Intranet & Document Management Solution for New Doha International Airport Contracted Party – 31 (NDIA CP 31) over MOSS 2007

Introduction

NDIA CP-31 is a one entity out of 40 entities that work for the New Doha International Airport project. This entity is compiled by two large international companies (ARINC & THALES) that run under one large international entity (Bechtel) that is mainly contracting other parties for the enterprise project implementation and run the operations from a higher perspective.

NDIA CP-31 is considered to be the “Working Brain” for the airport project. They do all the planning, organizing and the architecture of the project. This covers all the documentation that comes with the whole projects phases including the digital copies of all the documents and drawings into one unified system. The system built also on some specific work flows to organize the whole business stream.

Challenges

NDIA CP-31 were having many issues regarding document storage, data flow, document versioning and general operational processes regarding the documentation organizing specifically. The entity wanted a solution to provide a comprehensive document management solution, team collaboration and information flow control.

Main request of NDIA CP-31:

  1. General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions
  2. The DMS must support document versioning including:
    1. Multiple type of versioning (major/minor versions).
    2. Version limitation (maximum number of version allowed per document was 9 in their case)
  3. NDIA CP-31 wanted to have control over their own navigation system so that they can categorize the content and build the navigation depending on their own classification.
  4. Simple workflow to be added to the main document storages to be able to approve the documents through a specific limited steps of approval
  5. NDIA CP-31 needed a place for team collaboration were every one can interact directly with the system and with other users
  6. -NDIA CP-31 requested that they will be able to show specific data to users from the mail contracting entity (OBI) in a read-only mode through a separate accessed site and also have their own full permissions to control their own data on the site
  7. NDIA CP-31 wanted a powerful search facility to be able to search the content efficiently 8-NDIA CP-31 wanted to integrate their intranet with their existing Exchange Server 2007 that the users could see information from their Exchange accounts directly inside the intranet.

Solution

Main Delivered Features:

  1. MOSS 2007 older installation, done by MDIA CP-31 administrators, was reinstalled. All the data uploaded earlier including the site structure and security setup were restored successfully on a more stable online environment with SSL for more secured connection
  2. Afkar delivered a full fledged collaboration site with well-built informational structure based on the customer needs
  3. An extranet site for the OBI users to access specific information on the portal and all security related access issues were setup successfully
  4. Document templates were created and made available for immediate use in any document library based on their internal templates
  5. Document libraries were all created and sorted according to customer request and convenience. All the document management features were enabled on each library
  6. Older documents were uploaded from the physical location to the specified document libraries and sites
  7. Afkar created multiple additional collaboration spaces to help the customer more in user interaction (i.e. Calendars, Meeting Workspaces, Employee Directory, Employees Generic discussion board… etc

Added Value Services :

Afkar provided NDIA CP-31 with more added value services as a part of our commitment to provide better services for our customers. NDIA Cp-31 were not fully aware of what MOSS 2007 can give so we found ourselves committed to educate them more on how to get more use of the product. Some of the major added value services were:

  1. Afkar helped in creating the whole new vision for moving the system from an un managed physical storage to a full managed well organized Document Management System
  2. Afkar trained the users how to use the system by themselves and to get the maximum usage of the existing in-hand features in the product. The training contained tips and trick for users to help creating their own daily work methodologies
  3. The NDIA CP-31 administrators were well trained to handle the high level maintenance of the system and help other users get the maximum usage of the existing features. Their training included creating OOB workflows, OOB web parts, controlling views… etc
  4. Afkar used many OOB features of the enterprise search to help making the simplest basic user search as accurate as possible
  5. Afkar Trained the users to get the maximum benefit of “My Site” feature to reduce their own un managed desktop storage into using a system functional managed storage
  6. Afkar trained the users to their own Exchange data into their own sites using the OOB Exchange web parts
  7. Afkar trained both Office 2007 and Office 2003 users in separate groups to make sure every body gets the maximum benefit. Office 003 users also had the chance to look at the Office 2007 features that integrate with MOSS 2007 and the organization took a decision to purchase and use Office 2007 from that point
  8. Afkar helped with creating the enhanced document tagging features by creating the templates and adding some suggested tagging to them. NDIA CP-31 users were made sure to be aware of this feature and trained to use it

The project came with a great benefit to the NDIA CP-31 by providing a solution that really enhances their daily work and release a lot of work pressure and saves valuable time. Users now are able to create, control and dispose their documents through MOSS 2007.

The biggest benefit that NDIA CP-31 got through this project is that their vision expanded for larger and extended usage of the product. Afkar was leading to open their eyes onto a unique bigger opportunity in the future. The three different entities involved in this project started studying to purchase / upgrade their own internal systems to MOSS 2007 after their own experience in this project.

Before MOSS 2007 Using MOSS 2007
1- Figure 1: Old scenario. Documents were stored on server 1- Figure 2: Present situation. Documents are classified
2- user’s desktops and laptops. No well classification, no 2- and stored in sites and document libraries. A well
3- accurate search centric method. 3- classified structure and strong search engine.

The future seems to bee brightly smiling for this project as NDIA CP-31 has requested Afkar to draw the future outlines of the upcoming waves plan of this project. Afkar has already suggested a lot of future expansion and enhancements including:

  1. Using document policies and record management features that are built in inside the MOSS 2007 technologies
  2. Developing an embedded tool for automated document serializing
  3. Creating more complicated workflows and train the users to create medium level complicated workflows through MS SharePoint Designer 2007
  4. Train users and administrators for more deep and complicated processes in MOSS 2007 to cope with the new technologies and enhancements
  5. Move the existing online single-server installation platform to an internal solid and more reliable multiple server installation of MOSS 2007 to enhance performance, security and get more control

Summary

NDIA CP-31 is one of the first customers in the Middle East area that uses MOSS 2007 as their sole document management solution and collaboration portal. Their successful story with MOSS 2007 gives a huge indication on the effect of the planned and well structured usage of MOSS 2007, and indicates the big value for Afkar as we played an important role consulting the customer with the best solution to achieve the high success we are proud to showcase amongst our large number of success stories.