SharePoint Online Intranet

A leading provider of HR consulting services worked with Imaginet to create a brand new company intranet in SharePoint Online to replace their 10-year old corporate, on-premises employee intranet. Imaginet worked very closely with their communications team to design, build, and configure an Intranet Communications Hub. Using all of the latest features provided by a modern SharePoint solution, the Hub linked all of their company divisions and locations together with common navigation and news feeds that fed to the top of the Hub from each of the separate sites. Custom themes and page templates were created to achieve the desired look and feel and were propagated to all sites in the solution. Lastly, to ensure proper handoff at the end of the project, Imaginet provided train-the-trainer sessions to help ensure the proper look and feel were maintained.

Technologies:

• SharePoint Online
• PnP PowerShell
• Client-side Web Parts

SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online Migration

A not-for-profit research organization engaged Imaginet to plan and lead a migration effort from their existing SharePoint 2013 environment to SharePoint Online. Part of this migration effort was to develop and roll out a new intranet using the latest SharePoint modern technology and branding customizations. This new Intranet was utilized as a hub site to connect all the site collections that were created and migrated to as part of the new SharePoint Online Site Taxonomy standards. Power Apps was used to replace existing InfoPath forms with new modern forms and Power Automate running in the background to process the approvals and notifications.

Technologies:

• SharePoint Online
• Power Apps
• Power Automate
• ShareGate

SharePoint Intranet Modernization

North America’s favourite craft store engaged Imaginet to design, configure, and deploy a new intranet. Their goal was to connect employees with the corporate brand and learn more about news, events, and initiatives using the latest SharePoint Online modernization technology. Imaginet conducted workshops to review the types of content that needed to be published. From these workshops, Imaginet designed wireframes and mock-ups using modern UI and existing brand colours and styles with a consistent Information Architecture wrapped in corporate security for easy administration. The new design resulted in a new modern intranet experience that is easier to use and easier to share.

Technologies:

• SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online Restructure and Redesign

A charity organization engaged Imaginet to restructure and redesign their current SharePoint Online environment using the latest best practices and guidance from Microsoft. Team members were originally working in a nested sub site structure that did not facilitate Teams usage that was ramping up within the organization. We used this opportunity to promote their current active sub sites into site collections with the ability to add Teams to them. We also created a new Communication hub site to link all of the sites together. We archived the inactive sites in read-only to allow the historical records to persist but out of the way of current work. Custom themes for SharePoint were also designed and applied.

Technologies:

• SharePoint Online
• Microsoft Teams
• ShareGate
• PnP PowerShell

Microsoft 365 Implementation

A faith-based organization engaged Imaginet to implement Microsoft 365. Many team members used traditional methods, like storing files directly onto their hard drive or OneDrive, and email to share files. Or communicating and scheduling meetings using various instant messaging apps. With so many team members comfortable with their current setup, adoption to Microsoft 365 proved difficult at the beginning. Imaginet setup multiple review and training sessions with different teams to understand and resolve any issues and concerns. With User Adoption Coaching, Imaginet helped get everyone on board to use the new Microsoft 365 platform and improve collaboration.

Technologies:

• Outlook
• OneDrive for Business
• SharePoint Online
• Microsoft Teams

SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online Migration

An insurance provider engaged Imaginet to migrate their SharePoint 2013 content to SharePoint Online. To ensure a seamless process from start to finish, Imaginet conducted Business Content Audit sessions with the insurance provider to properly identify content and site taxonomy. Once determined and approved, Imaginet used Sharegate to migrate their content safely. With the switch to online, Imaginet can now design and develop modernized business processes using new tools only found in Microsoft 365 unique to the clients needs.

