The Challenge
The Walt Disney Company, one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world, found that its Disney DVD website had become outdated. The website's simple "movie list" format no longer captivated the audience with the same excitement emulated in Disney movies. The DisneyDVD website was falling short of the objectives of all related departments. Disney's marketing team wanted to update the website to better represent the vision of the strong Disney brand. The IT department found that a lack of common technical architecture across Disney's brands was making the website's maintenance both cumbersome and expensive. The website content editors were limited by the frequency with which they make updates because nearly every change required the assistance of a web developer, leading to additional payroll costs.

The Solution
Oshyn integrated Disney's new visual design and implemented a new Content Management System (CMS), and used their technical expertise and enterprise experience to provide architectural and usability improvements.
Unlike previous implementations of Disney's proprietary CMS, the new CMS can be reused across all Disney Studio properties. This CMS minimizes the development updates by automatically creating pages and modules, and by allowing non-technical users to manage the website structure, page layouts, and templates. The new robust CMS is built especially for demands of high-volume websites such as DisneyDVD.com and allows for best practices of web development. Oshyn improved the usability of the website to make it easier for visitors to find content by expanding the number of searchable categories and genres. This theme of "surfacing" content was also used to expand the video content available, making it center stage on more pages throughout the website.
Oshyn augmented Disney's new visual design with the use of big, bold hero images that helped build an emotional connection to each new DVD release. A new layer was added to the "Own It Now" button to increase the number of purchasing options directing the customer to Disney Shopping, Disney DVD Gift Express and Disney Movie Club.

The Results
The DisneyDVD.com website now has a strong visual presence that is consistent with the Disney family of brands. This new user experience enables DisneyDVD.com visitors to more easily find videos and quickly make purchases, helping increase Disney's online revenue, by making it the obvious choice for DVD purchases. The new CMS reduces website management costs and optimizes the workflow process for a faster turnaround time and reduced labor costs.

About Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, along with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with four business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment and consumer products.

The Technology

• Open Source Application Software
• Open Source Application Software: Struts 2
• Open Source Application Software: Spring Framework
• Open Source Application Software: FreeMarker
• Open Source Application Software: Hibernate
• Open Source Application Software: EHCache
• Open Source Application Software: Sitemesh
• Checkstyle
• PMD
• Maven2
• Hudson Continuous Integration server

The Challenge
Volkswagen of America, the world's third largest car manufacturer, was repositioning its brand identity to expand their market presence and reach its celebrated enthusiast community. Volkswagen's agency of record, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CPB), envisioned a more interactive and engaging user experience that strongly reflected the brand's personality. The VW team had several major goals for the new website - greater flexibility for marketing, reduced IT overhead and faster time to market with content updates. To coincide with the overall repositioning campaign, the website needed to be built in three months, which led to the first major obstacle: VW & CPB weren't sure that their ideal technical solution could be implemented within the scheduled timeframe. Crispin P+B recommended Oshyn, Inc. based on its track record of rapid development success and proven technical expertise with similar clients.

The Solution
Oshyn developed a proof-of-concept microsite to demonstrate their capabilities and prove that VW's envisioned technology solution could in fact be developed and delivered in the required timeframe. Oshyn then rapidly developed and upgraded multiple applications (Find a Dealer, Get a Quote, Schedule a Test Drive, VW Club and Maintenance) using an Agile development process to ensure that the functionality met the needs of all stakeholders. The integration of these systems required complex data migration, for which Oshyn used its proprietary designed migration scripts that reduce the possibility of creating bugs while concurrently speeding up the data migration process. Oshyn migrated Volkswagen's Oracle database and Websphere application server to the open source MySQL database and JBoss server.

The Results
Oshyn met the target completion target date; completely redesigning the back-end structure of the website and redeploying vw.com in less than 3 months. Volkswagen's website had experienced issues with duplicate or lost web requests, which Oshyn resolved through integration of back-end applications with Volkswagen's existing IT infrastructure, making the user's buying process, flawless from start to finish. By migrating to an open source database and open source application server, the goals of reduced expenses and increased flexibility were delivered. Oshyn implemented extensive security measures to ensure the website would be resistant to hackers. The new design gave the vw.com website a more appealing user experience with a more intuitive path to product information from a visitor's first interaction with the brand on the homepage to their scheduled test drive. The website won a Favorite Web Award with judges saying that, "the search-based site finds common ground between the highly informative stats, buying information, comparisons and the interactive marketing spaces typically treated as one-off microsite." Following the success of vw.com, Oshyn has continued to work on several Volkswagen initiatives.

"I would like to thank you and your team for the dedication and hard work on the 2007 VW.com rebrand project. It was not an easy assignment, and you guys really tackled it head on."
- Winston Binch, Executive Integrated Producer (Interactive) Crispin, Porter + Bogusky

"You guys are great…this couldn't have been done without you!"
- Jill Stieber, VW Interactive Marketing Executive

"We have a group that analyzes code in terms of how up-to-date, high-tech and high quality they consider it to be. They said they are in love with Oshyn's code as much as anyone can be 'in love with code'."
- Regional Director for Compuware (Volkswagen Hosting Vendor)

About Volkswagen
Volkswagen of America is a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, the world's third largest car manufacturer. The Volkswagen Group is made up of eight brands: Volkswagen, Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, Škoda and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles. Volkswagen's goal is to reach one million car sales in the US by 2018.

Technology

• All-new system architecture designed for high availability by eliminating all single points of failure
• Open source server stack eliminated licensing fees: Apache HTTP Server, JBoss Application Server, MySQL Cluster
• Standards-based JEE application leveraged EJB 3.0 + JPA, Struts, FreeMarker, Castor, and other open source libraries
• Custom content deployment system provides workflow, versioning, and easy rollback for localized content in multiple environments

The Challenge
The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers. The rise in smart phone adoption has increased the volume of users accessing websites via mobile devices. However, websites need to be mobile optimized in order for mobile visitors to be able to quickly navigate, download web pages and easily read content. Each year the National Education Association (NEA) hosts an Annual Meeting & Representative Assembly – this year in Louisiana. NEA felt that having a website that rendered for mobile devices would enable attendees to access important information during meetings. NEA also knew that developing this small mobile website would present a good foundation for further developing a mobile web presence. But time was a critical factor.

