SyncEx Case Study: Army Forces

SyncEx collaboration solution for Army Defense Forces using Connector API with Microsoft Exchange integration.

Business

One of the nine unified command JFCOM in the Department of Defense, in world's highly developed nation, plays a role in transformation, force provision, interoperability, joint training and experimentation for the defense department of the nation.

YASH Client manages large networks of stakeholders through their homegrown intranet system. Employee portal provides informationto employees and at the same time it gathers data from individual to furnish it into concrete information for business processes and assignments. Accessing employee information, entering data, sharing ideas makes this employee portal, a communicationhub for our client.

Challenge

Client has the requirement to provide visibility of calendars, events, and meetings across the enterprise to coordinate activities across the command. The emergence of the Enterprise Portal to support Horizontal Integration (HI) drives the need for visibility of event and calendar data in various contexts, each tailored to meet the needs of different stakeholder groups. The desired long-term solution needs to integrate calendar information and scheduling processes into the Command Portal, tying together, Microsoft Exchange-based tools and other schedule-based database systems.

Business Objectives

There are several business objectives that client is trying to achieve related to calendaring:

Make event data visible to specific stakeholder and user groups through enterprise Portal Increase visibility and awareness of events in support of horizontal integration (HI) including external events Allow visibility of schedule conflicts for long-term planning Aggregate data from distributed calendars maintained by different users into a single view, without requiring re-keying of data Standardize scheduling processes spread across Allow event data to be displayed in a manner that is desired by the user, filtered by date ranges, by types of events, and by echelon The ability for an individual to receive notification of categorized events Provide the required capabilities with a solution that minimizes the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over time

Solution

YASH provided client with the SyncEx connector API for Microsoft Exchange, which helped client to achieve the entire business objectives. SyncEx connector API not only helped the client for the Microsoft integration but also provided the assistance to implement the group-calendaring portal using SyncEx connector API and eXo portal. Apart from the general calendaring functionality SyncEx connector helped our client to achieve few critical calendaring features of JFCOM interest like-

Allow categorization of events based on their Commands Support for implementing SSO with the exchange in their Site Minder Environment Free busy information sharing Scheduling events Global Address List (GAL) support Public folder support High performance for integration and collaboration

Tools and technologies

Sun JDK1.3 Web DAV (Web based Distributed authoring and versioning) XML

Result

Successful implementation of the Group Calendaring on enterprise portal managing scheduling of commands spread across the globe. They are able to successfully integrate and hence collaborate within the environment in order to resolve scheduling management issue. With GAL support, they are now managing frequent mail collaborations using enterprise portal.

Benefits

Helped in easy adoption of enterprise portal Single view to the client calendar Better event management without any conflicts Create cognizant workforce by making information easily accessible Keeps the workforce updated with in time alerts

Extra Milestone

Along with global scheduling management, client could develop event management portal solution using SyncEx Connector API. They are now able to maintain Personal Information Management (PIM) System using contact functionality. YASH extended the API for mail collaboration to share global address list (GAL) for reaching to various units from any location.

YASH product and services used

SyncEx connector API for Microsoft Exchange Collaboration Server Java API development for collaboration server like Microsoft Exchange

Knowledge Share

Microsoft Exchange Integration with portal via SyncEx Connector Implementation of Portlet SSO using SyncEx Connector in Site Minder Environment Secure communication with Exchange on HTTPS using SyncEx Connector Global address list support for organization level contacts and addresses Custom categorization of events using SyncEx Connector

For more information

Write us to know more about: Enterprise portal for scheduling management, event management, specific collaboration API development or call us at 1.877.257.1343 (Toll Free).

YASH Enterprise Portal Solutions
YASH Consulting Services

See finished SyncEx products, developed using SyncEx Connector API-

SyncEx Collaboration Suite for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino
SyncEx Mail Portlet
SyncEx Calendar Portlet
SyncEx Contact Portlet