VE Built a Web Portal for an 100-Year Automation Company
Overview
The case summary
With 100 years in automation behind them, Swisslog healthcare had a plan for the future. The healthcare giant approached VE to build a Partner Portal that functioned as a web-based site to collaborate with suppliers, vendors and other agents. Our team worked on creating a portal for Swisslog during a busy time for the business.
They developed a plan for the portal, identified the functions it needed to perform, created a user-friendly interface, built a platform that supports five languages and has two versions for EMEA and North America.
The centenarian client
Swisslog Healthcare is a global industry leader in medication management solutions. Its experience in transport and automation allows it to lead change in healthcare.
A pioneer in automation technology, Swisslog works incessantly towards their mission of enhancing patient experience. It challenges the status quo in healthcare to forge new ways for intelligent medication solutions.
It has a comprehensive portfolio of products that connect the supply chain with healthcare systems, distribution centres and warehouses. Their products include customizable automated pharmacy solutions that help you achieve maximum efficiency, transparency and adaptability.
Project Objectives
The challenge at hand
Swisslog was associated with VE for multiple projects that spanned over three years. During the taxing pandemic crisis, developers were scarce in Switzerland because. As a result, they had to look elsewhere to find developers to build a partner portal. Satisfied with the track record, Swisslog approached VE’s developers for the task.
The company shortlisted PHP developers from the in-house team and with quick onboarding, VE’s developers were ready to work on the project within eight hours.
Project Specifications
Multiple demands, one portal
The quest for a functional portal was on. Swisslog’s portal blueprints came with multiple demands and specifications. Our developers were expecting nothing less from a company of Swisslog’s stature. There was already a healthy challenge right from the start but the pressing matter was the time at hand.
Functionalities of the portal:
- Act as a resource hub for all kinds of guides and business documents
- Onboard vendors, suppliers and buyers
- Upload, review and approve invoices, and other documents
- Raise queries regarding uploaded documents
- Communicate with support via chat.
Where it began to seem like a plan
Every project begins with a plan and ours was to dissect the demands into specific phases and approached them one by one. Our developers identified the most urgent requirements for the portal and prioritized them accordingly.
Phase 1:
Onboard vendors and customers
Phase 2:
Two versions for European, Middle Eastern, and African (EMEA) countries and America
Phase 3:
Portal support in multiple languages
What VEDelivered
Onboard vendors and customers
The foremost objective of the portal was onboarding customers and vendors, and providing them with a platform to manage their documents. The vendor portal also backed up as an invoice management server. The vendor/ supplier team could log in, onboard multiple users and roles to upload/ approve/ reject invoices based on their permissions. It served as a vital point of collaboration from a business perspective.
Platform used
Visual Studio Code
SQL Server
Blazor
Coding languages
C#
Angular 9
Two versions targeting EMEA & North America
Swisslog works with vendors and buyers across the globe. As business operations varied depending on the area, Swisslog decided to make two versions for the portal. Both portals had the same goals, but there were significant differences in how they handled client workflows.
SLHC EMEA Portal
SLHC NA Portal
Portal support in multiple languages
A challenge that emerged with EMEA portal version was its need to support multiple languages. Swisslog shortlisted five languages that were a must for the portal. VE’s developers found a way to incorporate the language feature and ensured that there were no communication gaps left.
Languages supported
English
Italian
German
French
Spanish
ChallengesFaced
Bottlenecks that weren’t part of the plan
Challenge1
Single sign on
Challenge:
Swisslog requested Single Sign On (SSO) for their portal. This way the clients could manage multiple roles and users with the same sign-in credential. SSO features allow users to log in once and access multiple portals and documents without having to put their credentials again.
Solution:
The portal was built using Blazor and Identity frameworks. It allowed users to register and log in. But the use of multiple embedded libraries blocked the SSO feature. Our developers toiled for over a month to enable SSO but to no avail. At last, they decided to start all over again and wrote the code from scratch. This gave them more room to build customizable features that suited Swisslog’s requirements.
5 languagesbut no 3rd party tools
Challenge2
Multiple language enabled portal
Challenge:
Swisslog wanted the EMEA portal to support multiple European languages. The client had strictly barred any use of 3rd party tools so all the languages had to be stored well in the database.
Solution:
Our developers prepared a blueprint for the portal and enlisted the labels that would be added. They then translated the labels from English to French, Italian, Spanish and German via of Google Translate. We created a spreadsheet with label data and sent it to the client for confirmation. Once we got the green signal, the labels were updated on the database.
Meet theChangemakers
The duo that did it all
Amit and Rajat put together their expertise for this project. Both of them have been with Virtual Employee for over 4 years.
Amit Kumar
Senior Software Engineer
- Angular
- SQL
- C#
- Blazor
Rajat Gupta
Software Engineer
- Blazor
- .NET Core
- C#
- jQuery