The Solution
With only 6 weeks to develop the mobile website from the Information Architecture (IA) Phase until launch, NEA turned to Oshyn. As NEA's RedDot developer and with extensive IA and visual design skills Oshyn was the ideal partner to meet the project deadline. The Oshyn team used an agile development methodology, which is an iterative approach to development. An agile approach encourages collaboration throughout the project, allowing the NEA stakeholders visibility and input when changes could still be made. This helped ensure that the Oshyn team would deliver a high quality product that met stakeholder expectations on launch day. Oshyn developed the mobile website, m.nea.org, using RedDot and simple HTML and graphics to develop an easy to navigate website that would download pages quickly to mobile devices. Oshyn developed the mobile website, integrated with NEA's Content Management System (CMS) RedDot (Also Known as Open Text Web Solutions) using simple HTML and graphics to support their desire for a phase 1 mobile web presence.

The Result
Oshyn delivered the mobile website m.nea.org within the 6 week period. The attendees of the Annual Representative Meeting used their mobile devices to access important information and live updates throughout the event on m.nea.org and provided much positive feedback. With this opportunity to test the value of providing a mobile optimized website to members, NEA will be able to make future mobile investments knowing that the investment will provide true value. The Oshyn team delivered a mobile website that met NEA's business goals in a short time frame and armed their in-house team with the tools and knowledge to update their new mobile website using their Content Management System.

About National Education Association
The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.

The Technology

• Reddot CMS with single html foundation for all targeted mobile platforms with HTML 5 and CSS3 standards
• Apache Rewrite Rules for Mobile Devices with optional "Opt-Out" feature to allow full html page in certain cases (ipod / iphone / some Blackberries)

The Challenge
Lexus is the top selling Luxury automaker in the U.S. and belongs to the global Toyota family, whose members together constitute the world's third-leading automaker. Lexus has a focus on innovation. Lexus wanted to encourage and inspire its audience to innovate in their own personal lives as well. Lexus launched their L Studio website to share a collection of original web clips from art, culture, design, science, entertainment, architecture, and beyond.

The previous L Studio site experienced less than optimal performance that prevented it from truly achieving 100% of the results that the team had hoped to achieve. The result was a decrease in support, participation and overall traffic to the site.

Some of the performance issues experienced:

• Less than optimal SEO
• Non-rigid data-structures allowing some videos or series to either have or omit attributes applicable to that video
• Inconsistent site performance
• Current web design and information architecture did not meet today's requirements
• Less than optimal video quality
• Difficult for content contributors to add videos as they always had to rely on technical people

The Solution
Team One (Lexus Agency of record) & Lexus selected the Oshyn team to help them address the issues facing the L Studio website. Oshyn and Team One partnered to deliver success. Team One provided a new design and information architecture, while Oshyn focused on the technical implementation.

The technical implementation came with many requirements and challenges:

• There was a requirement that no backend Java code was to be used— the site needed to be a completely static-HTML site served up by Interwoven Teamsite, using only client-side JavaScript and Ajax, even for the Search functionality.
• The client also required a very aggressive timeframe to complete the project.

Oshyn mobilized quickly and in the coming months worked very closely with Team One to deliver a project that would meet the high standards of a major global brand such as Lexus.

The Results
The new L Studio website was launched on time and has received rave reviews from Toyota, Lexus, their celebrity content contributors, and web visitors alike.

The SEO of the site was improved and is now in the number one spot in Google searches. The flexibility of the data-attributes and templates allow content editors to quickly upload and publish content without relying on technical staff.

Customer satisfaction has increased and web visitors can now easily find and experience the L Studio website, as it is the number one search result on Google.

Lisa Kudrow, one of the site's celebrity contributors, won a Webby Special Achievement Award for her outstanding comedic performance in "Web Therapy." The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet.

The Technology

• Interwoven Teamsite
• Flash AS3
• HTML
• XML
• JavaScript
• RSS Feeds
• Ajax
• Perl
• Omniture
• Akamai

The Challenge
Award-winning Miramax, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, planned to re-design their website to offer a truly entertaining user experience with access to all Miramax titles including those coming soon, currently in theaters, or on DVD/Blu-ray. Visitors to the website were not given immediate opportunities to make purchase decisions, leading to lost potential sales. Miramax also wanted to reduce the reliance on expensive technical staff to make simple content changes to the website.

The Solution
Oshyn customized Disney's proprietary Content Management System (CMS) to fit the design and scope of the new Miramax.com. Oshyn added versatility to the CMS by developing a multitude of modules to feature content such as "Coming Soon," "Behind the Scenes" and "You'll Love These". To add purchasing functionality, "Own It Now" links were built into the website to take clients directly to the selected film's purchase page at BestBuy.com. Some of the new modules are dynamically populated based on data, such as awards and honors. The Oshyn team integrated the CMS into the Buena Vista Home Entertainment's database to give Miramax content developers access to the entire library of films. Content developers could now easily select and publish specific details about films such as directors, characters, cast, and awards. Oshyn focused on improving the user experience, which included enhancing the video integration to deliver high quality video. Miramax can build their list of loyal subscribers with registration for the Miramax Insider with mailings about new releases and special promotions.

The Results
Visitors are now greeted by an exhilarating movie theatre feel, through enhanced video integration that provides a richer online viewing experience, increasing the time visitors remain at Miramax.com. The CMS reduces the turn-around time and costs of maintaining content by eliminating the need for content editors to submit change requests to web developers. The new Miramax.com is experiencing increases in revenue through improved communication to the audience about news about films, and by helping consumers find more movies of interest and by converting more purchases through "Own It Now" links.

About Miramax
Miramax Film Corp., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is a motion picture production, financing and worldwide distribution company. Miramax is committed to providing audiences with high quality, innovative and risk-taking films.

The Technology

• Open Source Application Software
• Open Source Application Software: Struts 2
• Open Source Application Software: Spring Framework
• Open Source Application Software: FreeMarker
• Open Source Application Software: Hibernate
• Open Source Application Software: EHCache
• Open Source Application Software: Sitemesh
• Checkstyle
• PMD
• Maven2
• Hudson Continuous Integration server

The Challenge
The Coca-Cola Company is the world's largest beverage company. In June 2005 they introduced Coca-Cola Zero®, their largest product launch in 22 years. Diet beverages are historically more popular with the female audience. However, in August 2007, leading advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B) was developing a large online advertising campaign for Coke Zero to attract a target market that traditionally did not consume diet beverages. An important component of the multimedia campaign for Coke Zero involved creating a unique digital advertisement that would allow Fantasy Football fans to create and personalize a victory dance animation via banner ads on their favorite Fantasy Football website or on a landing page at cokezero.com. Fans would be able to quickly submit their custom victory dances during games, so the interactive experience was also in real time. Coca-Cola now had a great idea, but they needed a team to execute this project flawlessly.

