatives of Semper Constantia Bank with a request to build them an app for their sales presentations. The idea was to create a system that will help them unify the look and feel of their sales PowerPoint presentations. 

As they explained to us, most of their salespeople were making presentations on their own which sometimes resulted in a look that felt “off-brand”. The way information was formatted wasn’t defined and uniformed, and the visuals were not in line with the brand's identity.

Semper Constantia Bank wanted to put a stop to this and they reached out to us to help them create a system that will allow their salespeople to create presentations only from predefined slides.

Of course, their request wasn’t that simple. Apart from the system that would help them unify their sales team output, the Semper Constantia Bank representatives also wanted us to create an option that would allow their salespeople to upload their own slides to existing presentations (of course, after the slides get approved by the management).

To sum it up: the client needed a tool for creating slide decks that also allow users to import template slides as cover, category, contact and disclaimer slides. The system had to support uploading presentations and users had to be able to select and reuse slides for their own presentations.

## The Solution

Considering the fact that this needed to be a part of the SharePoint intranet portal and that we needed to build a system that will help us organize different PowerPoint presentations and slides, it was logical that we use .NET to build this. However, we also needed a third-party library to help us run this kind of system quickly, without glitches. 

After a lot of research, we figured out that Spire.Presentation for .NET was not good enough. Even though we tested it while we were still in our trial phase, it just wasn’t working right. So, we asked people from Spire to extend our trial license and help us overcome some issues we were experiencing. The issues were mostly connected to their library. We found some bugs for them, which they really appreciated. They’ve shown their gratitude by providing us with developer licenses for free.

After a couple of weeks of work, we created a system that enabled us to separate and combine PowerPoint slides. It was ready for testing. We decided to implement it in the app we were building for our client and give people access so they can test it.

At this stage, we needed to decide on the technology we were going to use for the front end. Everyone in the team liked VueJS because it is very light but also powerful enough to render the components we were planning to use.

So, the final architecture of the app was:

 .NET library component for splitting and combining the slides
Web API for storing and retrieving slides to and from the SharePoint library 
VueJS app as a presentation layer to combine Web API and .NET Library we built

## The Results

Thanks to our approach and a very clear communication with the client, we ended up with a very intuitive app that had very few options, but was powerful enough to completely satisfy our client’s needs. 

Our solution has the ability to compose presentations out of hundreds of different predefined slides from various categories. It has the power to sort, filter and build “on-brand” presentations in record time just by recycling existing slides. After you build a presentation out of different templates and slides, you are given the option to customize the first slide. 

All salespeople have to do is change the name of the presentation, add their name to it, download it, and send it to their target. Their final version of the presentation will be saved in SharePoint, so that the management can keep track of their output. It’s a sweet little system that resolves a pesky problem and automates a mundane task that really shouldn’t take too much time out of salespeople’s day.

Since salespeople aren’t graphic designers and don’t necessarily have a developed sense for aesthetics and visual balance, this is a practical solution that ensures consistency for the brand of Semper Constantia Bank. The app is straightforward and easy to use, and more importantly - it eliminates confusion and ensures the client is always properly presented by their salespeople.



cover_slidesdeck

Slide Deck has the ability to compose presentations out of hundreds of different predefined slides from various categories. It has the power to sort, filter and build “on-brand” presentations in record time just by recycling existing slides. After you build a presentation out of d.ifferent templates and slides, you are given the option to customize the first slide

Custom-Made Slides Deck Solution for Semper Constantia Bank

## Business Challenge

The idea was to redesign our website and expand our portfolio with bleeding-edge technology. We wanted to use React as a framework for our interface, which also required choosing the correct tools and architecture to go along with it. Since we mostly do Microsoft related development, we decided to use Azure as our cloud provider.
What we didn’t think would prove to be so difficult was the selection of the right CMS for our back-end. On our previous website, we used WordPress which wasn’t sufficient enough for our needs. And since we decided to build the complete front-end with JavaScript, the easiest solution seemed to go ahead with Node.js based framework.

## Solution

A few choices seemed to stand out, most notably Keystone.js and Strapi. We gave both of these frameworks a try and decided to proceed with Strapi because it had a smoother and more user-friendly admin interface. 
The developer experience was not bad either. Building content-types took only a couple of minutes (that is, of course, if you know your way around the toolset). It felt carefully thought-out. The biggest issue, however, was that writing in this framework proved to be unstable on Windows platforms.

After we hit a wall with Strapi, we gave Keystone.js a try. 

It was just as easy to create content-types in Keystone.js, as it was in Strapi. You had more control over writing your RESTful API endpoints, and the community around it seemed to be bigger. Unfortunately, we saw that the active maintenance was at a stand-still, with version 2 being in sort of a limbo, waiting for active maintainers, and version 3 is still nowhere in sight. Unwilling to expose ourselves to unnecessary risks - we decided to pass on Keystone.js as well.

Since the website was intended to have a blog section, we knew we needed to find an SEO-friendly CMS. With React being the client-side framework, it meant the indexing for search engines would be an issue. Most notably for dynamic blog pages that come from the CMS.

So we knew we needed a server-side rendering (SSR) solution for our React application. Two most well-known frameworks for this specific case are Gatsby and Next.js. Our developers had previously worked in Next.js, so it was a no-brainer. In the end, it turned out to be a great decision, since we ended up building a mailing microservice on the same server. The flexibility in choosing, and building a custom Node back-end of Next.js seemed so apparent at this point. Of course, the server we used was built with Express. And it handles the routing for client-side pages, as well as the back-end REST endpoints.

There is, however, another part of the equation that required additional thinking when doing SSR: the styles, of course. CSS is also a first-class citizen in these types of scenarios, and in order to avoid common flashes of unstyled content, we need to render our styles on the server as well. As with everything regarding CSS, there are already existent solutions. CSS-in-JS is most commonly used in these scenarios because then the styles can be flushed to the head and rendered along with the rest of the markup. Next.js provides similar possibilities, but some CSS-in-JS libraries are harder to implement with it than others. We opted for using Emotion, a library whose 10th version came with default support for SSR. This probably saved us much trouble and initial configuration in order to integrate CSS-in-JS.

There were a lot of benefits that came with using this style library. Styles are encapsulated in the components, meaning there are no conflicting styles on the page. This helped us with code reusability, and it will also help us scale the website in the future, if necessary.  It was an outstanding experience overall.
 
## Result

We are very happy with the outcome of the work we did on this application. It was a learning opportunity in a lot of ways. This specific project serves as a reminder that good research and proper planning are the pillars of quality work.
The application is really performant, and we think the user experience is outstanding. Although you’ve probably experienced this yourself seeing as you’re here reading this article. We aim to provide the best software products possible, and with this, we’re sure we did just that.

web_fix

The idea was to redesign our website and expand our portfolio with bleeding-edge technology. We wanted to use React as a framework for our interface, which also required choosing the correct tools and architecture to go along with it. Since we mostly do Microsoft related development, we decided to use Azure as our cloud provider.

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