Technologies:

• Sharegate
• SharePoint Online
• Microsoft Teams
• Power Apps
• Power Automate Flow

Custom Teams Configuration with Business Process Automation

A municipal power agency engaged Imaginet to address their content and collaboration challenges. With so many committee members creating single adhoc agendas, their content system was left severely disconnected. Imaginet configured a custom Microsoft Teams solution to streamline processes across different committees and allow members to collaborate effectively. Power Automate Flow was integrated to create a series of automations. Folders are automatically created for each new agenda in its channel based on meeting dates, agenda drafts are created from existing templates, and leadership gets notified when documents are ready for review and approval. Flow can also create and assign tasks to members based on actions outlined in the agenda. With the power of Microsoft Teams and the ease of automated Flows, their committees can now effectively collaborate and post messages for all agenda members to see.

Technologies:

• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Planner
• Power Automate Flow

Project Site Automation

An engineering company engaged Imaginet to replace their manual project site creation process with an automated solution. Admins were required to follow a long and tedious step-by-step manual to create all the different areas required to store content. To automate their process, Imaginet created templated sites and stored site templates as XML using PnP. Azure Runbook and Power Automate were utilized to automatically create the templated site when new items are entered into a project list, saving the organization much needed time and resources to focus on other important tasks.

Technologies:

• Power Automate Flow
• Microsoft Planner
• Microsoft Teams
• SharePoint Online
• Azure Runbooks

SharePoint Workflows

A leading manufacturer and wholesale distributor engaged Imaginet to correct a previous SharePoint engagement with another consultancy. There were many unfinished SharePoint 2010/2013 workflows in a SharePoint Online environment and a tight deadline that their workflows would no longer work in SharePoint Online. The client site was extremely slow because of External Content Types being using throughout the environment. Imaginet removed the External Content Types and replaced with an Azure syncing function to store data in real SharePoint lists synced from a database in Azure. Imaginet worked quickly to redevelop a selection of workflows as Power Automate Flows to ensure use of the latest tools to prevent issues going forward.

Technologies:

• Sharegate
• Power Automate Flow
• Azure

Google Workspace to Microsoft Teams Migration

A financial services firm engaged Imaginet to recommend a single tool to improve their business processes. They had used Google Workspace for storage, Trello for project planning, and a custom solution for internal communication which each required authentication and juggling to get their jobs done. Imaginet proposed a solution by configuring an Information Architecture in Microsoft Teams to include all features for effective communication, simple content storage, and secure planning and sharing with their customers. Imaginet performed multiple working sessions with their technical teams to understand their business needs, configured the one stop shop that meets all their unique goals, and successfully migrated their content from Google Workspace to Microsoft Teams.

Technologies:

• Google collab API
• G Suite (Shared Drive)
• Microsoft Excel
• PowerShell
• Microsoft Teams (O365)
• SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT)

Batching Registration and Auditing

A globally recognized pet food company engaged Imaginet to assist in modernizing its legacy software suite for deployment into a new plant. The application manages the registration and update of ingredient batches at stations, units, and bins throughout the plant for auditing purposes. Imaginet performed an investigation of the existing legacy application to facilitate an Agile modernization effort in addition to bringing best practices to the development and testing processes.

Azure DevOps features were used extensively during the project, providing source control, Kanban boards, and continuous integration via pipelines. As part of the modernization effort, several features were observed to be common and could therefore be extracted into libraries to be shared across other projects. To aid this, the libraries were packaged and published using Azure DevOps artifacts to be consumed.

The modernization effort resulted in the successful migration of a legacy web application into a .NET Core 3.1 RESTful API and an Angular 11 client, in addition to many UX improvements.

Technologies:

• Angular 11
• .NET Core 3.1
• Entity Framework Core 3.1
• MediatR
• Identity Server 4
• OAuth2
• SQL Server 2016
• DB2
• XUnit
• Azure DevOps
• Git

Modernized Online Insurance Application

A crown insurance corporation commissioned Imaginet to augment their existing development team to modernize their insurance application to be entirely online for clients. They needed to retire their existing legacy insurance program and keep data from the new system in sync until everything was replaced. Imaginet seamlessly integrated into their development team while providing senior development leadership, including mentoring and guidance on best practices. The application was successfully launched and will continue to be worked on and supported while also converting other areas of their legacy applications.

