Drupal Case Study for K-12 Business Office Modernization

Case Study:

Drupal in the
K-12 Business Ofﬁce
by Erin Clerico
drupal.org: erinclerico
erin@clerico.com

Monday, October 28, 13

KCSOS

Drupal in the

• County Ofﬁces of Education:
• Serve California K-12 school districts
and the public

• Save millions of dollars with centralized
services and purchasing consortiums

• The COE system facilitates the local
control of schools in California

drupal.org: erinclerico • erin@clerico.com

KCSOS

Drupal in the

• Curriculum services
• Special education classrooms
• Court & Community Schools,
Valley Oaks Charter School

• CALM Zoo, Camp KEEP Cambria
• New teacher mentoring and certiﬁcation

KCSOS

Drupal in the

• Business & Management services
• District ﬁnancial & accountability services
• Payroll services
• Training for new school administrators
• Host several large Joint Powers Authority
(JPA) purchasing consortiums


Software Categories

Drupal in the

• CMS, Facilitate communication
• Track employee activity
• Plan/track resource utilization
• Enable and track dependent work-ﬂows
• Data warehouse

Software in use

Drupal in the

• Most divisions currently have loads

of vertical software in place to handle
their primary mission

• Some very good
• ...and some veeery bad
• Most not web enabled

Vendor Solutions

Drupal in the

• Custom and Vertical Applications
• Access & .NET based solutions
• Microsoft dominates the mindshare of

California K-12 business administrators

• Developers of vertical solutions include
many amateurs


It’s (still) Alive!

• Remote Desktop


Drupal in the

Common Complaints

Drupal in the

• Not web enabled
• Vendor non-responsive to feature requests
• Horrible UI


Software Gaps

Drupal in the

• Gaps in software functionality are ﬁlled
with human hands


Software Gaps

Drupal in the

• Gaps in software functionality are ﬁlled
with human hands

• Clipboards, card ﬁles, binders & staplers
• Excel + Cut + Paste + Word + Print...


Software Gaps

Drupal in the

• Users develop bad habits about storing

data - many use their workstations or email
boxes


Software Gaps

Drupal in the

• Users develop bad habits about storing

data - many use their workstations or email
boxes

• Results in data-loss and sometimes
security issues


Clunky Workﬂows

Drupal in the

• Admin staff is expensive
• Data not captured in real-time
• Data may not get backed up on local
workstations

• Retiring staff take knowledge of key
processes with them


Well Meaning Staff

Drupal in the

• Sometimes an application is developed by
staff in Access or FileMaker Pro


Well Meaning Staff

Drupal in the

• The need for streamlining operations

combined with the promise of developing
and controlling a process prompts ad-hoc
development by existing staff


Well Meaning Staff

Drupal in the

• Staff developed solutions lack any best

practices and begin to decay as soon as
they are launched


Well Meaning Staff

Drupal in the

• An inefﬁcient workﬂow soon becomes
entrenched and critical


Well Meaning Staff

Drupal in the

• Since there is no deployment strategy or
continuous integration scheme the
application becomes brittle and can’t be
serviced easily


Funding Leaks

Drupal in the

• Staff developed solutions have an
continuously increasing cost

•

Difﬁcult or impossible to alter as business
requirements change requiring MORE manual
labor costs

•
•
•

Huge potential for lost data
Poor integration with related processes
Add complexity to workstation migrations


Why do it this way?

Drupal in the

• Division administrators get what they
want when they want it


Why do it this way?

Drupal in the

• Local control - direct staff have best

understanding of needs and a better
incentive to deliver solutions


Why do it this way?

Drupal in the

• An ever-increasing workload against
shrinking stafﬁng levels


Why do it this way?

• Ignorance of the complexity of

Drupal in the

delivering secure, useful applications


Common Complaints

• Not web enabled


Drupal in the

Common Complaints

• Not web enabled
• Platform dependent
•
•
•

Access
Filemaker Pro
FoxPro


Drupal in the

Common Complaints

Drupal in the

• Not web enabled
• Not ﬂexible - staff that built original
solution has moved on


Common Complaints

Drupal in the

• Not web enabled

• Holds up migrations to newer hardware,
causes ‘VPS Sprawl’


Common Complaints

Drupal in the

• Not web enabled

• Holds up migrations to newer hardware,
causes ‘VPS Sprawl’

• No development best practices

Time to Reboot!

Drupal in the

• Stop wasting time and money on ineffective
work-ﬂows


Time to Reboot!

Drupal in the

• Stop propping-up dead-end technologies

and serve our customers better with high
quality desktop and mobile web
experiences


Time to Reboot!

Drupal in the

• Stop putting up with systems that don’t

interact with each other and provide our
customers with a more seamless
experience


Time to Reboot!

