Studies2, the platform for HEC's sites

In order to replace a now obsolete solution, the HEC group called on Smile to redesign the site generation platform for its professors. Entitled Studies 2, this project was developed using the open source solution Jahia, which combined features of a J2EE portal and a content management tool.

The HEC group is highly involved in the web

Founded in1881, HEC is today one of the leading business schools in France. To reach its targets, the HEC group has the following key strengths: an internationally recognised teaching body, more than 25000 graduates and close partnerships with numerous companies through the Fondation HEC. The HEC group is highly involved in the area of new technologies and has an Internet Resources Centre managed by Gaël Boisseau. This department manages:

• Internal and external online communication aids

• online education

These online educational tools develop and expand interactions between professors and students and between students and other students in both time and space. As part of the development of these educational tools, the HEC group called on Smile at the end of 2006 to work on the Studies 2 project, the redesign program for the professors' sites. This site creation platform is at the heart of technical devices available to professors. It provides the HEC group's professors with the opportunity to create their own website for putting educational aids for students online and for externally distributing their own research (general public, researchers etc.) The aim of this project is to renew this platform based on a proprietary CMS that had become obsolete.

The management of rights and ease of use were at the heart of the project

" We needed an efficient, scalable platform so that our professors can easily create and have great freedom when designing their site" explained Gaël Boisseau, the project manager for Studies 2. " For cost reasons we were interested in open source solutions.." To meet these requirements, the platform was produced using the open source solution Jahia. The main advantage of Jahia is that it combines features associated with portals and CMSs. Aside from the wide array of features contained in this version, Jahia also provides the opportunity to manage multiple sites and user rights which perfectly matched the school's requirements. Basic criteria that reinforced the decision to use Jahia included the active open source community and low cost.

The Flexibility of Jahia

" The advantage of Jahia is that it is easy to configure. It gives us the opportunity to add program developments and layers to the display without touching the core," explained Jean-François Coutel, Smile's project manager. This flexibility was essential for interconnecting with LDAP directories and the IT system.

The management of access rights to the sites

The Studies 2 project concerns more than 100 different sites with each site having its own access regulation. The management of rights involved key work and was a great challenge in terms of web engineering. A filtering system was implemented between Jahia and the professors' sites so that only students and/or professors could access the sites that they were authorised to access. The question of access rights was also applicable to documents posted on sites such as lessons, educational aids and also work that students wanted to submit to a professor via a website. For this a rights management system also exists on a document base between different sites.

The selection of a neutral tool

The other feature of the project lay in the HEC group's strategic decision in terms of the tool. Instead of providing tools specialised in online education, HEC opted for a neutral tool in order to provide its teaching body with technical means. Professor's can create their own homepage, content pages, document formats and the overall presentation of their site. During the automatic creation of the site it is possible for them to choose from various different graphic designs.

Studies 2 will be launched in September

Studies2 has been in service since June 2007 and gradually replaced the old system. The return to school in September will be a real test as more than 70 sites managed by the HEC group's professors will be opened up to students. " I was particularly appreciative of the Smile groups pro-active suggestions," explained Gaël Boisseau. " Indeed, throughout the collaboration, Smile's teams truly reflected on the project in order to define objectives and to provide the best solutions whilst controlling costs.."