Client
NMBU
Industry
Education
Assignment
Content Management System (CMS) for websites that is more user-customized, both for students and staff.
Technology
Decoupled Drupal with NextJS
Migration
10.000 articles and 50.000 media files
Tailored blocks
15+ Gutenberg blocs and page templates
Our delivery
- Strategic consulting for technology, accessibility (UU), and user experience (UX)
- Leadership across all consultancy areas (insight, process management, development, design, testing, etc.)
- Consulting for frameworks and systems
- Technical development of website with all necessary integrations and coordination of third parties
- Data and content migration
- Advanced role and access management
- Modern visual page builder in Gutenberg, often saving you more than half the time in content creation
- Ongoing operations and support
1700+
Employees
6000+
Students
9th place
International school ranking
89
Study programs
Finding information and applying for studies should be easy today. Together with NMBU, we developed a website that makes the student everyday and staff workday efficient. This helped them in the transformation from an information-heavy to a user-oriented website
The challenge
NMBU, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, is dedicated to securing the future’s livelihood. Building upon a proud history as the Norwegian Agricultural College and the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, NMBU has, since 1859, evolved into a world-leading university in several of its disciplines.
However, NMBU’s website was not world-class, and there was a need for a more user-friendly and efficient website for prospective students, current students, and staff.
The outcome
Here, you can explore study programs, conduct study searches, find resources for students, discover activities, and see the ongoing research at NMBU.
In addition, employees have gained a completely new and improved way to work with content and pages that is much more user-friendly and efficient. The new editing experience is based on the modern, visual page builder Gutenberg, often saving you more than half the time in content creation.
The new website marks the starting line for efforts to create a more user-friendly and efficient platform. To make the website more sustainable, content is stored in the cloud, unnecessary images and illustrations were removed, and a lot of old information was cleared out.
Selected integrations
Felles Studentsystem (Common Student System) for study information
The Common Student System (FS) is used by almost all Norwegian universities and colleges. The FS database contains the university’s own student and study data. Frontkom has developed an integration between the content management system (CMS) and the Common Student System (FS) that automates the retrieval and presentation of information on study pages. It allows you to choose the year and semester for synchronizing study information. These values can be overridden during manual synchronization in the terminal using Drush. The solution uses Sikt’s API, without the use of XML. Soon, the solution will also utilize Sikt’s new GraphQL API.
Previously, many relied on XML integration, but it posed some challenges related to the need for a manual review to ensure correct formatting. Additionally, the data synchronization import took a long time, did not provide an overview of which fields and studies were updated afterward, and did not allow for data pushback to FS.
More info: FS – Felles Studentssytem
Login with Azure Authentication via SAML
Azure Authentication via Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authentication-related data. In brief, the integration allows you to have users in an external database, providing the following benefits:
- Single sign-on (SSO)
- Simple, secure, and user-friendly login
- Can use the same login as the rest of the organization’s systems
More info: Azure Authentication via SAML
Cristin for publications
On each employee profile, visitors can view a listing of both scientific articles and other literature authored by the employee. The content is automatically retrieved from app.cristin.no.
Azure Active Directory for employee data
All employee data resides outside the CMS in the customer’s own system. Personal information and contact details for all employees are retrieved from Azure AD. This is seamlessly displayed in Drupal. Employees can be listed in various formats and filters, and, of course, they can be searched for using various criteria
ElasticSearch (search engine)
The search experience for the website is customized with 5 different indexes for study programs, study plans, subjects, employees, and global search. The search employs intelligent logic, including fuzzy search to accommodate spelling errors, a synonym dictionary, partial matches, and a variety of filters. Different types of content are weighted differently. The search results have been tested and tailored to provide maximum user-friendliness.
Does this sound interesting? Get in touch with Thor André 👋
Thor André
Senior advisor Education
