MN.gov/MN.IT Services

XPAND Corporation was brought on board to assist MN.IT Services' Applications Development Group with the transformation of the Minnesota Department of Commerce Website from a BroadVision Content Management System to a Tridion Content Management System.

XPAND was selected for this project based on its extensive experience with the Tridion Content Management System and previous implementation work for MN.IT Services. With very tight deadlines, XPAND quickly placed a Tridion expert on-site to work with the internal team and complete MN.IT Services' deliverables on time.

The project required the creation of a main portal site and four sub-sites for the different groups within the department. XPAND's expertise in designing Tridion "Blueprinting" structures allowed the four sub-sites to reuse much of the design, content, and functionality created for the main portal, reducing both initial implementation and ongoing maintenance effort. The new websites also took advantage of XPAND's unique Tridion Site Template architecture to manage site branding and simplify the page assembly tasks, allowing MN.IT Services' customers to create new pages while maintaining a consistent look and feel automatically. In addition to work configuring the sites within the Tridion environment, XPAND performed user interface development tasks using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

XPAND also assisted with the migration of content from the existing BroadVision site using Kapow data migration tools. XPAND developed a Tridion Business Connector module to allow the extracted BroadVision content to be easily imported into the Tridion environment. To add enhanced metadata to the migrated content, XPAND developed custom Tridion Event System modules to auto-populate data fields, to enforce data constraints, and to ensure high quality metadata is associated with all website content.

MN.IT and the MN Department of Commerce also had requirements for dynamic functionality, including automated publication and archiving of multiple reports, news items, RSS feeds, a dynamic site index, and a site search using Vivisimo's Velocity search engine. XPAND's previous experience with implementing dynamic data driven functionality within Tridion allowed MN.IT Services to offer functionality beyond the initial client requirements. The reusable modules developed will also reduce the cost of future website implementations, giving future clients access to advanced functionality that may have been otherwise out of scope.

The completion of this website implementation was well received by upper management at both the Department of Commerce and MN.IT Services. Since the initial project, XPAND Corporation has been brought back several times to MN.IT Services to assist with additional Tridion website implementations for the Department of Employment and Economic Development, Department of Human Services, Iron Range Resources Board, Office of Administrative Hearings and The State Guardian ad Litem Board. In addition to the new sites, XPAND has provided new reusable modules for blogging, RFPs, and RSS Feeds.