From eCommerce platform to a Document Management System

Challenge

As Crane Partners issues certificates for heavy equipment, they needed a site which would also have features of a Document Management System. Their old website based on ASP was hard to maintain, required many manual steps to complete the tasks and was not mobile friendly.

During the work on this website, the client asked for several important tasks including:

• Ability to generate dynamic PDFs for issuing certificates
• Ability to create dynamic PDFs for its reporting systems
• Form builders (some users could create forms and some others could fill them in)
• Ability to create several users and departments
• Responsive website

Solution

As the client’s old website was already based on ASP, the new solution was built on ASP.NET MVC technology of the industrial eCommerce platform, nopCommerce – this way the client’s current server could be reused and the migration process was smoother. Also, the client’s staff could keep working with a familiar hosting environment.

“When we started this project in November 2013, we were tasked with converting a website based on an outdated framework (ASP) to a robust, lightweight, customizable website in the short period of time with the least amount of coding. After researching, we found nopCommerce as the answer to our problems.” - stated David Niki, Operations Manager at Comelite IT Solutions.

To meet the above requirements, Comelite used nopCommerce core and customized it having created many objects such as departments, reports, certificates, form builders and etc.

For PDF generation Comelite used a system based on HTML templates, and converted them to PDF using webkit2html. This system gave the most flexibility to create many PDF templates for several reports and certificates.

A custom form-generation engine was developed for the client to create any kind of form required using standard HTML controls (textbox, dropdown lists etc.) The search system neatly tailors to these custom developed forms.

Comelite also transferred the old data and converted them into the new format to be used by custom developed modules. Now, things are smoother both for the client and the website’s visitors. The site also vastly uses AJAX to offer a smooth and efficient user experience.

The site allows users to collaborate and share documents. It is a comprehensive system which converts data collected from the users and displays them as PDF forms.

To make the website responsive, a responsive theme for nopCommerce was used.

Result

The entire website was enhanced and upgraded.

“We managed to create DMS for a company based on an eCommerce solution!” - says David Niki.

The site has many features compared to the old project, such as flexible PDF generation engine with webkit2html, reporting system, and dynamic form builder.