European Consumer Organisation BEUC launches wfDynamic-based online registration platform
Under the name of TRACE - Training for Consumer Empowerment - the European Consumers' Organisation BEUC organises training courses for staff of consumer organisations on behalf of the European Commission. To facilitate both the application for participants and the internal process of participant selection and training organisation BEUC has launched a database driven web portal based on webfactory's wfDynamic Web Application Framework.
Published on:2006-07-10
The implementation of webfactory’s wfDynamic gives both the BEUC staff and the course participants a user friendly and dynamic system designed to organize and transfer information, schedule events, put together publication materials and more - all while upholding privacy of the participants. How does it work?
Participants only need to sign up once online at http://www.trace-beuc.org to register for all courses they are interested in. After registering, participants are granted access to the participant area called myTRACE where they can easily handle all their personal information concerning the training course e. g. they are able to express their interest in participating in TRACE courses and update their personal data at any time.
Via the wfDynamic-based backend system, BEUC staff can select participants for the courses based on participant availability on the course dates. The training organisation process is supported by the integrated mail system that automatically sends personalised course calls, invitations, confirmations and course information to the appropriate audience.
Furthermore, the participant information is used to automatically generate pre-course trainer handouts, which contain all relevant information about participants. The same information is incorporated into booklets, which are distributed to the participants during sessions and contain contact information and photos of the course attendees. Since the participants maintain their own information (using myTRACE), participant information in such handouts is limited to what the participant designates in his/her personal myTRACE account. Thus the privacy of each participant is upheld. After each course, participants are invited to give their feedback via a web form in myTRACE, the feedback data being stored in the backend system. The handouts and booklets are generated in PDF format and all information can be exported to MS Excel for further processing and course evaluation.
webfactory designed and implemented the web frontend as well as the backend software and webfactory will also host the service.
“It was quite daunting as we set out to create a new database and website system to help facilitate our work but as soon as we started working with webfactory our fears were dispelled”, says BEUC training manager Carol Ann Morris. “Throughout the whole process webfactory have innately understood our needs and with patience and professionalism helped us to set up a very user-friendly database and lively website for both us and our course participants. Moreover the post launch support can only be described as excellent.”
About BEUC
BEUC, the European Consumers' Organisation, is the Brussels-based federation of 40 independent national consumer organisations from the EU, accession and EEA countries. Their job is to try to influence, in the consumer interest, the development of EU policy and to promote and defend the interests of all European consumers.