RARIK Boosts Engagement with sharper, more interactive and more informatic site

As with many of the recent implementations, we are still in the process of transposition to fully responsive Affino 8 - meaning that key parts of this project involved updating existing solution components, sometimes re-originating them entirely based on changes to requirements.

The element that took the longest time to finesse was no doubt the large map element on the Home Page (see 'Collaboration' above) - which gives customers a slick interactive interface for viewing the locations of regional offices - with contact information, then being able to view the entirety of the national distribution network grid, and finally a panel indicating geographical areas impacted by active incidents or forthcoming works - very much the same sort of information appearing on the Alerts Bar - but obviously in a more pictorial format.

On the Home Page is also to be found the Alerts Bar - which flags up active outage alerts and forthcoming works notices. We introduced some subtle transitions into the home page - to further enhance customer engagement - like the flip-overs on the above 'scenes from work' photo library.

For the main News page (Fréttir) we introduced a new design layout management approach - by way of the Smart Article Listing Design Element and Smart Article Listing Grids - which allowed RARIK to achieve their exact desired format, with easy update-ability to hundreds of different styles and formats. Tied into this page was also the brand new On-Page Feedback element which a number of our customers have since put into good use (Was this page useful? - Yes | No) - seen below in its Icelandic language variant:

We needed to wholly rethink, redesign and re-originate our Content Subscriptions functionality, which used to be based on logged-in Users and My Information screens. RARIK however don't require their users to register or login on the site, which meant that the functionality had to work wholly independently and for entirely 'guest' users.

We already mentioned the Home Page Alerts which were implemented as an automated API which pulls in the information in real time. We also implemented a weekly update solution for the RARIK Staff Directory - which handles fairly frequent inter-office moves.

RARIK makes use of a lot of graphs and table-based content, and we had to upgrade the HighCharts functionality to work fully responsively - this is likely to be revisited and streamlined as a phase 2. We also assisted with some custom CSS and JavaScript to enable versatile display of large tables across different devices and breakpoints. A custom presentation style was originated for optimising table display, as well as a slightly adapted in-article document download display:

At the 11th hour a new workflow requirement was identified, which required the resuscitation of the soon-to-be deprecated stand-alone Affino documents module (which has been replace by the Media Library). We were able to harness and clone the core functionality and database structure and re-work the display-side code to the new responsive framework.

The project turned out to be fairly fluid - with numerous change request and tweaks arising as we rolled-out and tested the various interfaces. There were a number of instances where additional complexities were discovered within hidden business workflows - all these elements added to the timeline. But in the end it seems to have all been worth it, as we would not have such a solid solution in place had we not had to brainstorm all those scenarios and engage due diligence to find clever solutions.

The RARIK site also makes use of a custom Google Site Search which already works well with inflected Icelandic vocabulary, and saved considerable effort in not having to write all those permutations into the Affino core. That said, Google is in the process of changing its corporate search offerings so this will likely need to be revisited in the near future. Hopefully there will be some more homegrown alternatives by then.