Application Development – Higher Education

Revamping the applications for a large education management company

Background: Our customer is a professional, full-service school management company that offers a non-traditional schooling option and helps their students achieve their academic visions. They employ managers, educators, financial experts, marketing professionals, and school facility planners to ensure they meet their customer’s needs and regulatory compliance.

Challenge: There is an increasing need for modern, continuously deployable, scalable, and user-friendly web applications for companies like our customer, who need to keep up with their growing user and staff base, all while making internal operations easy, fast, and straightforward. The current iteration of their all-in-one staff web portal has been 20 years in the making and was getting outdated, out of support, time-consuming to deploy, and hard to maintain. The primary challenges included refactoring the architecture of the application to keep up with today’s best practices, automating the deployment process, and creating a new modern “Cloud First, Mobile First” application from the ground up with those best practices in mind. The goal was to create an application that can be easily scaled, deployed, and maintained.

Solution: Back in Q4 2023, our customer and All Lines Technology started working on these challenges and potential solutions to address the problem. After many discussions and white-boarding sessions, the core architecture and tech stack were born. The core team followed Restful APIs, modern MVC framework, ASP.NET, DevOps Pipelines, and Responsive user interface, such as Angular, Typescript framework patterns and best practices to build a more modern and robust version of the current web application. This new application can be managed and deployed at-will from the cloud. The team used the old application as a template to create the new web app, while keeping the core user experience, but adding a much-needed modern and clean look, responsive design, and user-friendly interfaces. The new application is also horizontally scalable, as the team can add modules to the solution without having to modify or deploy existing modules. These modules can also be deployed to all environments, without manual intervention or setup.

Laying a solid foundation for robust application development: Laying a solid foundation for robust application development is crucial for creating software that is reliable, scalable, and maintainable. Here are some key elements our team considered:

• Clear Requirements and Planning: Our team started with a thorough understanding of the project requirements. Engaging the stakeholders helped in setting clear goals and expectations.
• Architecture Design: We invested time in designing a robust system architecture, choosing the right design patterns and framework that aligned with the application’s needs. A well-thought-out architecture ensures scalability and flexibility.
• Coding Standards and Best Practices: We established and enforced coding standards and best practices to write and maintain clean code. We conducted regular code reviews and used Azure DevOps for managing versions.
• Service Oriented Architecture: The Service Oriented Architecture was followed for modular application development.

Revamping the application for future-ready business: All Lines Technology works extensively on Microsoft, Azure, and Typescript technology stacks, including Angular, ASP.NET MVC, and Azure DevOps. That quickly showed our customer how powerful these products work together. It enabled quick turnarounds, continuous deployment of horizontally scalable modules, and reusable code for development in the new webapp. It also opened endless possibilities for the continuous transformation of the current app, and a rebuild of all old applications within the organization, with minimal end-user impact.

Since the inception of the Webapp Transformation initiative, our customer has seen two main modules introduced and implemented in the new tech stack, and continuous deployment of 4 other applications in their managed environments. Many new users are adopting quickly to this new ecosystem, giving positive feedback to the application modernization project.

Results:

• Improved User Experience: The modern design and responsive interface enhance the user experience, making it easier for staff and users to navigate and utilize the application.
• Scalability: The application is horizontally scalable, allowing the customer to add new modules without modifying or deploying existing ones. This ensures the application can grow with the customers’ needs.
• Ease of Deployment: The automated deployment process reduces the time and effort required to deploy the application, making it more efficient and less prone to errors.
• Maintainability: The use of modern frameworks and best practices ensures the application is easier to maintain and update, reducing the long-term costs and effort associated with maintenance.

Flexibility: The Service Oriented Architecture allows for modular development, enabling the customer to implement new features and functionalities as needed without disrupting the existing system.

Client Satisfaction

The application’s horizontal scalability allows the customer to seamlessly add new modules without modifying or redeploying existing ones, ensuring it can grow alongside their evolving needs.  These improvements collectively enhance operational efficiency, scalability, and user satisfaction, ultimately supporting the customer’s growth and success.