Integrating web portal

Simon Stevin is the Study Association for Mechanical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. Counting more than 1400 members of which about 150 participate actively in 25 committees, they organise all kinds events interesting for mechanical engineers. From their yearly Symposium to serving drinks in Faculty Bar 'De Weeghconst', Simon Stevin is considered one of the most active associations of Eindhoven.

Simon Stevin used many different externally and internally developed systems for e.g. event subscriptions, payments, book ordering, communication and member administration. Among those systems are a wiki, cash/POS system Lassie and a custom member administration. Together with Simon Stevin, I developed a brand new website with one clear focus: integrating all services in one clear dashboard for their members. Using Laravel 5.4, a clear MVC framework is made, connecting all external services and delivering a visually uniform front-end.

The dashboard contains all important information for members of the association;

• Featured events to subscribe to, based on the member's profile
• Events the user has subscribed for
• News articles
• Notifications regarding activities, ordered books or committee work
• The member's current balance, fetched from the POS system's API

Other features offered to users are visible in the main menu below. This includes a Single Sign-on Wiki which uses data available on users to determine the appropriate rights within the Wiki, an expenses claim form for committee members of Simon Stevin and a Study Resources portal in which students can share course material, summaries and exams among each other. All those features of course are supported with a back-end, making administration of expenses claims and iDEAL transactions easy and helping the board to reach out to their members using various channels. This includes sending notifications, which are delivered to student e.g. via push messages in the Simon Stevin app, automatic email or just a message in the user's dashboard.

Besides a front-end on simonstev.in, members are able to e.g. subscribe for activities and upgrading their bar balance via a dedicated app. Furthermore, users can receive last-minute updates regarding subscribed events through push notifications.