Technologies:

• SQL Server
• ASP.NET Framework
• ASP.NET Core
• DevExpress Web Controls
• DevExpress Reports
• CSS/SASS
• HTML5
• JavaScript
• Azure DevOps
• Visual Studio 2019
• SSMS

Increased Development Velocity and Code Reusability

A software consulting firm required guidance and assistance with setting up a mono repo front-end project to increase development velocity and code reusability. Imaginet assisted with setting up Server-side rending (SSR) using Angular Universal. SSR helped our client’s site have a faster load speed and improve SEO scores by making the site more accessible for web crawlers. The main purpose of the project was to develop a customer-facing site to sell commercial auto insurance. We integrated with their development team to architect a solution for the major functionality of their project, which involved loading dynamic questions from a back-end question engine. We also provided senior leadership for the project team by mentoring team members on the new tech stack, which involved code pairing and code reviews.

To improve their unit testing practice, we trained their team to write practical and meaningful unit tests and aided in implementing tests. A major challenge the customer had was developing the front end for a pre-existing backend. There were concerns about user experience and limitations with what the front end could do with the given constraints. Using the experience of Imaginet, we worked effectively with the entire team to resolve any conflicts as well as provide a solution that fits their vision.

Technologies:

• Angular 12
• Angular Universal
• Angular Libraries
• Angular Material
• Karma Test Runner
• Jasmine
• HTML5
• CSS/SASS
• RxJS
• Bulma CSS Framework
• Typescript/JavaScript
• Azure App Config
• .NET Core 3.1
• Visual Studio 2019
• Visual Studio Code
• Git

Modernized Insurance Coverage Calculations

A crown insurance corporation commissioned Imaginet to help modernize and tweak their insurance coverage calculations. The existing calculations were located in a legacy Cobol application and recreated in a modern ASP.NET application. Along with recreating the legacy calculations, new calculations were added to provide a “cushioning” factor to customer’s coverages. The calculations were served to an ASP.NET MVC application which provided the customers with a detailed view and analysis of the insurance coverages. Data were both retrieved and saved in their existing SQL Server database. Imaginet was able to provide project management, requirements gathering, legacy application investigation, development, and testing to support this project.

Technologies:

• SQL Server
• ASP.NET MVC
• C#
• Cobol
• Visual Studio 2019
• Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
• Azure DevOps

Lead Management and Quote Generation

An occupational testing company engaged Imaginet to build a lead management and quote generation tool for their sales and marketing team to replace Dynamics CRM. The application uses the customer’s approved quote templates to produce quote documents for leads that the user enters and supports call reports and source campaigns. Imaginet performed requirements gathering, wireframing and development using Agile methodologies to deliver this new application, which was completed on time and budget and adopted by the customer’s sales and marketing team.

Technologies:

• ASP.NET Web API 2.0
• Angular 6
• Angular Material
• HTML5/CSS3
• SQL Server 2016

Manufacturing Inventory and Automation

A Fortune 500 manufacturing company enlisted Imaginet to guide and assist updating software for an existing manufacturing plant and add new features for a new plant. The application manages inventory, integrates with factory systems and automated processes, and supports large-scale transactions to manage state in case of hardware or software malfunctions. Imaginet’s team integrated with the customer’s team to provide solution architect and senior development leadership for the project team. The updated version was completed on schedule for the new plant’s opening.