The Solution
Oshyn was brought in to develop this interactive functionality based on very complex requirements. Using the visual design created by CP+B, Oshyn designed the Flash animation so the victory dances created by fans would be displayed on banner ads that would automatically be timed with music and play back with movie quality. The success of this multimedia campaign required Oshyn to provide the user with as much power and choice as possible without sacrificing usability. Users could quickly upload and edit photos that could be then resized, rotated, cropped, and superimposed on their individual football players. The options for Victory Dances required creating 15 difference dance segments, so users could construct their own dance by selecting an opening move, middle move, and finishing move. The banner area where victory dances would play was expandable, so fans could edit and preview the dances without leaving the website.

The Results
Oshyn tackled this project with creativity and a high degree of technical expertise to deliver an end result that met the expectations of the advertising agency, Coca-Cola, and the fans. Following the campaign's launch, the average time on site was doubled. Visitors stayed on the website longer because the quality of the interactive component to drew them in, to create and re-create movies. During the campaign, traffic on cocacolazero.com was substantially higher than Pepsi's two websites dietpepsi.com and oneify.com combined. Coke Zero was the most successful product launch in 25 years and has already become a billion dollar brand.

About The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is the world's largest beverage company with a selection of over 450 sparkling and still brands. Along with Coca-Cola®, recognized as the world's most valuable brand, the Company's portfolio includes 12 other billion dollar brands, including Diet Coke®, Fanta®, Sprite®, Coca-Cola Zero®, vitaminwater, POWERade®, Minute Maid® and Georgia® Coffee. The Coca-Cola Company is the world's No. 1 provider of sparkling beverages, juices, juice drinks, ready-to-drink teas, and coffees. Through the world's largest beverage distribution system, consumers in more than 200 countries enjoy the Company's beverages at a rate of 1.5 billion servings a day.

Technology

• Flash Animation

The Challenge
Bugaboo Bee was launching an innovative stroller designed to be nimble, compact and easy-to-use. The focal point of the product launch campaign was a video demonstrating the luxury stroller. The interactive portion of the product launch required demonstrating the agility of the stroller's movement through fluidly moving Flash-driven banner ads.

Bugaboo's agency 72andSunny, had a strict schedule for creating the Bugaboo Bee's product launch advertising campaign coupled with very precise technical specifications which required advanced Flash skills. The banners were to be created with maximum fluidity, but with limited file sizes, a challenge that would require advanced Flash design skills. 72andSunny chose Oshyn as the partner to assure project success based on Oshyn's reputation of adhering to strict agency timelines and a proven track-record of translating design concepts into the highest quality Flash deliverables.

The Solution
72andSunny provided Oshyn with the Bugaboo artwork demonstrating the storyline of each banner. Using these graphics, Oshyn's Flash developers built the animations within the precise specifications outlined using Adobe Illustrator for vector artwork, Adobe Photoshop for raster image and optimization, Adobe Flash and ActionScript to assemble the ad units. Oshyn's developers wrote succinct program code for the animations to minimize file size while optimizing output and maintaining the integrity of the artwork.

72andSunny required deliverables be provided each week during the course of a six week international campaign schedule. The campaign schedule was divided into several production categories; English, UK English, Nordic, Swedish, German, French, Spanish and Dutch..

Oshyn worked with 72andSunny's Producer throughout production. The Producer was able to efficiently review all ads during development to ensure they were meeting all requirements with a custom-made player Oshyn created to demonstrate video functionality during development.

The Results
The overall CTR was higher than Bugaboo's expectations. The total banner ad impressions for the campaign were 1,010,867. The Clickthrough Rate (CTR) for the 160x600 expandable banner was above the industry average on a placement site – especially strong in NYC and LA geo-targeted areas. Oshyn's produced high quality project deliverables on time throughout the project ensuring successful campaign delivery. For the Bugaboo campaign 72andSunny used EyeWonder and Mediaplex MOJO ad serving technology. Oshyn delivered the banners within technical and security requirements of 72andSunny, MOJO and EyeWonder. Oshyn provided, zipped files adhering to MOJO's requirements, to ensure that the interactive banners would be correctly loaded by the ad server and used default static images for Bugaboo in the absence of a Flash plugin. Oshyn zipped the files with URL locations for multiple click-through animations and minimum FlashPlayer requirements.

About 72andSunny
72andsunny is a modern full-service design and advertising company with offices in Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Founded in 2004, 72andSunny is dedicated to unleashing creativity across all platforms and solving tough business problems with massively integrated ideas. 72andSunny works with clients defining culture today including Nike, Discovery Channel, Quiksilver, The CW, and Bugaboo.

About Bugaboo
Bugaboo is a mobility company. Our mission is to excite every person on the move. For parents, that means having the ability to get out and explore the world with your child. In the city, through the woods and over sand and snow, Bugaboo wants to help you go.

The Technology

• Adobe Flash
• Adobe InDesign
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Photoshop
• ActionScript
• EyeWonder
• Mediaplex MOJO
• Custom Flash player

The Challenge
Intrawest, parent company to five destination ski resorts in North America, found that their current CMS for Winter Park Resort’s site was outdated and causing various usability issues. With 80% of travelers researching their travel plans online¹, Intrawest knew it was time to update Winter Park Resort’s CMS to better serve the needs of their site visitors.

As one of the top ski resorts in Colorado², Winter Park Resort’s site is key to their business, hosting daily snow and trail reports, up to the minute weather conditions, resort events, promotions and other dynamic content. The Winter Park Resort team knew that their current CMS was limited and could no longer support these demands or grow with the resort and its complex business needs. That’s when they turned to Oshyn for help.

With a CMS that was nearing the end of its lifespan, Winter Park Resort was running into reoccurring issues like dead links, time-consuming updates and frequent unscheduled site outages on a routine basis. A complex web of technical workarounds was becoming the norm rather than the exception. They knew they needed a CMS that could handle constant updates, would be easy-to-use and intuitive, and would have built-in reporting tools to help them keep their website running smoothly. Intrawest chose Sitecore CMS because it has the ability to fit their current needs and the flexibility to meet their future needs.

The Solution
Oshyn worked with Winter Park Resort to implement Sitecore 6.5 templates, layouts and sublayouts and Sitecore Web Forms for Marketers into their site. Sitecore helps businesses like Winter Park Resort better leverage their content, improve customer experience and drive business growth due to its industry-leading flexibility and scalability. Sitecore’s Web Forms for Marketers is a module that lets non-technical editors create simple forms to gather customer information quickly and easily. This module also provides reports and analytics to help business users monitor and maximize the effectiveness of their forms as well as effortlessly make changes if needed.