Drupal in the

• Stop the institutional brain-drain by

standardizing needed work-ﬂows in to
web enabled applications


Strategic Goals

Drupal in the

• Better customer service and quality control


Strategic Goals

Drupal in the

• Economical and timely delivery of software
based tools for our customers


Strategic Goals

Drupal in the


• Fully embrace open standards - no platform
dependance


Strategic Goals

Drupal in the


• Fully embrace open standards - no platform
dependance

• Deploy with a fully open source stack

Strategic Goals

Drupal in the

•
•

Better customer service and quality control

•

Fully embrace open standards - no platform
dependance and mobile friendly

•
•

Deploy with a fully open source stack

Economical and timely delivery of software

Promote the long-term health and ﬂexibility of
deployed solutions


Tactical Plan

Drupal in the

• Select a web-based development platform
• Develop engineering staff competence
• Build a deployment platform
• Multisite provisioning
• Version control
• Continuous integration

Tactical Plan

Drupal in the

• Establish Agile development practices to
manage and execute new projects


Tactical Plan

Drupal in the

• Establish Agile development practices to

• Re-invent cost-recovery methods to reﬂect
the reality of on-going development and
deployment investments


Tactical Plan

Drupal in the

•

Establish Agile development practices to

•

Re-invent cost-recovery methods to reﬂect
the reality of on-going development and
deployment investments

•

Engage in outreach to the broader
organization to promote our services and
adoption of Drupal as an ofﬁce standard
among the users and administrators


Platform Selection

Drupal in the

• Evaluate popular web development
platforms

• Open Source
• Built upon LAMP
• Seasoned code base with active
contributor community


WordPress pros

Drupal in the

• Our web team uses it
• Trillions and Trillions of users
• Looks super-cool out of the box, little
assembly required

• Inﬁnite number themes to choose from
• Tons of click-to-install complete feature
modules available


WordPress pros

Drupal in the

• Mature, active code-base
• Active community
• WordPress plugins are largely plug and play
for advertised capabilities

• Some WordPress modules allow non-

developers some custom capabilities to
make work ﬂows and schema


WordPress cons

Drupal in the

• Sparse developer APIs as contrasted to
competing platforms

• Modules often duplicate low-level functions
and interface code resulting in bloat and
complexity in deployed sites


WordPress cons

Drupal in the

• Modules space seemed untamed - too

many pay-for-play solutions and other
mischief baked in to contributed modules
and themes

• WordPress MU architecture and
deployment seemed awkward


Joomla

• No


Drupal in the

Ruby on Rails pros

Drupal in the

• The Ruby language
• Sweet MVC organization of code
• Thriving community and contrib space
• Well documented


Ruby on Rails cons

Drupal in the

• Deployment best practices always seemed
a little murky

• Not enough built-in standard services

across the platform - way too much to do
by hand with every project

• No easy way to get less technical players
involved in the process


.NET

Drupal in the

• Not open source
• Looks more like the past than the future
• Promotes platform dependence


Drupal pros

Drupal in the

•

Rich and Powerful internal API structure for
custom development

•

Many modules provide foundational functions
that can be shared to build larger solutions more code sharing for:

•
•
•

Lighter deployments
Better security
Lego-like site building


Drupal pros

Drupal in the

• Enterprise-class deployment model
supports

• Scaling
• Replication of specific site configurations
via Installation Profiles

• Continuous integration and testing

Drupal pros

Drupal in the

•

Amazing community with regular, organized
outreach to assist with staff development goals

•

Well developed and documented methods for
non-developers, or ‘site builders’ to build
amazing web-applications from off-the-shelf
modules

•
•

buildamodule.com
drupalize.me


Drupal pros
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Great CMS capabilities
Views
Rules
Context Module
Drush
Panels
Aegir


Drupal in the

DrupalCons
•
•
•

Antwerp: February 24-26 ’05, Belgium
Portland: August 1-8 ’05, Oregon, USA
Amsterdam: October 17-21 ’05, The
Netherlands

Drupal in the

•

San Francisco: April 19-21 ’10,
California, USA

•

Copenhagen: August 23-27 ’10,
Denmark

•
•
•

Chicago: March 7-10 ’11, Illinois, USA

Munich: August 20-23 ’12, Germany

•

Vancouver: February 6-11 ’06 British
Columbia, Canada

•
•

Brussels: September 22-23 ’06, Belgium

•
•

Barcelona: September 19-22 ’07, Spain

•
•

Boston: March 3-6 ’08, Massachusetts,
USA

•

•

Szeged: August 27-30 ’08, Hungary

Portland: May 20-24 ’13, Portland,
Oregon, USA

•

•

DC: March 4–7 ’09, D.C., USA

Prague: September 23-27 ’13, Prague,
Czech Republic

Yahoo! Campus: March 22-23 ’07,
Sunnyvale, California, USA

London: August 22-26 ’11, England, UK
Denver: March 20-22, ’12 Colorado,
USA

Sydney: February 6-9 ’13, Sydney,
Australia


Drupal cons

Drupal in the

• Steep learning curve
• Requires assembly before play
• Some key modules don’t receive the
attention they should

• Third-party documentation lingers past it’s
expiration date for some key techniques.
(community-maintained docs are better
maintained)

Hands Down!


