The Jerusalem Trust help provide resources to schools teaching Christianity within Religious Education through grant funding.
A Snippet of
The Requirements
The team at the Jerusalem Trust (J.T.) came to us asking for help to streamline their current process. With an outdated website database and CRM system, their website required some T.L.C.!
After discussions with the J.T. team, it was clear this project required database-driven development. There were two requirements which needed to be executed:
1) For schools to use the website to follow an application process to apply for funding.
2) For the J.T. admin team to utilise the website’s backend to manage all applications. From there, the team need to be able to accept, decline and monitor all stages of the applications.
YEAR
2021
MISSION
To design and develop a bespoke database and CRM system for schools to apply for grants and for the Jerusalem Trust team to manage applicants.
TYPE
Bespoke Web Development
Database Migration
project process
the initial stage
The Jerusalem Trust project was a build involving great complexity. Through the development of a custom user-facing application form with numerous fields, to housing confidential details of each applicant that had to be editable by the admin and used to communicate to the applicant via pre-set email triggers. This project demanded a deep understanding of the website’s data flow and how we were going to store this data safely and securely.
At the start of the journey, we have the website that the user sees. The frontend custom form displayed many fields collecting the user’s details, such as name, email, phone number, and school details, to a list of desired items to be purchased by the school with the funding acquired.
Each field had to be collected and stored once the form had been submitted. This being done by creating a custom application post type that could be monitored, edited, and stored efficiently by the admin on the site. With the sensitive data collected, each field had to be encrypted with a sypher which ensured security and would remove the possibility of any data integrity breach.
Signika
Signika variable font is a sans-serif with a gentle character, developed for wayfinding, signage, and other media where clarity of information is required. It has a low contrast and tall x-height to improve readability of texts in small sizes as well as in large distances from the reader.
Android Green
#A6C706
Avocado
#507400
Selective Yellow
#FFBA00
Onyx
#3C3C3C
project process
next steps
Next, it’s the turn of the J.T. team to manage the application…
Once the data for each application was collected and stored into an application post type, the J.T. team would then have the ability to monitor each application and perform the necessary actions required to approve or deny the funding request.
We developed a user interface accessible by the admin (the team) that would give them the option to search through all existing applications with an array of different filters, and from there, be able to navigate to a single application page that would house all the information taken from the application form. This was displayed in a format that made it very easy for the admin to retrieve the required data, updating items through changing their names, quantities and even the value they were set to have. The admin could also add new items, updating the entire application to display the correct totals.
We also developed a dropdown list of different email triggers within this single application user interface. Selecting a specific one and confirming the send would fire an email to the applicant with relevant content. Some email triggers would also hold private links to pages requiring the applicant to navigate to and perform important actions. One of these was the request for the school’s BACS details, where they would have to attach files to a form and submit it back to the website. Again, this process had to be very secure as it was dealing with sensitive data, so we developed a system that would send the applicant an encrypted link that, once they submitted the form, would send the contents back to the correct application, ready for the next stage of the application process.
As well as the development work on the application process, we had to work with the Google Maps API to create a map of the U.K. with pinpoints of all the successful applications. We developed this feature within the site’s backend to be used by the admin so reports could be easily generated. We also built the functionality to that the admin could select two dates, and it would find all applications within them.
Overall, we aided the J.T. team in reducing admin time by streamlining their application process and developing a platform that enabled them to view all applicants at every stage of the application process.