Sitecore 6.5 allows Winter Park Resort to create a full-featured website that is easy for their team to maintain using inline editing, media asset management and rich text editing. Oshyn’s Sitecore implementation included integration with Winter Park Resort’s customer relationship management (CRM) system, travel booking engine, jobs board, Resorts Interactive media provider, AreaNet weather data feed, and more. With an easy-to-use interface, Sitecore allows the Winter Park Resort team to update their website with as little effort and time as possible.

The Result
Oshyn delivered a completely new Sitecore implementation and a new, intuitive editor and user experience within budget and on time. With Sitecore, the Winter Park Resort team will now enjoy the ease of content editing, dynamic promotion modules, simplified administration of the snow report, lift and trail status, in-page editing, integrated marketing solution and more.

Winter Park Resort can now easily and reliably edit and deploy content updates, making their site fresh and relevant to their users. The Sitecore implementation also included a robust promotion system that allows Winter Park Resort to easily manage their promotions across the site and reuse promotion material in multiple areas, saving the time needed to edit content.

The success of the Winter Park Resort CMS implementation led the Intrawest team to continue to partner with Oshyn to assess user experience and perform complete website redesigns of their other five resort sites.

About Intrawest
Intrawest is a leader in the development and management of experiential destination resorts. The Company has a network of resorts at North America's most popular mountain destinations including Mont Tremblant Ski Resort, Steamboat Ski & Resort, Winter Park Resort, Snowshoe Mountain and Stratton Mountain. The Intrawest network also includes Canadian Mountain Holidays, the largest heli-skiing operation in the world and Club Intrawest, a private resort club with exclusive locations around the world. In addition, Intrawest markets and sells real estate at its resorts in North America.

The Technology

• Sitecore 6.5
• Sitecore Web Forms for Marketers
• Lucene Search Engine
• Adobe SiteCatalyst
• jQuery
• IIS 7
• MSSQL 2008
• Windows 2008
• Visual Studio 2010
• NAnt & MSBuild
• Jenkins Continuous Integration Server

Resources

• ¹ PhocusWright, "Destination Unknown: How US and European travelers decide where to go", 10/2010
• ² http://www.winterparkresort.com

The Challenge
Multiquip, located in Carson, California, is one of the largest, most diversified manufactures and suppliers of world-class, quality products and solutions for: construction, industrial, telecom, government, non-commercial, aerospace, municipalities/federal, entertainment, and oil and gas exploration markets. Multiquip found that their current version of OpenText Web Solutions was outdated and needed to be updated. Multiquip was not using all the aspects of their OpenText Web Solutions, Management Server and Delivery Server to their full capabilities and had never implemented their purchased Content Server (Livelink). They lacked the time and experience to put all the pieces together to create a fully dynamic, functional and efficient CMS and delivery platform; for this, they turned to Oshyn. They knew Oshyn could handle the complexity of upgrading and tying together OpenText Management Server, Delivery Server, and Content Server.

The Solution
Oshyn knew that the first thing to do for Multiquip was to update their current version of OpenText Web Solutions (RedDot) from Version 7.5 to Version 10. Oshyn installed Management Server 10, Delivery Server 10 and Content Server (Livelink) 10 for Multiquip. OpenText Web Solutions Version 10 improves usability for the user, allows more agile and innovative content creation, leverages Enterprise 2.0 features and gives organizations more control over the content creation processes. With a widget-driven homepage similar to iGoogle that is easily customizable, site administrators have a new way to work with Task and Searches that is faster and more intuitive. Multiquip hoped to take advantage of all these features. Along with the software installations, Oshyn migrated all of Multiquip’s web content from Management Server their old servers to the new ones as well as moving all PDF assets from Management Server Asset Managerto Content Server. Content Server allows Multiquip to more easily manage their PDF documents and embed them in their website in a dynamic, low maintenance fashion. Lastly, Oshyn implemented site search using OpenText Common Search and Delivery Server to search PDFs and all web pages on the Multiquip website.

The Result
Oshyn stepped up to the challenge of completing such a complex project under significant time pressure. With the implementation of Content Server (LiveLink), Multiquip’s employees are now more efficient and accurate when uploading product and informational documents onto the site. Oshyn’s full upgrade of Multiquip’s site from OpenText Web Solutions Version 7.5 to Version 10 provides Multiquip with a site that is more stable, secure and easy to use.

About Multiquip
Multiquip is a diverse manufacturer and supplier of world class, quality industrial products and solutions. Multiquip’s comprehensive product portfolio encompasses light to medium construction equipment, power generators and lighting. Servicing customers worldwide, Multiquip distributes its products in more than 70 countries through thousands of authorized distribution partners.

The Technology

• OpenText Web Solutions CMS Version 10 including upgrades in Management Server, Delivery Server
• Content Server (Livelink) Version 10
• Windows 2008
• SQL Server 2008
• IIS7

The Challenge
Epson Electronics America (EEA) is known by its parent-company Seiko Epson Corporation and with industry partners for being forward-thinking and making innovative technological advances. EEA realized its website was a key tool in their sales process and wanted the user experience to reflect its image as a market leader. EEA decided to launch a website redesign that would also reduce maintenance costs.

The Solution
Oshyn created a new website design/user experience that was consistent with the EEA brand while simplifying the maintenance of the dynamic portlets. These portlets automatically extrapolated and updated website content such as corporate news and product information. The key visitors to EEA's website are engineers searching for electronic components, so Oshyn designed sophisticated search capabilities that helped quickly serve up product information as well as provide suggestions for similar products. The Oshyn team provided further advanced usability enhancements by guiding engineers to new EEA product information relevant to their current search, exposing them to new product developments, without requiring a page refresh. The Oshyn team resolved backend issues with Oracle's J2EE Portal technology to simplify the procedure for uploading press releases, saving EEA time and money. Oshyn provided EEA with documentation (instructions and guidelines) to maintain the website independently giving EEA maximum flexibility and control to make future changes.

The Results
The new visual design gives users an updated user experience with search optimization that beats the competitions'. By providing the target audience with enhanced search capabilities in an easy to navigate website, EEA has continued to see growth while maintaining current clients, leading to increased profitability. Oshyn provided EEA with the ability to independently maintain the website giving EEA maximum flexibility and control to make future changes.

