We’ve broken out the bubbly, and are snacking on the caviar, because we’ve just launched our first intranet built with RubyOnRails. What’s an intranet you ask? What’s RubyOnRails?

Remembering that this is ostensibly a post to tell you about the work we’ve been doing for Five Senses, I’ll just give you a quick primer. An intranet is essentially a way for you to store and use company information via a web browser. And RubyOnRails, which we mentioned a while back is a web development framework that makes our job easier than some of the tools we were using in the past. And as we all know, when things are easier for the developer, that means less time which, happily for all (except our bank manager) means less money!

We’ve broken out the bubbly, and are snacking on the caviar, because we’ve just launched our first intranet built with RubyOnRails. What’s an intranet you ask? What’s RubyOnRails?

Remembering that this is ostensibly a post to tell you about the work we’ve been doing for Five Senses, I’ll just give you a quick primer. An intranet is essentially a way for you to store and use company information via a web browser. And RubyOnRails, which we mentioned a while back is a web development framework that makes our job easier than some of the tools we were using in the past. And as we all know, when things are easier for the developer, that means less time which, happily for all (except our bank manager) means less money!

So, what did we do for Five Senses? Well, a little bit of background first, and then we’ll get to the cool stuff.

Five Senses are a coffee roaster based in Rockingham, Western Australia who just happen to make the best damn coffee in the world. Over the seven or so years that they’ve been in business they have grown quite considerably, to having around 700 clients around Australia (and in fact distributors in Japan and other countries). And they’ve managed all of those clients using a combination of paper, accounting software, rubber bands, chewing gum and luck.

When we discussed developing their new website (which you should totally check out by the way), we talked about the possibility of helping sort out the multi headed beast that their customer management system had become. So, with the website up and running and taking orders left, right and centre, we sat down and had a crack at the intranet.

With many hours on Skype and Adium, we planned out what was needed. Then, using the wonderfulness that is RubyOnRails, we sat down and built it. And can we just say that the experience was astonishing. After having dealt with data access layers, DLL versions, non-standard HTML generating server controls, custom server controls and a whole host of other beasties while developing in ASP.Net, we were just blown away by RubyOnRails. You want something, you just build it. You change it, you only have to change it in one spot, not in fifteen different configuration files. It’s great.

OK, now that you’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering, what does this intranet actually do? Firstly, it provides a central location for all information about Five Senses’ clients to be stored. Addresses, email addresses, contact details, standing order information, packaging requirements. All of it. Then, it allows staff to track all interaction with the clients, so that everyone else can see what’s going on. If you call Five Senses, they log it. If you fax an order, it goes into the intranet for Operations to fill it. When Operations fill the order, they print the shipping label from the intranet. And the best bit about it is that it’s all accessible from anywhere in the world, provided you have a web browser. Simple.

We’re ever so happy with what we’ve done. We’ll post some screenshots of the intranet at work shortly. Now, if you excuse us, we’re off to have a drink!