Statute database: Customized DMS integration for TUM

Requirements & Prerequisites

The task of this project was to make over 1500 statutes, regulations and official notices including their readable versions digitally available. In addition, a filtering and sorting option for the entries as well as a direct download of the respective document as a PDF was desired.

The foundation for this was already laid at the beginning: the statutes and regulations are created and managed by approved administrators using the powerful document management system (DMS) provided by codia to the Technical University of Munich. Features such as versioning, categorization and the storage of meta-information were already available here.

Implementation & Challenges

We built the bridge to TUM's TYPO3 instance with the help of a TYPO3 extension, which has read access to the API provided by the DMS. This makes it possible to retrieve the necessary data from the database in real time and to output it correctly in the front end. Furthermore, on the individual course details pages of the Studyfinder, cross-links are displayed, which can be used to get directly to the appropriate statutes for the respective course.

One of the challenges of this project was the technical connection of the DMS to the TYPO3 environment via a complex interface, which we were able to manage quickly based on our experience in this area. Thanks to the agile approach and regular online meetings, the project, despite a large number of parties and people involved (developers and project managers from the Technical University of Munich, contacts from codia, as well as our own responsible employees), could be efficiently implemented and successfully completed within a very short time.

Outlook

In the near future we will keep an eye on user behavior and, if necessary, plan and carry out further optimizations in order to keep improving usability. The extension also offers a good basis for building future projects with interface connection to document management systems based on it. We look forward to user feedback and to the next few years of working together on other exciting projects!