Promet + Acquia Co-Sponsor FLGISA Winter Conference

Posted on January 23, 2018 by Molly

The FLGISA is an organization for CIO's, IT Managers, and technology decision makers from the state's local government agencies. The FLGISA Winter 2018 is where technology leaders from Florida local governments attend to learn, share the latest in technology trends, foster new professional relationships and meet current and potential business partners. Conference attendees consist of local government chief information officers, technology managers, and other technology decision-makers.

The Promet Source and Acquia team will be onsite throughout the duration of the conference to speak with attendees about web development, support, hosting, web accessibility and cloud based open-source solutions that can help propel their government organizations web presence.

About Promet Source

Founded in 2003, Promet Source is a web design and development agency that specializes in open-source solutions for government, higher education and association/nonprofit clients. We offer web design, custom implementations, private and public instructor lead Drupal training, complex integrations, web accessibility compliance services, digital consulting and full 24x7 support to their clients.

About Acquia

Acquia is the leading provider of cloud-based, digital experience management solutions. Forward-thinking organizations rely on Acquia to transform the way they can engage with customers -- in a personal and contextual way, across every device and channel. Acquia provides the agility organizations need to embrace new digital business models and speed innovation and time to market. With Acquia, thousands of customers globally including the BBC, Cisco, Stanford University, and the Australian Government are delivering digital experiences with transformational business impact.

Working with Government Organizations in Florida

Together, Promet Source and Acquia have helped a number of organizations in Florida redesign and rethink their websites to create modern, user friendly and accessible digital experiences with Drupal 8.

South Florida Water Management District

SFWMD needed a platform that was modern and user-friendly. Because they have a lot of content to share with site visitors, they needed a content management system that could comfortably handle large amounts of information. Their previous site had hard-coded pages, which were cumbersome to update, so they also needed a site that could be updated without having to touch code when information changed.

SFWMD also wanted to minimize the usage of custom modules and code, so a decision was made to utilize existing Drupal 8 modules and code whenever possible, instead of developing or depending upon custom modules. In order to help SFWMD schedule budgeting and management needs for the project, Promet Source took a phased approach to the project, and set phases and milestones so that both parties could keep track of the project progression.

Martin County Florida

The state of Florida has a policy of open government which allows Floridians free access to public records and documents. This is a great way to bring transparency to the inner workings of Florida’s government agencies.

Promet Source was faced with the challenge of building a highly useable and accessible Drupal site that also made thousands of PDF files searchable within the site. Combine a massive volume of data with the particulars of Martin County’s user stories: users need to see accurate search results for specific synonyms within the vast library. Another wrinkle to the equation was introduced by the hosting setup for Martin County, a cloud instance which didn’t allow Javascript.

Promet Source implemented a PDF document parser with Apache Tika. A single instance of Solr on the web head server delivers speedy results, while swapping Solr’s default query configuration for indexed phrases and other stored content to deliver highly accurate results for searches containing phrases. The indexed content is then displayed to the end user on the Drupal site.

The end result is a comprehensive search functionality that quickly delivers accurate results from three different sources, while providing all users with a flawless experience, no matter their web accessibility challenges.