Background

The Union Learning Fund (ULF) was created in 1998 by the Government to provide training in the work place to increase people's basic skills. Each year a new application round opens so that unions can apply for funding to run projects / courses for their members in conjunction with their employers. An allocation of £20m per year is provided to the ULF to fund new union learning projects.

BOCC together with TUC Unionlearn developed a web based online grant application, processing and management system that allows unions to submit funding bids to the Union Learning Fund (ULF).  The Union Learning Fund team is then able to manage these applications through to successful contracts and monitor the projects and funds during the term of the contract.

Our brief

The ULF commissioned Campaign for Learning to create a resource to help with the planning and delivery of ULF projects for unions.  The resource - 'ULF Toolkit'  is a comprehensive document that comprises of approximately 30 pages in it's paper form. The Toolkit also references a number of already available materials, such as Resources, Key Documents and Case Studies.

Our approach

The ULF team were looking to create an interactive, online version of the Toolkit and make it available from the main ULF website. BOCC suggested that in order to accommodate for the new Toolkit and also restructure the current website that we upgrade the existing content management system to the latest version of the YouDu CMS.

BOCC's in house Design Team created an updated new look and feel for the webiste and developed the following templates for the Toolkit:

• Revised Home Page design to incorporate news stories, forthcoming events and promotional images;
• Revised 'Prospectus' design;
• New Toolkit design, including the option to embed Flash and video files.

The revised designs were based on the existing ‘unionlearn’ and ‘ULF’ brands.

The YouDu CMS includes the following additional features, which were integral to the inclusion of the Toolkit within the website:

• News and press releases module;
• Events module;
• Notice Board;
• Ability to upload rich media content such as videos, Flash and audio files;
• Easily move and restructure the website pages and content.

The website redesign, CMS upgrade and additional Toolkit functionality was completed to a particularly tight deadline. The new site was up an running within three weeks of the go ahead from the ULF team.

Technologies

The system utilises:

• Microsoft™ SQL Server 2005
• Adobe® ColdFusion®
• AJAX
• Microsoft Internet Information Server
• Fully managed dedicated web server at BOCC
• SSL (Secure Server Certificate)
• Extensible HyperText Markup Language 1.0
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.0 compliant