By producing a series of reusable functionality components, GBS has made it easy for Powerco to quickly assemble superior customised map viewers in-house

Challenge

Powerco’s eView application was showing its age and internal users were becoming increasingly frustrated with the amount of time it took to find the information they needed.

“We were working with outdated technology. It was inflexible – a ‘one-size-fits-all’ type of solution that wasn’t tailored to the needs of any specific business unit”, says Greg Newman, Project Manager at Powerco.

“It was also high maintenance – an increasingly hard application to support.”

GBS were contracted to develop a set of tools and components that would allow Powerco’s in-house development team to quickly build focused viewing solutions on-demand to suit the various requirements of specific user groups.

All components had to be compatible with the ArcFM 10 Silverlight Viewer. GBS was also responsible for training the Powerco developers on how to use the tools and components.

The Solution

GBS developed a set of ArcGIS Server, ArcFM Server and Custom (ArcGIS, ArcFM hybrid) Silverlight components. Collectively, the components form a library of tools that can be used interchangeably across multiple Silverlight viewer solutions. The toolkit is extensible, so more tools can be added in the future.

The toolkit approach gives Powerco’s in-house developers the ability to design focused applications for specific end-user groups.

“Within the ElectricView component kit we have what we need for various map-related activities, such as network tracing, locating, queries and bookmarking. It’s a complete framework that lets us mix and match tools to suit a specific business group or set of users. Instead of having one big application that everyone had to wade through, people can work with an app that’s exactly made for them”, says Greg.

Acceptance by users switching from eView was assisted by the speed and usability of the new applications. Applications built with the ElectricView kit run faster and are much easier to use.

 “It’s simple to use and simple to configure. Simply drag and drop. The end result is so much easier for our users – they get only the functionality they need, precompiled in a web-accessed application.”

Lokesh Addagada, GIS Specialist at Powerco says, “we are maintaining a different level of functionality for each group. For example, we have an internal ElectricView, which has the tracing functionality, bookmarks and query address location – that’s all one group needed, so that’s all we’ve given them. It’s pick and mix. Everyone gets just what they want.”

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