Building a Drupal-powered knowledge management platform for a global nonprofit

Challenges

The client wanted a seamless integration of the knowledge management platform with the SharePoint Library while also ensuring security for their public website.

This meant our teams had to find an efficient way to share critical information with org's external partners while maintaining robust security measures on their public-facing platform.

Approach

In our research phase, it became clear that streamlining and standardising the organisation’s online platforms was necessary. 

To achieve this, we created a strategic approach to develop code and configurations tailored for Clearing House and the Knowledge Portal, with the flexibility to extend their use across other websites within the organisation.

This approach simplified the reuse of shared components across platforms and helped establish a more cohesive user experience across the organisation’s digital landscape.

For the knowledge management platform, we chose Drupal for its strong CMS capabilities and built two separate websites: Clearing House, which stores documents and media from the organisation’s SharePoint system through API integration, and the Knowledge Portal, the public-facing site that consumes and publishes content from Clearing House.

Solution

Cohesive design

To create a cohesive user experience, we implemented a consolidated homepage featuring country-specific information. This design allows users to seamlessly switch between regions while the experience remains consistent.

It offers a central solution for users to access a single source of truth across multiple country sites, covering diverse media.

Full-text search

Seamless integration of full-text search into the organisation’s Knowledge Portal empowered users to effortlessly conduct comprehensive site-wide or country-specific searches, streamlining access to critical information throughout.

Clearing House

The Clearing House website serves as a hub for various types of information, including audio, video, images, and more. This content is stored as media and is accessible through a public API.

By making use of this API, other websites can seamlessly share the organisation’s technical knowledge. They can achieve this by embedding media via iframes or providing simple download links.

Users find it easy to approve documents on SharePoint and publish them directly on the Clearing House website. The metadata from SharePoint documents is queued and routinely synchronised, ensuring that the content remains up-to-date, typically refreshing every 2-3 minutes.

Clearing House acts as a publisher website, allowing other websites to subscribe to new content via OAuth 2.0 authentication. Currently, the Knowledge Portal is the only subscriber. Whenever fresh documents or media become available within the Clearing House, they are promptly dispatched to the Knowledge Portal.

The organisation’s approach includes safeguarding certain content. To support this, Clearing House enables other websites to subscribe through an OAuth 2.0 authenticated REST API.

This framework allows Clearing House to apply access rules to the content it publishes,ensuring it remains secure while still being accessible to the appropriate users.

Knowledge Portal

The Knowledge Portal serves as a hub for various microsites covering different geographies and categories such as health, migration, water and sanitation, and more. The organisation’s content authors can seamlessly access Clearing House documents within the Knowledge admin interface.

Content authors can then enrich these documents by creating articles that add context to complex information, making it easier for a wider audience to understand and use.

Outcome

We established a robust workflow that simplifies access to information across various websites. Content authors now have the flexibility to create and update information based on Clearing House documents and share them on the Knowledge Portal.
Content can be added to microsites or the global site, and both the Clearing House and Knowledge Portal offer easy search and sorting options. The page builder tool empowers content teams to craft homepages and other basic pages effortlessly.

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