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Charity Web App Design and Development
Technologies Used
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Wireframing and Website Design
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Logo Design
.NET Framework
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Bootstrap Frontend Development
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Umbraco 8 Development
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PDF Integration
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SMS Integration
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Azure DevOps
Results
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A bespoke designed and developed solution that exactly met the client's requirement.
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A fully digitalised solution that replaced a manual and paper-based process
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Secure for sensitive and private information about children with additional needs
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Fast and easy timesheet and payroll processing
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Easy and intuitive for befrienders and families to register, apply and find a match.
The Partner
Ruils is a charity based in London who support disabled children and adults. They help by providing support with long term health & mental health conditions to live independently. They provide information, advice, befriending and activities to their clients and their families.
Background
One of Ruils' support services involved finding support for families with SEND children (children with special educational needs and disabilities)
with befrienders; paid individuals who are experienced in providing supporting. When Ruils approached us, the matching process for befrienders and families was entirely manual. Families looking for support would telephone or email Ruils and undergo an application process where they would fill in paper forms, and post them back. Befrienders would be recruited via events and similarly would apply for positions, completing a written application form.
The process of matching would involve manually reading through family requirements and reading through a catalogue of befrienders that they had on file. It was paper based and it took considerable resources ensuring matching was performed to the highest standard and that the information stayed organised and up to date.
Ruils wanted to digitalise the service - they wanted the entire appliation and matching process to happen online.
Website: https://www.friendbee.co.uk/
Solution
We worked closely with the client to develop wireframes to sketch out how the digitalised version of the service would work. Within this process service users along with managers were involved to ensure the site would behave in the right way. Following the wireframes our designer worked alongside the client to create a design that was targetted exactly for the intended users.
At this point, Ruils decided that the name of the new service would be called FriendBee. Along with the wireframes we were involved with designing a logo for the FriendBee service.
Umbraco CMS was used which would provide functionality for user and content management. The client found beta users who would provide early feedback about the functionality as it was developed. In particular, one of the aims was to make the registration and approval process for onboarding families and befrienders as straight forward as possible. There was a lot of information and steps involved in approving family and befriender acocunt due to the sensitive nature of the data involved; information about children with additional needs would be accessible from the website and the site needed to be secure to protect this data.
The solution included functionality that:
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An intuitive and easy to use application form with a function to upload identification documentation.
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Search functionality that provided a way to for families and befrienders to search for each other.
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A timesheet and payroll tool that allowed befrienders to submit timesheets and for the family to approve or query. Coordinators would then run payroll.
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Co-ordinators can review and approve applications.
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Profile management for families and befrienders including updating images
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Co-ordinator functionality to set announcements to the site or segmented by befriender or familye and easy to use application form with a function to upload identification documentation.
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Maintain training sessions that befrienders could enrol on.
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Maintain training sessions that befrienders could enrol on.
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FAQ management allowed co-ordinators to set up common questions and answers and categorise them for befrienders and families to read.
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Export Befriender and Family profiles to PDF.
