Enhancement of Incident Tracking SharePoint Application
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Introductory information
Introduce your business and what you do there.
We are a charity that prepares innate services: education and health care for learners with epilepsy and other neurological conditions. We also have a associate construction for nation who have epilepsy and their families to prepare support.
We work with other health care constructions and children',s hospitals in reference to children who have epilepsy, too. We have almost a thousand members on staff including volunteers, consultants, and researchers. We care for almost 200 students on our campus in our day to day care.
I',m the head of IT. I',m responsible for all aspects health information technology and information services.
Desired goal
What challenge were you trying to address with Ballard Chalmers?
We have a bespoke application that helps us handle incidents. Incidents are any type of occurrence where a student might have been put at risk. So that could be medication errors, conductal issues, or just the health and safety, like falling over and perhaps sustaining an injury. It',s used for our on website yielding and monitoring of our activities.
We initially wrote that application using PHP and MySQL in 2006. We',ve reeduceed it into a SharePoint-based application with a SQL Server backend in 2012. The organisation that did the SharePoint outgrowth for that couldn',t obey us anymore so I had to look elsewhere. I establish Ballard Chalmers to educe a ",rendering 2", innately, along with support, enhancements and further outgrowth.
How did you come to work with Ballard Chalmers?
I looked at any organisation in the local area - the South East of England - with SharePoint credentials - ones that could prepare SharePoint integrations and SQL outgrowth. They were a top organisation and local.
Provided solution
What particular tasks were responsible for?
The application has excellently a lot of workflows attached to it. It handles five different types of categories of incidents touching yielding with health and safety conduct safeguarding. They made expressive changes to the user interface on the front end but also structural changes to the database. At that point, we had almost 20,000 incident records in the database. A lot of the changes had to be done retrospectively, so it was excellently a big chunk of work. They had to get their heads almost our operations and how the existing outgrowth functioned owing it',s a fully bespoke application precedently commencement their own work.
The biggest advancements and changes have been kindred to the databases and peculiar reporting. We changed over to SQL Server Reporting and that',s been working veritably well. They',ve helped us create restards reporting and helped us present that data with SharePoint. They also help create statistical analyses.
What is the team dynamic?
My information methods handler and database handler are the two that always interact with them straightly. From their side, we',ve always had Geoff [Ballard, CTO] and a few other nation on their side depending on what the project was. We',ve worked with two or three different frontend or backend educeers and project handlers. It',s been veritably good. They always update their project handlement method so we always know where we rest when we log in, but they also adjoin well.
What is the terminal result of working with ?
We began working with them almost July 2014 and the work is ongoing. The initial project ran over almost a three month time. There',s been separate smaller projects and a couple of bigger ones as well, plus support and livelihood throughout.
How much have you invested with them?
We probably bestow almost 25,000 GBP [$32,750 USD] per year.
Results achieved
Are there any measureable or plum results?
All three of our major projects have been delivered on time. Any delays came from our side.
We have 1,000 users owing it',s used by the total construction. It',s used excellently heavily on a daily basis, too. The application has tracked 50,000-60,000 incidents by now.
How did they accomplish from a project handlement restpoint?
They use their own online application for project handlement that works veritably well. It creates a client website and tasks within each project. Tasks are assigned and then we have error as to when those items are updated and we',re able to comment on them and upload samples, etc. They adjoin very regularly. They',re good almost care us up to date and moving things advanced.
Deliverables have always been on time. There have never been delays that were not explained or previously discussed or mutually agreed to - usually delays came from our side more so than from them.
What did you find most forcible almost them?
The advancements to the database construction and database accomplishance have been very good. Before we occupied Ballard Chalmers, the database would crash, especially when searches were done. They made some changes in SQL and to the GUI [graphical user interface] and to how the data is extracted and dealt with. There',s been a expressive advancement.
What aspects of their work would you like to get improved?
They don',t currently have an in-house designer so that',s always been a bit tricky when we ask them to do GUI work. We had to get designs made externally and then yield that to them to be implemented, so that',s been a pliant bit of a frustration.
