Event management and promotion platform

Objectives:

We worked with the customer’s US team and also need to be integrated into the process.

The main project goals:
– Make redesign of old UI
– Rewrite PHP code
– Implement complex features / modules
– Ensure testing and stabilization
– Provide current version support

Solution:

During this large and complex project we had a plenty of technical tasks, but the main objectives were to make UI redesign, completely rewrite PHP code, ensure product stabilization, and provide post-project support and maintenance.
The product consists of many complex modules. Their development required a lot of thoughtful work and solution of various issues. As the project was complex and large (it took 5 years!), we made the description of each significant module we had built.

Project modules
1. Reg
Reg registration module is eCommerce and reporting engine. At this stage we needed to complete the following key tasks:
– make Salesforce, Linkedin, and Facebook integration
– integrate payment gateways
– make web-versions of mobile applications
– ensure multi-language within the platform
The work took approximately 4 years and required 4 developers and 2 QA engineers to rewrite code, implement enhancements and add new features, and fix bugs.
As a result we got a completely configurable and complex module, which provides tools for submission and registration management, badges, certificates, invitation creation, travel management, and reporting.

2. Home
There we had the following main tasks:
– create UI to generate sitemap for the custom website
– add ability to create sitemap for each event
– implement automatic canonicalization (c14n) for each event site

The development of Home module took 4 months. There are 3 specialists participated in the process: 2 PHP developers and QA engineer.
After our work done, we received a  fully configurable event website with the module allowing events to be professionally displayed, marketed, and promoted.
3. Select

The main objective was to build a complex module based on Reg module and ensuring the ability to create a public site, manage submissions, sessions’, reports, etc.
The development process in total took 2 years and involved 7 PHP developers and 5 QA engineers. Now we provide module technical support and maintenance.
As a result we developed an abstracts module which easily handles a variety of selection processes and eliminates the need to manually copy/paste speaker profiles and session descriptions into user agenda and website. Select is fully integrated with scheduling process and speaker databases of an event.

4. Survey
Survey is an online module for creating surveys for attendees, integrated with the Reg registration module. There we had the following tasks:
– create a summary report for a survey
– make UI with the ability filter survey data and export in pdf/excel
– implement the ability to create different charts (pie/bar/line) and to print them
The completion of these tasks took 3 months and required 1 developer and 1 QA.

5. Budget
Our main objective was to build a module with complex business logic to track revenue and use financial funds according to provided real-time registrant data.
The development of Budget module had 6 months duration and involved 3 developers and 2 test automation engineers. As a result we built a solution which facilitates control and tracking of event expenditure, revenue streams, and overall financial performance.

6. Seating
Seating is a module which enables rapid creation of seating charts for rooms of any size. The module is to ensure easy and convenient seating of event visitors. At this step we had the following technical tasks:
– implement various features
– make the ability of setting up and managing table plans for attendees

The completion of this stage required 5 months and 3 specialists (2 developers and a QA).

7. RFP
Our main objective was to build a venue module and integrate it with Zentilla. The process of creating RFP took 1 year and involved 6 developers and 3 QA engineers.
As a result we developed a venue sourcing module powered by Zentila, enables employees to easily plan events, negotiate, and contract with hotels and other places about event organization within the platform. The solution captures all the communications and negotiations, and allows to automate a lot of manual operations.

8. Social
The principal tasks for this stage were to add different settings to existing Social functionality, create UI, creating backend and database architecture for that. This required 1 developer and 1 QA, who solved these issues for 1 month.
We made a quality solution according to the customer’s spec. Social is a network module allowing delegates to connect with other visitors and request on-site meetings.
9. Marketing

The main objective was to develop a new module which allows to launch and manage email campaigns and promote events, based on other modules. Marketing also should ensure tracking of work of attendee generation campaigns as well as communication with the target audience.
As a result we built a complex solution like MailChimp according to the technical specification, which took 6 months and required 3 developers and one QA engineer.

Result:

The project is a comprehensive web-based event software management platform. It is based on a cloud-based architecture using open source technology, and delivered as software as a service (SaaS).