The Problem 

Lego were an early adopter of TeamSite and use it as part of their release management solution to store .NET pages and related code for their website (www.lego.com). 

The TeamSite workflow used to process deployments was based on the legacy workflow specification (WFT). It was: 

• Unreliable: It did not send emails as intended, 
• Complex to administer/customize: it could not leverage TeamSite groups; users were sharing accounts for simplicity and code updates were required to add new deployment projects 
• It did not provide all the functionality that Lego required. 

Lego were also finding it difficult to scale their OpenDeploy infrastructure due to the pricing model for the product and were looking to use an alternative solution. 

The Solution 

TBSCG implemented a new TeamSite workflow based on the recently introduced Workflow Modeler framework (WFM), including all the functional requirements that Lego were looking for. 

This included: 

• Leveraging TeamSite groups 
• Better separation of roles and responsibilities 
• Email notification steps during the progress of the release 
• Simpler administrative customization for new projects, teams etc. 
• Error trapping, reporting and retry for deployments 

TBSCG also integrated an alternative deployment product from RepliWeb R-1 which has a similar set of capabilities as OpenDeploy at a much reduced cost. This allowed Lego to implement a comprehensive deployment infrastructure, deploying pages and code held in TeamSite to their increasingly populated runtime server farms. 

The description 

After having received the requirements from Lego for their ideal TeamSite based release management workflow, TBSCG’s consultancy team has created: 

• Workflow using Autonomy Interwoven’s Workflow Modeler 
• Data source to retrieve a list of TeamSite groups representing the Agile development teams at Lego 
• External code to support emails to TeamSite groups 
• Custom email templates to format notification messages sent to users 
• External code to create a lock file used by the Source Control Management solution 
• External code to integrate the workflow with RepliWeb R-1 

The team has also customised the TeamSite User Interface to include filters for the workflow tab. Recent updates include adding a new deployment phase for a new STAGING environment (now deploys to DEV, STAGING and LIVE) 

Benefits for the customer 

Thanks to the Consultancy team the following improvements have been carried out to the LEGO website: 

• Release management workflow matches their release management processes 
• Separation of roles and responsibility with improved accountability (no shared accounts) 
• Team members receive emails to prompt for reviews etc. 
• Team members receive emails during the release management process (Both of these reduce the requirement for users to regularly check TeamSite for tasks assigned to them) 
• Comprehensive deployment infrastructure based on RepliWeb R-1 has been implemented with a considerable reduction in associated costs 
• System Administrators can adjust the configuration of the workflow using forms provided by TeamSite (no code editing required)