By rodtatham on

CGL is a social care and health charity working throughout England and Wales in the UK. CGL manages nearly 250 projects dotted up and down the country, employs over 2,700 staff and has 53,300 client contacts every day.

CGL had an established digital team who were keen to be embedded in the project with the agency chosen to build the intranet - Sereno. A phased plan allowed the team to deliver the new tools in nineteen different sprints over several months.

This kept disruption to an absolute minimum for the 4,600+ users who were migrated from the old intranet.

Visit intranet.cgl.org.uk →
CGL Intranet
Why Drupal was chosen: 

Drupal and Sharepoint were considered as potential solutions. Following a cost-benefit analysis, Drupal was selected for two main reasons:-

  • it was more affordable for both initial development and ongoing licensing - so represented better value for money both in the short and longer terms;
  • it seemed better able to achieve the content and user migration, together with the single sign-on requirements of the project.
Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome): 

Project Goals

Once Drupal was selected, there an intensive internal process of user research amongst staff and other users. Sereno undertook the discovery phase for a brand new Drupal 7 intranet to help CGL meet their identified goals:

  • migrate 4,600+ users from a Symfony staff database
  • migrate thousands of policy documents and other critical downloads to Drupal
  • apply strict workflow rules to these documents based on staff roles and expiry dates
  • rationalise other content (including news, events, calendaring, staff alerts), migrating existing content where necessary
  • develop a mobile-friendly, responsive theme that won't break on the staff computers' browsers
  • make the administrative process easy and provide staff training where necessary
  • phase roll-out of the above to minimise staff disruption

Technical specifications

Drupal version: 
Drupal 7.x
Key modules/theme/distribution used: 
Workbench Moderation
Search API
Organic groups
Poll
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen: 

We selected tried and tested modules which brought key features to the site - both for the content management point of view and for the community of users.

Document management had to go through a rigorous workflow for controlled documents like policies and procedures with built-in review and expiry points. Workbench Moderation helped us model this.

Access to tools for different user groups from staff to volunteers was deployed on top of Organic Groups. Search API provided the nuts and bolts for building an advanced but user friendly faceted search which received particularly positive feedback.

Team members: 
rodtatham
johnnewton
Project team: 

Sereno Ltd worked with CGL to design and build. A collaborative approach was needed, since CCL had an internal design team to be trained in Drupal theming and content management as part of the process. Nineteen distinct sprints fell out of the Discovery Phase, each sprint creating a piece of working software that would benefit the organisation straight away.

Features included:

  • Account management tools and extensive site administration area based on roles and access privileges;
  • Document Publishing and workflow - categorisation of documents linked to publishing roles with approval system;
  • Policy document library - sortable, searchable document areas making extensive use of tagging;
  • Project and People Directories - searchable staff using advanced faceted search, projects, departments and location. Line management relationships, team membership and contact details. Integration with Google maps to provide country-wide views;
  • Dynamic and personalised content. Content tagged to by role access. Content can be published by role and organised into categories;
  • News, jobs and blogs publishing system - automated with date triggers to publish/unpublish;
  • Group based functionality - creation of distinct sub-areas of the site to provide group/thematic private areas;
  • Mass mail functionality;
  • Social media integration, including personalised accounts by staff profile;
  • Linking via single sign on (SSO) to related tools, including Moodle LMS, a face-to-face training booking system and Quality toolset;
  • Self-service features for users to maintain parts of their record;
  • Discussion forums;
  • Wellbeing zone with tools to share experience and resources;
  • Reporting area tagged by service type and location. Drupal user data capture and reporting along with Google Analytics integration.

The Result

Sereno's new intranet moved 96% of CGL's content onto Drupal. The existing Moodle Learner Management System (LMS) was retained as part of the change management. Sereno built a single sign-on (SSO) solution so staff wouldn't have multiple passwords. Drupal's authentication was used, and Sereno built a module to make the integration with Moodle seamless.

The project was delivered on time and budget.

"Sereno have worked with CGL over many years. They have always provided high quality, flexible and creative services delivered on time and on budget."

Mike Pattinson, CGL Executive Director

Sectors: 
Community
Healthcare
Non-profit