Technologies:

• AngularJS 1.4
• WebAPI2
• .NET Framework 4.6+
• Unity
• MediatR
• Angular Material
• Log4Net
• MSTest
• SQL Server 2016
• DB2
• SSMS
• Visual Studio 2017
• Visual Studio Code
• Enterprise Browser
• Windows Mobile
• Windows CE
• SignalR
• MSMQ
• JQuery

Increased Report and Analytics Efficiency

USA’s #1 grower of vegetable and herb plants needed to gather data from Microsoft Dynamics and improve speed and efficiency when accessing reports. Previously, they refreshed large amounts of data on a daily basis to feed QlikView reports resulting in delays and stalls. To increase analytics efficiency, Imaginet designed and built a data warehouse hosted in Azure to integrate operational data. Multiple pipelines in Azure Data Factory were created to fetch data from various domains like finance, inventory, production, and payroll. Data were sourced from different on-premise SQL Server databases then loaded into their data warehouse. SQL scripts were developed to create data factory task queries, merge stored procedures, and views to accommodate the columns for the dimensional model. Lastly, Imaginet deployed a data model to Power BI that allowed them to get instant insights into their production and create their own reports and visualizations in a proof of concept workspace. DevOps pipelines were created to accommodate deployments for different environments.

Technologies:

• Microsoft BI Stack
  • Azure Data Factory
  • Power BI
• Microsoft Languages
  • DAX
  • T-SQL
  • RDBMS
  • SQL Server 2016
  • Azure SQL Server
• Other Tools
  • Microsoft Dynamics
  • QlikView

Gained Holistic and Accurate View of Mortgage Data

A nationally recognized mortgage lender needed to analyze and report on mortgage data on a daily basis. However, data were stored in multiple disparate systems making it difficult to get an accurate, holistic view of their data. Encompass (an information management system) contained loan information, Velocify managed lead information., and Nextiva had historical data related to calls. In order to gain clarity and make better business decisions, data needed to be extracted across systems and loaded into a data warehouse to be useable in Power BI. Imaginet built an ETL (extract, transform, load) process and multiple pipelines in Azure Data Factory to fetch data from HTTP endpoints and raw files (csv / xml) to the source system. We then transformed the data in a relational form and loaded it into their data warehouse. SQL scripts were developed to create data factory task queries, merge stored procedures, and views to accommodate the columns for the dimensional model. Lastly, we developed a Power BI model sourcing data from the data warehouse allowing them to visualize and analyze data from a single source of truth, and create highly accurate and visually stunning reports and dashboards.

Technologies:

• Microsoft BI Stack
  • Azure Data Factory
  • Power BI
• Microsoft Languages
  • T-SQL
  • DAX
  • DBMS
  • Azure SQL Server
  • Snowflake
  • Rest APIs

Modernized Data Storage and Reporting

A crown corporation engaged Imaginet to design a storage structure of data from a retiring IBM UniData system, extract the data, prepare it for storage, replicate the ODBC connection functionality in SQL Server and Excel, replicate reports in a reporting tool, and develop trust in the data. Data was extracted to a SQL Server database using SSIS pipelines and C# custom applications. SQL objects were created to prepare the database as a source for analytics tools. Reports were built using Microsoft SSRS and ASP.NET. The data was also provided to power users through an Excel connection.

Technologies:

• Microsoft BI Stack
  • SSIS
  • SSRS
• Microsoft Languages
  • C#
  • ASP.NET
  • T-SQL

WellView Peloton API Extraction

An oil and gas subsidiary commissioned Imaginet to extract data from their WellView information management system into a data warehouse to be used with other data consumers. A custom C# app was developed in order to extract data periodically from WellView using Peloton Rest APIs and store the output data to JSON files in a server machine. A pipeline in Azure Data Factory was created to fetch data from the files, transform them in a relational form, and load raw data to their SQL data warehouse. Some SQL development was done to create new tables and views to select all required table columns. Finally, a WellView SSIS package was incorporated into a current SSIS project to load WellView data to join with other database tables. Views, packages, and tables were added or updated to support a data mart. The existing tabular model was updated with the new data so users can consume the data from Excel.

Technologies:

• Microsoft BI Stack
  • SSIS
  • Azure Data Factory
  • SSAS
• Microsoft Languages
  • C#
  • T-SQL
  • RDBMS
  • SQL Server 2016
  • REST APIs