Working with Penney Holland, Director, Internet Services, we delivered a low cost, easy to use Drupal powered test system that was completed 22% under budget.
Business Outcomes
In operation for almost 2 years, the Themesandmodules.com solution has proven to be:
- On Time & On Budget - The initial system was delivered within 6 days of the planned date, and was completed 22% under budget.
- Effective - the system has met AHC’s business requirements.
- Reliable - in almost 2 years, there have been no major downtime incidents.
- Flexible - various incremental improvements have been made to the system.
- Low cost - there has been no need for expensive infrastructure or application rewrites due to the well designed system and the solid base that Drupal provides.
Services Delivered
- Requirements analysis and system specification
- Graphic design & Drupal theming
- Advanced custom Drupal development
- Complex systems integration to a Microsoft SQL Server customer database
- Ongoing maintenance and enhancement
Project Summary
Established in 1974 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, AHC Media LLC is the largest publisher of health care newsletters in the world.
As part of their subscription packages, AHC’s customers are able take tests on the topics discussed in each newsletter, earning credits towards their continuing medical education.
The tests can be completed offline or online, and though AHC already had an online testing system, it was hard for customers to use and almost impossible for AHC to maintain.
Drupal was chosen as the application platform for the new online testing system and Themesandmodules.com was selected as the Drupal consultancy tasked with developing the new online testing system.
We worked with Penney Holland, Director, Internet Services, to collect and understand AHC’s business requirements, and ultimately deliver a value for money Drupal solution.
Technical Highlights
Considering the complex business rules surrounding subscription management, Drupal's automated unit testing system, Simpletest, was implemented for the more complex parts of the system to ensure system stability.
Drupal Webforms module was leveraged for one part of the system, saving significant development time. It was also extended to provide a Leichhardt scale form component type.
Webforms was too complex for AHC staff to use, so it was not used as a basis for the custom testing module. Instead, an easy to use AJAX powered interface was built.
The AJAX interface allows AHC staff to quickly create multiple choice tests with unlimited numbers of questions and answers without a single page reload. The questions and answers can be ordered by drag and drop without a page reload.
During the development of the custom testing module, an issue was uncovered in Drupal core in tabledrag.js. A patch was submitted to the community, and accepted into Drupal 6 core.
Customers only have access to a small subset of the total number of tests in the system. Access is granted to customers according to what subscriptions they have. The system integrates with a backend Microsoft SQL Server database, analysing subscription tables to obtain subscription information and grant customers the appropriate access permissions.
A soft integration link was built that allowed data to originate from both the backend SQL database, and from within the Drupal system. This allowed for various new functionality to be added, such as the ability to periodically give free subscriptions to certain users - such functionality was not provided by the backend database.
About AHC Media LLC
The quality leader in healthcare information & education Established in 1974 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, AHC Media LLC is the largest publisher of health care newsletters in the world.
AHC Media's incisive, useful, up-to-date publications are read by more than 50,000 people per month in the fields of clinical medicine, health care management, and biotechnology and medical devices.
In addition to newsletter publications, AHC Media LLC is a growing electronic publisher, a leading provider of continuing medical education and regularly convenes conferences in key areas from emergency medicine to hospital case management.
