Staff Portal
Case overview
A personalized digital portal designed for university students and faculty, serving as a single access point for all academic information and services. The platform integrates over 10 internal systems and APIs — including schedules, grades, and Moodle SSO — into one seamless experience.
The portal dynamically adapts content and functionality based on 8 personalization criteria, ensuring every user receives a relevant and intuitive experience immediately after login. Alongside the user-facing experience, the system provides editors with a flexible content management environment that removes dependency on developers for everyday content operations.
Special attention was given to platform stability under high load and to building a preview system that allows editors to view pages exactly as specific users would see them before publishing.
Goal: To create a unified and highly personalized university portal that simplifies access to academic services for students and faculty while providing administrato
Key project info
Industries
Education, Higher Education, E-learning Platforms, Academic Administration, Digital Campus Solutions, Student Information Services
Services
UI/UX Design, Frontend Development, Backend Development, CMS Customization, API Integration, Cloud Infrastructure Setup, Content Personalization
Solutions
Student & Faculty Portal, Personalized Academic Dashboard, Moodle SSO Integration, Academic Information Management System, Personalized Content Delivery Platform
Technologies
C#, .NET, Angular, Umbraco CMS, Docker, AWS, AWS Fargate, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, AWS Load Balancer, REST API Integrations, Single Sign-On (SSO)
The challenges
Large Number of APIs
More than ten data sources with different formats, protocols, and constraints required a unified integration layer that stayed stable despite external system updates.
Personalization
Every content item could target a specific audience across 8 criteria. The personalization engine had to perform reliably under thousands of concurrent user sessions.
Stability Under Load
The portal shares infrastructure with the public site, requiring careful architecture for traffic isolation and stable performance during peak academic load periods.
Moodle Integration
Moodle’s complex authentication required custom SSO integration for seamless transition between the portal and LMS without repeated login.
Personalized Search
Standard full-text search was not sufficient — search results had to be filtered against each user's permissions and profile, requiring a dedicated search index architecture.
Editor Preview System
Angular SPA runs inside the Umbraco back-office. An embedded preview system lets editors view any page as a specific student before publishing.
The process
A phased implementation approach is used, beginning with the design and setup of the core API architecture and authentication system, and gradually progressing through successive stages, ultimately culminating in a fully integrated, CMS-driven notification layer that unifies content delivery and system behavior across platforms.
Architecture Design
Defined a scalable system architecture based on a shared infrastructure with the public website, ensuring clear separation of domains, stable performance, and readiness for high-load usage in an academic environment.
Content Personalization System
Implemented a rule-based personalization engine using 8 criteria, enabling precise control over content visibility and ensuring that each user receives relevant information based on their role and attributes.
API Integrations
Connected multiple external and internal services, including schedules, grades, payments, assignments, and Moodle SSO, creating a unified access point for all academic data within a single portal.
Editor Experience & Preview System
Developed a flexible CMS experience in Umbraco with an embedded preview mode, allowing editors to accurately view content exactly as it appears for specific user types before publishing.
Frontend Implementation
Built a dynamic Angular SPA that supports personalized rendering, seamless navigation, and real-time adaptation of content based on user roles and permissions, ensuring a responsive and consistent user experience across all modules.
Performance & Stability Optimization
Focused on ensuring consistent system reliability under high load conditions by optimizing backend processes, improving infrastructure configuration, and enhancing API communication across distributed services and integrations.
Solutions
The key features of solution
Schedule — Schedule API integration with day, week, and month views. Real-time sync from academic system.
Grades & Academic Progress —Access to grades via API — current, final, and course breakdowns.
Course Payments — Course payments — status, balances, receipts in portal.
Assignments — Live display of assignments, deadlines, and submission status — synchronized with course management systems.
Moodle SSO — Single Sign-On between portal and Moodle — one session for all services.
Content Personalization — Rule-based personalization across 8 criteria. Editors define target audience per content item.
Results in numbers
100%
The portal delivers fully personalized content based on 8 user-specific criteria, ensuring each student and faculty member sees relevant information after login.
10+
The system consolidates multiple academic services into a single portal, integrating schedules, grades, payments, assignments, and Moodle access.
100%
Long-term maintenance effort significantly reduced through modular architecture — changes are isolated, predictable, and require minimal engineering time to implement or roll back
100%
The portal is accessible only after successful authentication, ensuring secure, role-based access to sensitive academic data and services for students and faculty.