Cascade CMS

Cascade is a ASP.NET MVC-based CMS that I developed to manage client content for web sites created by my company, Limerock Solutions. The CMS allows clients to manage:

• Web Page Text
• Blog/News Stories
• E-commerce (products, retail settings, orders, and more)
• Advertising Campaigns
• Reports & Data integration
• Events
• Email Blast Marketing
• Polls
• RSS Feeds
• Video and Image Galleries
• and more!

The decision was made to create a CMS from the ground-up, as opposed to using an off-the-shelf product, mainly because I saw a means of allowing Limerock clients who share an industry vertical to utilize a common system that allowed for collaboration and sharing of content. For example, the e-commerce component of Cascade allows manufacturers to maintain a product catalog, and retailers from the same industry to "subscribe" to that manufacturer's product feed. This eliminates the necessity of each retailer maintaining a separate catalog of products, and allows manufacturers to keep tight controls on product data and images. Opportunities for collaboration are built into almost every aspect of the CMS.

Distributed Social Networking: Challenges Met

• Created a tool that allows users to ask/answer questions, shares links, photos, and videos, and documents, and sell and buy from each other using a built-in classified system.
• Created the tool in such a way that it can be easily plugged-into existing web sites, even sites we have not created.
• Made the UI slick, utilizing jQuery and AJAX throughout. It's a joy to use.

H.BLOOM: Challenges Met

• Worked with the founders to help determine initial business rules and technical strategies that would allow them to grow quickly and with little overhead costs.
• Developed a recurring billing solution that allowed for customers to skip deliveries, pause subscriptions, restart subscriptions, and cancel mid-term.
• Integrated the CIM product from Authorize.net which allows for tokenized credit card data to be stored securely at ADN.
• Developed a back-end system that would allow delivery staff to manage deliveries and procurement.
• Developed tools that would allow site admins to manage which floral collections are available for purchase at any given time. Also, allowing certain products to be offered as "deals" and others as basic offerings.
• Developed a custom invoicing system for corporate clients.
• Developed a set of revenue reports allowing leaders to make better decisions and report back on success to investors.
• Successfully handed off my code to a full-time CTO hired after year one.

Chamber Street Wines: Challenges Met

• Created a web-based e-commerce shopping experience that ties into existing POS software utilized in the store. This task was particularly difficult because the RMS/POS system from Microsoft has no API, and is a legacy product to say the least.
• Modified a rather closed legacy product (the in-store RMS/POS) so that it can communicate with a web service on the web server, updating the web site's data to reflect in-store changes to products, customers, and orders; all in real-time. And, without have any noticeable impact on in-store cashiers.
• Created a custom web-based shopping experience that communicates with the in-store RMS/POS system, adding orders and customers as they are created on the web side.
• Integrated the Email Blast tool that is part of my Cascade CMS, allowing the client to communicate with clients via emails that contain lists of products tied to the live database, and seamlessly integrated with the site as a whole. This would not be possible with Constant Contact or another third-party email tool.
• Integrated the CIM product from Authorize.net which allows for tokenized credit card data to be stored securely at ADN. Made sure this system was also working with the in-store RMS, and further made sure that all customer payment tokens are synched across the two environments in real-time.

Campus-wide Shutdown Alerts: Challenges Met

• Integrated Active Directory logins into an MVC-based internal portal, allowing users to sign-in without having to create SQL-based logins.
• Created a system that allows users to subscribe to the shut-down alerts that are relevant to them.
• Automated the sending of alerts according to user-created schedules, and crated a role-based system that allows for certain personnel to create alerts and others to approve alerts.

State-wide Energy Consumption: Challenges Met

• Created a system that allows for role-based security at the state, agency, campus, and building level. This means that admins can designate some web users as only able to see energy consumption data from a single building, and other users to see the data at the campus level, while others may be able to see all data across the state.
• Created a system that allows admins to create and then "memorize" reports. The "memorized" reports are made available to other users, making it easy for them to get the data they need without having to fill in report parameters and thereby saving time and mitigating training.
• Created complex stored procedures and SQL functions to handle the varying levels of data that needed to be extracted both due to report parameter changes and security considerations.

NYC Real Estate Company Needs Granular Meter Info: Challenges Met

• Implemented SQL Table Partitioning in order to better handle querying meter data that stacks up millions of rows as it is typically collected every 15 minutes of every day.
• Created a web site with a dashboard allowing users to view invoice and meter consumption data on a building-by-building basis, with the opportunity to drill-in to the tenet level of any building.
• Allow any tenet to see all invoices, both summarized and as scans of the original bill.
• Allow users to run complex reports show usage data over time, from the building level down to the meter level

Lanesboro Sales Commission: Challenges Met

• Linked the web site to data that was "locked" at the auction site, and previously only accessible via a desktop application. This was accomplished by exporting the necessary data to the web server and then building a set of reports around the data.
• Created a system that allowed the client to secure what portions of the data any give web user was allowed to see. This involved mapping user logins from the web site to customer keys in the reporting database. The system of key assignment had to be secure, and easy for the web user to request keys and easy for the client to assign keys.
• Created a system that allowed cattle farmers to consign livestock prior to upcoming auctions, uploading images and videos if desired.
• Created a means for buyers to list livestock they wanted to purchase at upcoming sales.