"I would recommend Oshyn for any technology projects. Their know-how and ability to deliver are unsurpassed. My clients as well as other stakeholders are all very happy."
-Harmik Baghdasarian, IT Director - EEA

About Epson Electronics America, Inc.
Epson Electronics America (EEA) is part of the Seiko Epson Corporation (SEC), based in Japan. EEA was established as the regional headquarters for SEC's entire electronic device and component business for the Americas, covering the United States, Canada and Latin America. EEA markets and sells SEC's electronic devices and delivers the engineering support necessary to ensure that designers developing advanced systems select SEC's products over those of competitors. EEA markets a wide array of crystals, oscillators, real time clock modules, SAW products, optical devices and gyro sensors. With an innovative and creative culture, SEC is dedicated to exceeding the vision and expectations of customers worldwide with products known for their superior quality, functionality, compactness and energy efficiency.

The Technology

• Oracle Corporation J2EE Portal technology
• Compliance with the industry-standard Java Specification Request (JSR-168)
• Portal development
• Ajax

The Challenge
ICON was created by the infamous Jonathan Ward, who worked directly with Mr. Toyota to build three working prototypes of what eventually became the 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser. ICON was born out of Jonathan Ward's experience and passion for rugged luxury bespoke 4x4 vehicles. He asked himself, "If we were to revisit the FJ40 our way, how would we do it?" ICON pays homage to the Land Cruiser tradition and the exciting new FJ Cruiser. ICONs are built handmade in California with a starting price of $100,000. How does one drive up sales for such luxury vehicles when auto sales are tumbling, you ask? Well for starters, you make your information accessible, up-to-date, exciting and highly user-friendly. At the time, the ICON website needed to be updated by outside web developers which proved tedious and caused delays in getting updates and exciting news to the market. And so a new www.ICON4x4.com was to be born.

The Solution
ICON discovered the perfect design-meets-technology partnership with Osnova and Oshyn. The Team worked cooperatively to deliver the desired user experience for the new ICON website and layered that with a scalable technology solution and implementation. Oshyn recommended that the website be built using the Open Source Content Management System, Drupal. Oshyn chose Drupal to give ICON staffers an easy and cost-effective way to manage the website, quickly create new galleries, videos, new pages and edit all content. In the future ICON can add more features to the website such as podcasts, blogs, events, polls, collaborative work, forums, etc.

The Results
Equipped with a perfect minimalist design, the new website focuses unequivocally on the designs of the rugged ICON 4x4s. ICON is better equipped to communicate with its luxury consumers in real-time. Though ICON 4x4s are hand-made to spec, an inventory of a few vehicles is kept. The website allows ICON to make such details immediately available, along with photos. ICON can also update information such as news, events, or downloadable brochures in real-time. By using Drupal CMS, Oshyn gave ICON a highly flexible design that can be quickly updated with new features while keeping costs low.

"Thanks Oshyn – You guys ******* rock!"
-ICON

The OSHYN team is awesome. The most painless build I have ever worked on. I have worked on many, from jetBlue to BMW to Healdsburg. This has been the easiest ad most enjoyable by far. Many thanks for the OSHYN referral ˜ I am sure we will do much business together in the coming years. Smart, professional.
-John McMamus, Osnova Group

About ICON
The Icon is hand-built by Jonathan Ward & his Master Craftsmen at TLC in California from the ground up in very low volume. Production is limited to 24 units per year. These rare vehicles utilize the finest components available from the automotive, aerospace and marine industries. Every part of the ICON design has been researched and implemented to provide the highest standards of operation and durability, whether it be the stainless steel plumbing, Lear Jet sourced aluminum sun visors, or industrial grade coatings. The ICON comes in 3 models & 3 trim levels to match your lifestyle, with numerous options to make every ICON built truly a one-of-a-kind vehicle.

The Technology

• Drupal CMS
• PHP
• MySQL
• LAMP

The Challenge
Best Buy's Geek Squad dreamed of building a new website where their Geek Squad Agents could network and compete to find solutions to "some of the hi-techiest, sci-fiest and most geeked-out things imaginable". This new website was part of a change in brand positioning strategy to change the perception that Geek Squad Agents just fix computers. Geek Squad wanted to let the world know that their Agents are high calibre professionals that can help customers realize their computer-related dreams with projects such as the planning and installation of unique home theatre solutions, custom car audio, video, and navigation systems. Oshyn was selected to help convey this image to the outside world.

The Solution
Oshyn developed the Geek Dreams website with a custom built Content Management System (CMS) to offer extensive control and management of content delivered by GeekSquad and by their Agents. The CMS is highly extensible, allowing the Geek Squad to update or further customize as required. The Oshyn team leveraged many web technologies: AJAX technology for faster page load, LDAP for single sign-on, and the Akamai platform for improved image and video delivery. Geek Squad Agents can create profiles, upload images and video, link to other social networking websites using the AddThis functionality, and upload their solutions to Geek Dreams competitions.

The Results
With a website that was faster to load, easier to use, and incorporated the latest web technologies, the Geek Squad was able to promote their technical prowess to its online visitors. Geek Squad now offers their Agents an exciting social networking website where they post challenges to spark competition amongst Agents who participate by uploading their proposed solutions. Both the custom built CMS and website were designed using the latest website development technology and were constructed to be highly extensible so that Geek Squad can easily update or further customize content. Several Geek Dreams have already been realized; 'Pool Theater', 'Wireless House' and 'Inverse Microwave', a sign that the Agents have quickly become involved in this new brand positioning strategy.

About Geek Squad
Geek Squad, a subsidiary of Best Buy Co., Inc., was founded in 1994 to provide various computer-related services. There are currently 18,000+ Geek Squad Agents who provide service at retail locations, on-site, via remote access, online chat, Have Us Call You service, and by a hotline available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Geek Dreams was created to let Geek Squad Agents create 'some of the hi-techiest, sci-fiest and most geeked-out things imaginable'.

The Technology

• ASP.NET 2.0
• AJAX
• Akamai
• AddThis

The Challenge
Mallika Chopra, the daughter of Deepak Chopra and Sal Taylor Kydd a former Yahoo! executive, wanted to launch Intent.com with the aim of it becoming the most trusted wellness destination for capturing and sharing people's personal, social, spiritual, and environmental intentions.

