Sector(s)

Project Team

The team was comprised of strategists, designers, developers, and project managers from Aten Design Group and The NCEO.

Visit the site

Visit the site

Organizations Involved

Community contributions

The Login Notification module allows site administrators to construct multiple notification messages which will be displayed upon user login. The module utilizes the conditional plugin system to restrict what messages a user receives. 
 

The National Center for Employee Ownership (The NCEO), a US-based nonprofit association with more than 10,000 members, has been supporting the employee ownership community since 1981. The NCEO conducts original research, facilitates discussions at their live and online events, provides access to a wealth of publications and resources, and helps businesses cultivate employee ownership within their own organizations. Through their initiatives and resources, The NCEO encourages employee ownership throughout the business world.

We worked with The NCEO team to redesign the The National Center For Employee Ownership website, a comprehensive platform that provides 25 years’ worth of research and resources to help businesses implement employee ownership. With a custom CRM, complex membership tiers, hundreds of publications and resources, an online store, and a custom learning management system, The NCEO equips businesses with all the tools necessary to successfully implement an employee owned business strategy.
 

About the project

Key Challenges:

  • Provide a powerful and accessible administrative experience that streamlines content entry and offers flexible authoring capabilities.
  • Migrate 25 years of content across three different platforms while maintaining a seamless experience for authors and end-users.
  • Design a user-centered digital platform that reflects The NCEO’s core mission and identity while simplifying user experience.

Key Solutions:

  • We migrated 25 years of publications into Drupal 8 and implemented SSO to eliminate data double-entry for authors while creating a fluid transition from one distinct website to the next.
  • We ran in-depth mapping exercises with The NCEO to develop an effective strategy for migrating content to the new website.
  • We designed a digital experience that highlights The NCEO’s core mission through the use of dynamic imagery, easy-to-find content and seamless navigation between platforms.
     

Why Drupal was chosen

The National Center for Employee Ownership’s public-facing website was a custom PHP system that needed to be upgraded or replaced with a platform capable of integrating with its recently developed Drupal 7 CRM. Together we chose Drupal 8, both to leverage the organization’s ongoing investment in Drupal as well to take advantage of Drupal 8’s strong integration capabilities. As part of the project we built a public-facing frontend for The NCEO’s Drupal 7 CRM with an online store, check out, and membership management functionality. In order to provide a seamless experience for end users, we implemented a single sign-on (SSO) solution, using Drupal’s CAS module, so that visitors and members are able to navigate between the Drupal 7 CRM, the online store, and the new Drupal 8 website housing the majority of the organization’s content and resources.

The NCEO periodically provides training courses as part of its product offering. We created a separate Drupal 8 instance to house this content, sitting side-by-side with the Drupal 7 CRM and the new Drupal 8 platform. Again, utilizing SSO, a user can login and purchase a training course on the Drupal 7 commerce website, then proceed directly to the course content upon purchase.

Given The NCEO’s prior investment in their custom CRM, we felt it would be the most efficient and risk-averse tactic to keep the Drupal 7 CRM, Drupal 8 CMS and Drupal 8 LMS separate but integrated so that any major changes or updates would remain contained to their respective platforms.

Technical Specifications

Drupal version:

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen

store.nceo.org (Drupal 7) - The NCEO had already built a highly customized CRM for storing membership records, tracking membership dues, and handling e-commerce requirements. CAS was utilized to create a seamless experience between the CRM and their main site built in Drupal 8.

  • D7 Commerce module - Ability to pay member dues, purchase publications and other merchandise.
  • CAS Server - Single Sign-On for other Drupal sites.
  • Redhen CRM - Manage member records.
  • SendGrid Integration - integration with the SendGrid API for reliable email sending.

www.nceo.org (Drupal 8) - We helped The NCEO build their primary web presence in Drupal 8, offering thousands of resources with tiered, membership-based access. 

  • Permissions by Term allows for a paywall-like experience where The NCEO can designate access – for example, delineating member vs staff-only content.
  • CAS creates a seamless experience between the user and member data in Drupal 7.
  • CAS Attributes integrates user data, like users’ roles in Drupal, to Drupal 8 accounts during login.
  • Integration with the SendGrid API allows for reliable email sending.
  • Tour UI allows The NCEO team to create a tour of the new site through the UI.
  • The defacto Redirect module that was perfect when migrating to Drupal.
  • We also used a few migrate contrib modules that made it easy to pull in 20+ years of content from a custom PHP/MySQL application.
  • Using Leaflet and Views were were able to quickly recreate Service Provider and Lender maps.
  • Background Image Formatter gave The NCEO team ability to place quality images as the header on content throughout the site.
  • Asset Injector allowed The NCEO team to include custom javascript and css needed on various nodes through the site.
  • Webform provided a quick way to recreate several mission critical forms NCEO had on their previous site.

training.nceo.org (Drupal 8 & Custom Application)

  • CAS provided a seamless experience between the user and member data in Drupal 7.
  • CAS Attributes sends user data like Drupal Role to users signing in to Drupal 8 sites.