BT Corporate Social Responsibility Report

SharePoint for Corporate Social Responsibility

Description

Implementation of collaborative document repository and automatic generation of indexed web-based report.

Background

A team of editors and auditors collaborate to produce the BT Corporate Social Responsibility report. Microsoft Word is used to write the report sections due to writers familiarly with the application and the document change tracking features included.

The report is published to the web annually to a tight deadline. Each section needs to be verified and indexed.

Requirements

  • Reduction of overall cost of publication 
  • Automation of manual procedures to reduce errors
  • Simplification of editing and indexing process
  • Versioning and tracking of report changes
  • Generation of searchable, indexed and accessible website 

Benefits Experienced

  • Visibility and notification of the status of each report section
  • Reduction of errors and time to produce report
  • Full automation of indexing and website generation
  • Production of award winning accessible and searchable report

Solution Overview

UniTech deployed Microsoft SharePoint 2003 to provide a central repository for storing, managing and versioning the documents which comprise the report. A hierarchical site and tree navigation component was implemented which mirrored the structure of the final report. This was developed as a Sharepoint WebPart using the Microsoft .NET Framework.

SharePoint security groups were set up to restrict users to the sections they are responsible for and a custom service was developed using C# for propagating user rights through to subsections of the report.

A customised workflow system was developed using a SharePoint WebPart to show the progress status for each section of the report. This included sending automatic email notifications to interested parties when the status of each section is changed.

Custom SharePoint WebParts were also created for linking keyword, KPIs, targets, charts and other indexes with each section of the report. A Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database was used to store these indexes.

A publishing service was developed in C# and ASP.Net to assemble the finished documents and generate the complete report as a searchable, indexed website.

The generated website was bulit on the Microsoft ASP.NET including personalisation features and searching against a SQL Server 2005 database with full-text indexing.

 http://www.btplc.com/Societyandenvironment/Socialandenvironmentreport/index.aspx