The Solution
Armed with an outline of a preliminary visual design and required functionality, Intent.com selected Oshyn to design and build out the rest of the plan and execute the launch of the website. In addition to the consumer facing website, the business development team at Intent also needed a pre-launch demo of the website to assist them in signing deals with content syndication partners, sponsors, and advertisers. Oshyn rapidly built a beta version of Intent.com to give the business development team the opportunity to showcase the website's functionality from any location while they pursued revenue and content opportunities. Collaboration was at the heart of the Intent.com website. Therefore, Oshyn built a website that offered visitors with many ways to contribute, collaborate, and connect: user accounts, social networking platform, blog, quizzes and polls, newsletters, invitation-only feature, content syndication, podcast, and video. Intent.com needed to have the capabilities to handle many registered user bloggers and guest bloggers, most of whom were not technically savvy. Intent.com planned to aggregate content from various online sources, and to syndicate original content to many other websites. Oshyn selected the Drupal open source framework for building a Content Management System (CMS) that would allow non-technical editors to easily manage all content and syndication while staying within budget.

The Results
Oshyn delivered Intent.com, a highly engaging website designed for social networking. Since the launch, Intent.com has rapidly expanded its membership base and has received much publicity. Intent.com has continued to sign new content syndication partners, sponsors, and advertisers. Intent.com is well on its way to becoming the most trusted wellness destination.

About Intent.com
Intent.com is a new, premier wellness site and social network founded by Mallika Chopra and former Yahoo! executive Sal Taylor Kydd. Intent.com aims to be the most trusted and comprehensive wellness destination for capturing and supporting people's intentions and helping them to reach their goals in the key categories of Health, Relationships, Balance, Success, Causes, Planet, and Spirit. The site offers the "best of " content in the wellness category including over 200 blogs from top wellness experts, and curated online content on personal, social, and global wellness.

The Technology

• Drupal open source Content Management System (CMS)
• PHP5
• MySQL 5
• Apache 2.0
• Red Hat Enterprise 4 Linux
• Content aggregation to RSS content feeds
• Rich content syndication model through;
• Rich content syndication model through: RSS badges
• Rich content syndication model through: AddThis
• Rich content syndication model through: send-to-friend

The Challenge
Zune-Arts.net is a gallery website that hosts a variety of artwork that has received formal praise from the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The gaining popularity of the website meant that Zune-Arts.net expected to have a rapidly increasing volume of artwork and licensing to manage. In addition to the increase in volume, Zune expected to extend the types of artwork and information to include; information for events and festivals, weekly news updates, and interactive artwork. Zune-Arts expected that the website would continually evolve, requiring new content to be added at varying frequencies and with varying licensing timeframes. The goal of zune-arts.net was to evolve the gallery into a more flexible, scalable and richer experience for the user and to better accommodate the growing number and types of artwork that will come from an evolved Zune Arts program.

The Solution
Upon assessing the exact design requirements, Oshyn recommend that Zune-Arts.net use Sitecore Content Management System (CMS). Oshyn then customized Sitecore CMS and built the back-end functionality for the newly redesigned zune-arts.net website allowing anyone to update the website with news updates, images and web-based interactive artwork. The website, for example, allows artist collaboration through a shared canvas allowing artists to build on a previous creation. Oshyn worked with Tree-Axis to integrate the front-end and back-end components. Oshyn's design of the Sitecore CMS included building various templates, data-tracking, automated go-live and end dates, revision tracking, music licensing information, artist information, etc.

The Results
The new website gives visitors increased avenues to explore the art, find information about artists, share and blog the media. The CMS gives Zune-Arts.net the ability to give visitors current information about Zune Artists and events on the website or by RSS. Visitors can download music, ring tones, posters, desktop icons, screensavers, and Zune device wallpaper, and now have complete control over how they view films. The website allows artist collaboration through a shared canvas allowing artists to build on a previous creation. The CMS is intuitive and easy to understand. It allows users to track data, easily update and end the duration of content, track revisions, track music licensing and artist information. Oshyn met a strict deadline and budget, delivering the project in six weeks.

About Zune-Arts.Net
Zune Arts brings the best creative minds to collaborate on inspiring work of art under themes of sharing, connection, discovery, and friendship. Zune Arts is continuously growing, ever-evolving, and always open to new voices, influences and ideas. Zune is Microsoft's music and entertainment brand that provides an integrated digital entertainment experience. The Zune platform includes a line of portable digital media players, the Zune Marketplace online store, and the Zune Social online music community.

The Technology

• Sitecore CMS integrated with Flash UI via XML over HTTP services
• Intuitive custom admin interface
• Multi-channel content delivery for HTML, XML, and RSS clients

The Challenge
Carmichael International Service is a full-service customs broker and freight forwarder. Carmichael must comply with complex governance by the United States Department of Homeland Security which had overtime become increasingly complex and time-consuming due in part to an aging core architecture based on outdated AS/400 technology. To better serve customers and continue growth of the business, Carmichael needed to streamline systems and wanted to enable clients to fulfil their logistic needs online.

The Solution
Oshyn worked directly with Carmichael's internal licensed custom brokers to identify opportunities while insuring that all development work would adhere to complex compliance regulations. Oshyn used a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to redesign core applications and to integrate legacy programs, databases and United States government agency information. Oshyn developed a suite of web-based applications to provide Carmichael with ability to manage end-to-end transactions through one web-based interface.

The complexity of the shipping process and regulatory changes led to rapidly changing requirements by industry and product which legacy systems were not designed to accommodate. Therefore as each individual customer or broker identified new data, they were unable to record this information in Carmichael's system which led to continual duplicate work and delays. Oshyn developed a system to capture new data and make it available to all users.

The Results
The integration allows for more rapid and efficient communication with various parties such as the Department of Homeland Security, clients, internal staff, importers, shippers, ports and manufacturers. All parties in the shipping process now have simplified access to required information which has significantly reduced the need to contact Carmichael directly. Carmichael reduced phone calls by over 3000 per day because clients are able to obtain information needed via Carmichael's new web-based interface. The reduction in calls has lead to a significant reduction in payroll expenses for Carmichael and reduced shipping expenses for clients. Carmichael has increased client retention and increased their client base by delivering the best technology combined with the most up-to-date and accurate information in the industry. By using a Service-Oriented Architecture approach, Oshyn enabled Carmichael to maximize the efficiency of any future systems development or expansion.

