Established in 1977, the Faculty of Science and Technology (Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia), is one of the organic units of the New University of Lisbon (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), and is currently one of the most prestigious schools of science and engineering, with the support of 500 teachers and investors (320 doctorates) and 220 employees non-teaching staff. It is structured in 14 Departmental Sectors, 8 Support Services and 16 Research Centers.
FCT sponsored by the Student Association of the Faculty of Science and Technology (AEFCT) of the New University of Lisbon (UNL) and the Student Support Section of FCT, proposed to JAVALI the development of 4 web platforms: jobs, accommodation, teachers and events. It also received JAVALI's support for software development services, maintenance services for various computer systems in Drupal, as well as support for the migration of the institutional site to Drupal. Additionally, the development of the platform was proposed short-term internship management.
About the project
The main objective of job portal is the integration of students and graduates in the labor market, with the secondary effect to obtain statistical data on employment. Likewise, that companies can recruit skilled and well-qualified workforce from one of the most prestigious universities in the country.
Thus, since the launch of the job platform, about 3000 candidates have been registered and 1800 job vacancies were distributed among 600 national and international companies.
Regarding accommodation platform, it aims to promote the reception, accommodation and integration of new students, teachers and displaced employees, whether they are resident at home or abroad, by searching for accommodations, by type of accommodation desired (room or house), availability, inclusion of expenses or not, suitable for boys or girls, among others, and on the other the submission of one or more housing offers by tenant. Of note, the rapid insertion of new content (rooms or houses).
The teacher's portal allows each FCT / UNL to autonomously create their own personal page and insert their curriculum, disseminate scientific articles, present the subjects taught and share feeds.
The event portal aims to gather information on conferences, workshops, lectures and exhibitions organized by FCT / UNL in one platform.
With regard to institutional website the FCT, the objective of this migration included the standardization of the corporate image of the higher education institution, present in the 5 platforms developed, based on the best practices accessibility of contents (WCAG), usability of solutions (UX), Data Security and Privacy (RGPD).
Finally , the short-term internship platform is a great tool for integrating students into companies, thus promoting their first contact and giving companies the opportunity to benefit from their expertise and resources even for a short time. (small internship 5 weeks). The objective under consideration was to enrich the education of their students in complementary skills (soft skills) and promote entrepreneurship.
Given that all solutions have been developed on the Drupal CMS platform, functionality can be improved by using a wide range of modules and components that can be developed at any time.
Thanks to the ease and intuitive form of the backoffice allows easy management by those who moderate the platforms.
Through the implementation of the Portal with the Drupal Content Manager we were able to make offers faster, employers immediately accessible, applications easier for interested parties and easier to obtain statistical data.
Isabel Sequeira Pinto
Why Drupal was chosen
In accordance with FCT requirements and objectives, the overall solution to the challenges presented was the efficient use of Drupal CMS on all deployed platforms. Drupal is considered the most efficient, intuitive and versatile open source Content Management System used to manage websites, giving companies complete autonomy over their use. Using this tool, FCT has benefited from:
- Cost savings in software licensing;
- Ease of administration of the platform;
- Quick development of new features;
- Minimization of response time in content introduction;
- Stability;
- Security.
In the implementation of the Job Portal, all design was conceived using the “User Centered Design” methodology, based on such important aspects as usability / navigability and accessibility. Regarding the development of the Web Portal, the main function of the tool is the creation of offers and consequent application by the interested parties. It has a system of notifications directed to candidates who fulfill the requirements of each offer, always being aware of the most recent proposals.
Each company also has the ability to add employees of their own company and thus enable them to also enter new offers on behalf of their company. Be it a company or a contact, each one has access to their offers and their applications, receiving alerts whenever there is a new candidate and several alerts about the expiration of the application made. In terms of backoffice for website managers, it provides various useful statistics, management of all content and creation of integrated event registration forms. The site is integrated with Google Analytics allowing the Customer access to detailed statistics. On the other hand, given the high importance of a good SEO strategy there was a special attention in the creation and optimization of the site and implemented the possibility of managing meta information in all content.
In implementing the accommodation portal, the design was in charge of the Central Brandia Agency, and with regard to the development of the Portal, the main function of the tool is in terms of information management, highlighting the ease of relationship between the most various contents, the possibility of inserting multimedia content such as videos, images, attaching galleries and banners, as well as informative blocks, menus and others.
It was also integrated with social networks, namely Facebook, Twitter and Linkdin.
The portals of teachers and events allow you to create personal or events / conferences pages, easily change the layout of the pages, and all pages created by the teachers follow a set of guidelines, thus keeping homogeneous both the image and its content. They also allow the creation of a centralized directory of teachers or events / conferences.
Regarding the FCT institutional site, the JAVALI team provided the website migration service to a Drupal platform, and coordinated the technical and advisory decisions related to its adoption. JAVALI's team provided full support in the design implementation in Drupal as well as the definition of best practices and customization of the content management platform to support the desired functionality. Finally, he provided on-the-job training and follow-up to FCT / UNL technicians.
In addition, he also developed the short-term internship portal, where he developed the “FCT Curriculum Profile”, with the implementation of a set of specific complementary skills subjects, common to all FCT courses, as well as the creation of spaces in the school calendar. to allow each student throughout their course to have some experience working in companies.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
