Chicago Schools Leverage BI and Portal for Better Student Info Access

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) IMPACT group uses Business Objects Crystal Reports to report on important student data - everything from basic information like addresses and attendance to homeless status, lunch program registrations, disability status, and so on. They are able to make informed decisions about programs, resources, and budgets based on the information reported out of this Business Objects system that were maintained and consumed at the District level.

CPS needed information to manage schools better

The problem was getting the right reports to the right people in the right place where the information was most needed—in the schools. Since there are more than 600 schools, with a unique organizational hierarchy, the out of the box solutions would have required that they develop, deploy, schedule, and maintain, over  600 reports. This was not practical from cost or effort perspectives. Moreover, they had to make certain that information was shared only with authorized users. CPS also wanted to minimize the number of different systems that users needed to learn how to use.
 
Dunn Solutions Group Delivers Custom SharePoint Business Objects Integration

Dunn Solutions Group leveraged the Business Objects platform SDK and Microsoft Sharepoint to create three applications that allowed CPS to deliver the right reports to the right people through one seamless interface:

  • A report burster which generated Business Objects reports into folders for each of the 600 schools
  • Custom Active Directory integration to handle security and single sign-on
  • Custom SharePoint application to present the reports in the standard CPS intranet portal
Dunn created a “reporting burster” application that automatically copied the reports to the proper school folders and dynamically specified the correct parameters (school ID, district ID, date, and so on). As part of this process, Dunn also upgraded their platform to Business Objects Enterprise XI Release 2. The software was installed in a distributed cluster, which is fault-tolerant and allows for load balancing.

The next part of the solution addressed security. CPS has unique report access needs that did not fit into the standard Business Objects security model. They also manage access control, passwords, and user names with Microsoft Active Directory on their network. Dunn Solutions Group created a “synchronizer” that pulls the Active Directory information into Business Objects which manages users, groups, and folders and the security on top of them so that administrators can control access to reports in one place.

Lastly, Dunn wrote a custom integrated SharePoint application that mimics Business Objects’ InfoView look and feel, but allows users to browse reports by District, Area, and School that relate to their work.

Better Information Drives Better Performance

This custom solution allows CPS to get the most out of their Business Objects system in the context of their whole technical environment. They were able to continue their efforts to push decision-making to the school level and support local leadership with the data they need.