"The interface that Oshyn built has provided us with the most competitive technology in the full-service customs broker and freight forwarding business."
-Vince Salvo, President, Carmichael International Service

About Carmichael International Service
Carmichael International Service is a full-service, Customs Broker and Freight Forwarder that delivers superior service by combining the knowledge and experience of its professional staff with advanced information technologies and systems to seamlessly coordinate the flow of goods and information through today's complex trade environment. Carmichael has built lasting partnerships by providing clients with customized and innovative solutions, enabling them to meet their strategic goals and gain competitive advantages. Carmichael operates in the ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach, New York-New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco-Oakland, Seattle-Tacoma, Miami, Boston, Baltimore, Atlanta, Savannah, Louisville, and Memphis. Headquartered in Los Angeles, Carmichael currently employs 245 professionals, including 35 licensed Customs Brokers in 13 offices nationwide.

The Technology

• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• XML
• .Net
• Ajax
• AS/400
• MSFT SQL
• RPG
• Crystal Reports
• Java

The Challenge
The City of Torrance uses RedDot CMS known currently as Open Text Web Solutions to update and manage content on http://www.torranceCA.gov. The website is a public-facing website used to provide information to the residents and businesses of the City of Torrance, as well as information about the municipal government. The city required a solution to automatically update an external database when changes are made in RedDot CMS. The City of Torrance defined the database table structure and the stored procedure and hired Oshyn for integration with RedDot.

The Solution
Oshyn chose to use a solution where a workflow step (built-into RedDot) generated an XML with the necessary page data. This XML would be generated in a specific directory inside the RedDot server. A .NET Windows Service, developed by Oshyn, would consume these XML files generated by RedDot and directly communicate with the external SQL server database and execute the stored procedure developed by City of Torrance. The project was completed within a week.

The ResultsThe City of Torrance's external database now automatically updates with RedDot CMS data. Every time an editor updates or creates a new page, the process transparently occurs.

"You guys went above and beyond my expectations. Your team is very knowledgeable and responsive. I would definitely recommend you for other projects."
-Mark Iinuma, City of Torrance

About City of TorranceThe City of Torrance, incorporated in 1921, is the sixth largest city in Los Angeles County and the 35th largest in California with a population of approximately 150,000. Torrance is home to one of the nation's largest shopping malls, Del Amo Fashion Center, which is 2.5 million square feet. The US headquarters for Toyota Motor Sales, USA and American Honda Motor Company are located in the City of Torrance. The site http://www.torranceCA.gov is an informational website for residents and businesses in the area. Also contains information about the City's governing body, events, news and FAQs.

The Challenge
Websense, Inc. is a global leader in integrated Web, email and data security solutions, protecting over 50,000 organizations worldwide from malicious code, loss of confidential information and ensures enforcement of Internet use and security policies. Websense had elected to migrate from Interwoven Content Management System (CMS) to RedDot CMS. After Websense had begun an implementation of OpenText's RedDot CMS they found that the implementation had not met their requirements, in part because Websense.com and its many microsites used disparate technologies and page designs. With constant updates on security threats, patches and product support news, the differing technologies and page designs put forth many restrictions requiring constant support from the IT department, thereby increasing costs.

The Solution
Open Text recommended Oshyn for the implementation, based on a successful track-record well-designed, fast and cost-effective RedDot projects. Oshyn began integrating RedDot in critical areas of Websense.com, while working with Websense's IT department to develop a roadmap to: integrate additional sections of the website and microsites, plan the .Net migration, and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) TIBCO development. Since different microsites were managed by different business units, each having specific requirements, Oshyn coordinated with the various stakeholders to reach a universal consensus in order to create a common platform.

The Results
Oshyn delivered a new intuitive user experience and delivered the RedDot CMS implementation on-time and within budget. The new CMS implementation gives Websense more precise management of their enterprise content, which can now be updated in minutes without support from Websense's IT department, significantly cutting maintenance costs. The design of Oshyn's RedDot implementation offers Websense extensive flexibility for future changes in requirements. For example, one area of the website design can be updated and applied throughout the website within hours. The intuitive design of the implementation resulted in rapid end-user adoption. The success of this CMS implementation led to Websense further engaging Oshyn for guidance and expertise for ongoing development of websense.com

About Websense, Inc.
Websense, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBSN), is a global leader in integrated Web, email and data security solutions that help organizations block malicious code, prevent the loss of confidential information and enforce Internet use and security procedures. Websense provides Essential Information Protection™, which provides integrated threat defense and powerful policy-based control over sensitive external and internal data. Organizations using Websense can control all their critical elements of Web, data, and messaging security, such as who can access specific websites, where sensitive data can be sent, where users can go online and how online resources can be used safe from security threats. Websense is currently used by over 50,000 organizations worldwide.

The Technology

• Custom .NET integration with existing customer extranet
• Open Text Web Solutions (OTWS) Management Server
• Integration to custom security alerts system
• Live global alert tracking
• Threat map
• Alert Subscriptions

The Challenge
The University of Arkansas had recently installed Version 9 of RedDot CMS (also known as Open Text Web Solutions). Following the installation the content editors experienced several issues with the WYSWIG Telerik content editor integrated in RedDot CMS Version 9. The University of Arkansas reported these issues (bugs) to the RedDot support group hoping they had been previously identified and could be quickly fixed through a patch or new release. RedDot support did not recognize the bugs and directed the University of Arkansas to Telerik for support. The support team at Telerik was not knowledgeable about how their content editor Telerik RadEditor was integrated into RedDot CMS and could not provide support. With no solutions offered by Open Text Web Solutions support or Telerik support, the University of Arkansas turned to Oshyn for its extensive experience integrating and resolving issues with RedDot CMS.

The Solution
Oshyn's first step in resolving the content editor bugs, was to reproduce the bugs the University of Arkansas was experiencing. Oshyn setup a RedDot Environment with RedDot 9 CMS on Oshyn's servers to conduct research and debugging without interfering with the current performance of the University of Arkansas' operating CMS. After validating the bugs, Oshyn's RedDot developers researched later versions of RedDot 9 CMS to see if the bugs had been resolved. After various tests they learned that these bugs remained. Oshyn researched the latest version of RedDot – Open Text Web Solutions Version 10 – and found that the issues were resolved because it had been updated with a newer version of Telerik RadEditor. Instead of proposing a costly and time consuming upgrade to Open Text Web Solutions Version 10, Oshyn instead integrated the new version of Telerik RadEditor in the RedDot Version 9 installation. The integration of the new version of Telerik RadEditor required extensive expertise in .ASP, ASP.net, RedDot Version 9 and Open Text Web Solutions Version 10.

