Each year they support; 47 resident charities, 100’s of associated members throughout Ireland and 1000’s of boards members, managers, staff and volunteers providing;

• Office Space


• Meeting Rooms


• Organisational Support


• Governance and Development


• Training

The Carmichael Centre needed a complete overhaul of their website and in particular sought the following improvements;

• New, Clean, Fresh Design


• New Site Architecture to aid Findability


• User Interface with full suite of Accessibility features


• Search Site facility


• Completely CMS-driven Solution built in Drupal


• Members Area for Document Management


• Board Members for Document Management


• Training Course Booking Module


• Contact, Sign-up and Joining Forms


• Integration with Salesforce.com

Project Process

Stage 1

At the kick-off meeting the tender document was further clarified and the requirement was agreed. We set out a high level project plan assigning dates and responsibilities to Monsoon and Carmichael project team members. A sign-off procedure was agreed and shared access was established on Basecamp, the online project management tool we use to manage the project, track documents and assign responsibilities and milestones to the project team. Working closely with Carmichael Centre staff we sought to identify the different website user groups and clarify each groups information needs. We then re-structured the information architecture and developed a simple wireframe mock-up. Simultaneously we conducted a simple design research survey to get clarity on the design brief.

Stage 2

Once the information architecture was agreed Carmichael staff began uploading finalised content (images, form layouts, text etc) to Basecamp which followed the agreed website structure. In parallel Monsoon took the design brief and sample sites provided by Carmichael and developed a design layout which we felt reflected a cleaner, fresher design look. After 4 iterations the homepage design was signed off and the inside pages (text, forms, and image galleries) were agreed and signed off.

Stage 3

The layouts were then converted from flat files to html/css stylesheets and the drupal build was customised to the functionality spec as agreed in the information architecture and themed with the agreed design layouts. Content was uploaded and the application moved to our QA team for first cut functionality testing, admin module testing and cross browser compatibility

Stage 4

The site was released to the client for review to catch any major issues. Fixes were applied and then the application went to user acceptance testing. This was managed via a bug tracking sheet on basecamp. After 2 further releases the application was migrated to the live server and final developer and user testing was completed prior to launch. Outcome With a tight schedule which was geared towards the new term of training courses run from September the site has delivered on its phase 1 goals of creating a new look for the Carmichael Centre, highlighting the key services, with document management and a training course module and all provided on the Drupal Content Management System and integrated with Salesforce.com.

Technology

Drupal