Progressive and successful implementation including integration and customization
The Federal University of Santa Maria, more commonly known as the University of Santa María (USM), was founded in Valparaiso in 1929. The USM is one of the Most reputed engineering universities in Chile. It has ofces in Chile located in Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, Santiago, Talcahuano and Rancagua, as well as Campus in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The Universidad Santa María was the rst Latin American university to grant a doctorate in engineering in 1963.
Challenge
Leverage a single source of information to serve different academic portals
The Latin American IT Department at the Federal University of Santa Maria faced challenges with their existing, inefficient information-sharing system. They needed a centralized platform to create, manage, and share content effectively within their department and enhance collaboration. Their initial goal was to establish a centralized source of information within the department. In a subsequent phase, they planned to extend this solution to connect with other university departments, aiming for a standardized platform for the entire university community.
Why eXo?
An open source solution with full third-party integration capabilities
For the project, the ideal solution was to adopt an open-source-based platform that was extensible and compliant with standards. eXo Platform emerged as the perfect choice for a digital collaboration and portal management solution, meeting the department's requirements.
We chose eXo Platform for its price-to-performance ratio, since it not only meets all our desired characteristics in a portal solution and its total cost is more within reach compared to other similar tools on the market.
Sergio Fuentes León, Chief Development Officer
Since we are talking about a university, the cost was a major criterion when choosing the right solution. The overall cost of the eXo Platform was able to t perfectly with the budget that the university allocated to the project.
We remain in touch and are quite satised. At rst, the process was somewhat slow but then response times improved as the project progressed. There isn’t much we would change at this point. For us, the product does not need any major improvements.
Sergio Fuentes León, Head of Development Area at the University
The impact
Team collaboration improved and made signicantly easy
By implementing the eXo Platform solution, the university achieved several significant benefits. They were able to create and manage information efficiently using custom templates, centralize this information in a single source, and facilitate sharing across all departments, thereby promoting unity through a single product .
This approach led to cost savings in terms of maintenance.
Departmental portals were established for various university units, including the General Secretariat, the Directorate of Information, and the Department of Chemistry.
These portals included news templates categorized by topics and a tailored information application that allowed for the management of both internal and external documents.
In functional terms, the platform has the ability to integrate different portals into one along with the possibility of integrating services built by us through portlets that comply with internationally recognized standards, ensuring compatibility with other platforms. It also allows us to share content between portals easily, which facilitates the administration of content in our institution.
Sergio Fuentes León, Chief Development Ofcer
The result is quite interesting with a total of four portals managed from a single intranet framework and made accessible securely to key departments of the university.
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