The Results
Oshyn provided the University of Arkansas with a fast solution that minimized costs and resolved all the bugs content editors had been experiencing. In addition to having a new bug-free content editor the University of Arkansas now benefits from new advanced features such as Flash management tools in the newer version of Telerik RadEditor. The resolution of the bugs in the content editor was crucial to successfully using the Content Management System to manage the University of Arkansas' websites.

"Thank you very much. It's good to work with such professionals. I hope we can work with you again in the future!"
Chris Nixon
Director of Communication Technology Services
University Relations - University of Arkansas

About University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas, located in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university and is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System. Founded as Arkansas Industrial University in 1871, its present name was adopted in 1899. Enrollment for the fall semester of 2009 was 19,849, with 3,616 graduate students, and 398 Law School students. The University campus comprises more than 130 buildings on 345 acres.

The Technology

• ASP
• ASP.net
• RedDot Version 9
• Open Text Web Solutions Version 10
• Telerik RadEditor
• RedDot Query Language (RQL)

The Challenge
The National Education Association's Member Benefit Corporation (NEA MB) is a professional employee organization that represents public school teachers and other support personnel, faculty and staffers at colleges and universities, retired educators, and college students preparing to become teachers. NEA serves 3.2 million members across the United States.

Their current website was outdated and did not accurately depict the size and power of the largest professional organization in the United States. In addition to the weak branding, the website was limited in its ability to properly deliver personalized content. It was particularly important to be able to direct members to services appropriate to their needs, as the organization offers an extensive number of services.

The Solution
NEA turned to Oshyn to redesign a new website that would be more representative of their brand and better serve their members online. This project required front end design and back end work implementation with Open Text's RedDot and LiveServer Products.

The Oshyn team kicked off the project with a strategic discovery phase with the NEA stakeholders in order to properly understand the current business challenges and goals. Through this discovery phase, the Oshyn team was able to architect the user experience, visual design approach, and technical strategy. A more detailed design phase followed where the intended functional outcome was determined.

To address NEA's needs for timely and personalized content delivery, the Oshyn team implemented Open Text's RedDot Live Server products. This gave the NEA team a fast content management system for their target marketing needs.

The Oshyn team used an agile development methodology, which is an iterative approach to development. An agile approach encourages collaboration throughout the project, allowing the 30 NEA stakeholders visibility and input when changes could still be made. This helped ensure that the Oshyn team would deliver a high quality product that met stakeholder expectations on launch day.

The Results
This project required nine months of planning and development work. The result was a new website with a more personalized online experience for members, more control over content for the NEA team, and a robust backend for the NEA IT team to manage.

The new website showcases a shift from product to content-driven sales. Members can now receive a blend of self-directed content as well as personalized content. The new content management system allows NEA to generate dynamic Flash content to be placed strategically throughout the site. The Oshyn team also implemented an eligibility engine that offers powerful marketing capabilities for the NEA team. This engine grants specific members with access to specific products or content. NEA can now target their product launches across specific segments of members based on more than 20 member types, eight segments, age ranges, and various other profile attributes. This personalized online experience will likely increase sales for NEA through better member relationships and increased return visits.

In addition to the new design and user experience, the Oshyn team also delivered a seamless integration with the mainframe backend (MDS) to allow for secure submission and processing of form and order data. Now centrally managed, MB can readily generate new business cases, implement non-technical CMS solutions and interoperate with MDS without any further mainframe interface development. The NEA team received comprehensive training by Oshyn, so by launch date they were fully capable of handling business user questions on their own

The Oshyn team delivered a website that met NEA's business goals and armed their in-house team with the tools and knowledge to leverage their newly branded website.

About NEA MB
For more than half a century, NEA Member Benefits has helped enhance the lives of NEA members and their families through advocacy, service and information. The NEA Member Benefits Corporation is a subsidiary of the NEA, established to develop, implement and administer NEA Member Benefits programs and services.

The Technology

• OpenText CMS
• OpenText LiveServer
• Oracle Database
• Live Server Authentication
• Custom Java Code /
• RSS Feeds
• Advanced JavaScript / JQuery
• Flash and custom ActionScript

The Challenge
The Saskatchewan Watershed Authority is responsible for leading the management of Saskatchewan's water resources to ensure safe drinking water sources and reliable water supplies.

The Watershed Authority manages two internal intranets and two public-facing websites which requires maintaining hindreds of pages of content with more pages being frequently developed. The existing system required updates including urgen alerts to be sent to the IT departament to be updated by programming staff. The Watershed Authority wanted a more immediate method to update information on their intranets and public-facing websites.

The Solution
The Saskatchewan Watershed Authority selected EPiServer Content Management System (CMS) as the technology to enable more than 300 non-IT personnel to quickly update content. Oshyn was selected as the EPiServer Partner to integrate the CMS solution for the intranets and public facing websites. Oshyn's team of EPiServer developers used their extensive experience in CMS implementations to assess the websites and the Watershed Authority's needs. The project required site configuration for EPiServer installation, the user of external libraries to implement templates, custom controls and attributes, multisite design and architecture, and custom extension methods to access data. One of the biggest challenges was that the programming language required by the Watershed Authority was VB.NET and EPiServer is built in C#.

The Results
The Saskatchewan Watershed Authority has successfully implemented development versions of EPiServer and is in process of rolling out EPiServer into production to be able to quickly update the intranets and external websites with important information and quickly issue water advisories and other alerts. Oshyn created EPiServer integrations with the Watershed Authority's Active Directory Server in order to manage intranet permissions and authorizations. Oshyn's programmers translated the EPiServer demo project into Visual Basic to insure it met the client's requirements before translating the actual Watershed Authority implementation of EPiServer CMS. Oshyn prepared a detailed training for the non-IT personnel to ensure that they can carry out day-to-day updates to the website without IT assistance.

An added benefit to the project is that Oshyn was able to provide detailed instructions on implementing EPiServer in VB.NET to the EPiServer community.

"We have a small IT staff that is responsible for a great deal of web content. Our self-maintained intranet, for example, houses close to 500 pages of content, and we are adding new information daily," said Jan Franken, Director of Information Systems for the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority. "We evaluated other web content management platforms and EPiServer was the clear winner in terms of capabilities, ease of use and management, and price point. It allows us to put the publishing and editing power into the hands of end-users, regardless of their IT knowledge, which is exactly what we need to ensure our community members are getting the information they need when they need it."

The Technology

• EPiServer
• C# translated to VB.NET

About Saskatchewan Watershed Authority
The Saskatchewan Watershed Authority leads management of the province's water resources to ensure safe drinking water sources and reliable water supplies for economic, environmental and social benefits for Saskatchewan people.