Drupal in the

Staff Development

Drupal in the

• Regularly attended Drupal meetups in the
Los Angeles Area

• groups.drupal.org/la


Staff Development

• Attended Drupal Camps
• Drupal Camp LA
• BADCamp


Drupal in the

Staff Development

Drupal in the

• Used a subscription based Drupal learning
site called buildmodule.com


Drupal Deployment

Drupal in the

• Aegir based Drupal site management
• Create and deploy new sites among
multiple servers


Drupal Deployment

Drupal in the

multiple servers

• Track sites through upgrades with
rollback capabilities


Drupal Deployment

Drupal in the

multiple servers

• Track sites through upgrades with rollback
capabilities

• Test un-released software and theme
upgrades against current snapshots
of live data

Agile Development

Drupal in the

• Drupal allows for rapid builds of complex

work ﬂows and interfaces once a developer
masters basic site building skills

• Supports short release cycles and can

lessen the pain of ﬁxing bugs or adding
features in planned releases


Agile Development

Drupal in the

• Aegir deployment allows devs to post new

development builds for inspection by stake
holders more frequently

• Catch changes and errors earlier in the
build process


Agile Development

Drupal in the

• Project management on our own
Redmine server

http://www.redmine.org/


Agile Development

Drupal in the

• Git version control
• BitBucket.org
• Private repos
• Sandbox projects on Drupal.org
• Someday may become real projects

Cost Recovery Model

Drupal in the

• Aegir deployment allows economical

deployment and management of multiple
hosted solutions for our clients


Cost Recovery Model

Drupal in the

• Aegir deployment allows economical

deployment and management of multiple
hosted solutions for our clients

• Allows for a ‘software as a service’ billing
model that covers hosting and
development costs over the long-term


Cost Recovery Model

Drupal in the

• Aegir deployment allows rapid deployment
of developed solutions for new clients

• Drupal site installation proﬁles allows

outside agencies to become subscribers
to solutions previously developed for
internal clients


Our First Project

Drupal in the

• Central Kitchen Ordering System
• Kitchen manager was retiring
• Position was being eliminated due to
budget cuts

• Big part of the job was taking in the

orders from our school sites and
entering the data into a spreadsheet


Organizational Buy-in

Drupal in the

• Presented our ﬁrst project to our
Technology Advisory Group

• Basic Drupal goodness
• SchoolMeal online ordering system


Organizational Buy-in

• Drupal Fridays!


Drupal in the

New Projects

Drupal in the

• Asset Tracker
• Tracks workstations and users for help
desk techs


New Projects

Drupal in the

• BusLogger
• Track in-service spare busses
• Track available substitute drivers & aides
• Log actual driver, aide, bus number per
route daily


New Projects

Drupal in the

• Staff Tracker
• Satisﬁes ‘fund accounting’ reporting needs
when staff are payed from multiple
programs or grants


New Projects

Drupal in the

• Online Training
• Short and simple compliance training
• Complete one book, pass one quiz
• Safety Training
• Disaster Preparedness training
• Sexual Harassment traning

Skilled Drupal Workers

Drupal in the

• We have very few skilled Drupal site

builders and developers available to us in
the Bakersﬁeld area


Skilled Drupal Workers

Drupal in the

With a venue provided
by the Kern County
Superintendent of
Schools the Bakersﬁeld
Drupal Users Group
was established this in
May of this year.


Essential Tools
• Modules for

data-basey stuff

•
•
•
•
•

Views
EVA
Embed Views
Views Filed View
Entity, Entity Reference

•

Entity Reference
Pre-Populate

•
•
•
•
•

Entity Token
Rules
Context
Field Collection
Auto Node Title
(+ Token Tweaks!)


Drupal in the

Essential Tools
• User Interface/Theming
• CKEditor
• Field Group
• Node form Settings
• Zurb-Foundation
• Zen
• SASS/Compass

Drupal in the

Essential Tools
•

Devel/Admin/Deploy

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Features + Strongarm
Backup Migrate
Feeds module
Migrate Module
Devel module
Module Filter
Admin Menu
Coffee (the module!)

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Module Filter
SASS/Compass
Vagrant
Drush
Site Proﬁles
Aegir
Jenkins (coming soon)
Apache Solr
Diet Coke


Drupal in the

Essential Tools

Drupal in the

• Staff development
• BuildAModule.com
• groups.drupal.org
• Drupal Camps/DrupalCons
• Version control
• BitBucket.org - private git hosting

Thank you


Drupal in the

Drupal Case Study for K-12 Business Office Modernization

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Similaire à Drupal Case Study for K-12 Business Office Modernization

Similaire à Drupal Case Study for K-12 Business Office Modernization (20)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

Drupal Case Study for K-12 Business Office Modernization