TMSDIOnline

TMS Development International are experts in the psychometric profiling of teams, specialising in the learning and development sector. Employers use them to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of a team and how different people prefer to work. Previously Castlegate IT worked with TMSDI to deliver a bespoke application and questionnaire, which served to greatly enhance the company’s online services.

Following the completion of our work on TMSDI’s questionnaire system, we began working on the next stage: delivering the documents which are generated from TMSDI’s clients’ online questionnaires.

The brief

After the success of the TMSDI Questionnaires application in 2011, TMSDI approached us to develop the next stage: a document delivery system for their questionnaire results and reports. An off-the-shelf system was unsuitable for this project. It needed to be tailored to the company’s exact workflow and processes to be a success.

We were given a long list of requirements including: complex user management schemes, multi-language capabilities, mobile optimisation, email and SMS notifications, full activity tracking and logging, facilitator and end user sections, automatic data purging, online payment gateways and more.

We worked with TMSDI to break the project into its smallest components and built the core functionality in the first round of development, with plans to add additional features in the near future. It’s been evolving ever since.

The application

TMSDIOnline is a platform for delivery of documents and reports in 12 different languages. To suit the TMSDI workflow everything was built to their requirements. It allows them to manage their data at organisation, company, event and user level. The application is vast and rich in functionality, but noteworthy features include:

Fine grained user permissions and roles

Customisable multi-language email notifications

Duplicate user detection and automatic user account merging

Document management with automatic PDF screenshots and PDF merging

User document libraries and user favourites

Batch uploads & automatic document language detection

PDF report and graph generation, available as interactive pages, images or PDF documents

Bespoke CMS and translation editors

The technology

TMSDIOnline was developed on a custom PHP framework and makes use of some interesting tools and libraries for PDF manipulation, creation, conversion and screengrabs.

We developed a report generation system which accepts a CSV upload and produces graphs to TMSDI’s strict specifications. Making these reports available as interactive web pages, images and PDFs posed an interesting and welcome challenge.

Robust hosting is required for such a crucial business tool. We used our dedicated server for stability, security and maximum control. With the addition of a failover system, the application is always available.

The result

Before TMSDIOnline, profile documents and supporting information was delivered to their clients by email or post. The application reduces the manual workload of TMSDI staff and cuts waste by eliminating paper and printing.

It’s become an essential tool for delivering their products and allows them to stand out amongst their competition as an industry leader. Over the years we’ve worked with TMSDI to develop the system from its humble beginnings, into one of our largest bespoke systems to date.

Used by a large client-base across the globe, the application now boasts some impressive statistics: