Ormiston Children & Families Trust

Ormiston logo Ormiston Children and Families Trust works to promote the well being of children and young people, especially those disadvantaged by their life experiences or circumstances. This is achieved through direct service provision and by raising awareness of related issues through research, publications, conferences and events.

We have undertaken two projects for Ormiston using a dedicated server which we procured for them.

Web Site

Their public web site explains all about what they do. As with most of our bigger customer web sites it uses our Opus content management system so that Ormiston can update the site themselves now that it's set up. In particular the job opportunities page as they are often recruiting new staff.

In 2007 Ormiston undertook a re-branding exercise and using Opus stood them in good stead as by re-designing a few templates we were able to re-brand the whole site for them while retaining the existing content.

Ormiston screen shot

The design they are using now is themed, with different colourways for each section of the site, so for example the Time for Families pages uses different spot colour to the Community Projects pages.

Intranet

As you will see from the map on their web site Ormiston has people working in projects all over East Anglia. This gives them particular organisational problems which we have helped them solve.

On their colo server we have installed an intranet. This is a web site to which only their employees have access, they having to identify themselves by logging on. They can get access to the server from any office, from home, or when visiting other locations, so they always have access to the facilities on the intranet so long as they have Web access.

OCFT intranet screen shot

Once logged into the intranet they have access to:

Noticeboard
The noticeboard gives them news of events and other information which needs sharing within the organisation. For a charity with as many locations as Ormiston this is vital. The noticeboard is broken down into sections. It's based on Opus again so it's easy for them to update themselves.
Shared diary
Based on WebCalendar, a diary system we have also installed elsewhere, with modifications to integrate it with the rest of the intranet, this lets employees keep their diary on the Web and to share it with other employees so at a glance they can see what other people are doing, schedule meetings etc. WebCalendar supports public and private events so that confidential diary entries can be kept private or just the date and time shown but not the details of the event.
Address book
A shared address book allows details of employees, projects, external organisations and contacts to be stored.
Email
Based on SquirrelMail with modifications to integrate it with the rest of the intranet, including the address book, employees can send and receive email via the intranet's web interface. In addition the intranet server includes an IMAP mail server which can be accessed from a IMAP capable mail client such as Outlook or Thunderbird.
Document store
A repository for organisation wide documents such as the employee handbook so that employees always have access to the latest versions of documents. Based on Opus documents are stored in PDF format and are searchable using the Opus search engine.

The intranet is very much an ongoing project with new facilities in the pipeline.