University of Waterloo Case Study
Overview
The University of Waterloo stands as Canada's #1 institution for hands-on experiential learning and comprehensive research, managing a vast digital ecosystem of 1,100 websites serving 7 million page views monthly. When faced with Drupal 7 end-of-life migrations and the need to modernize key digital properties, Waterloo partnered with ImageX to tackle complex technical challenges and transform their digital presence.
Through innovative problem-solving and strategic collaboration, this partnership not only accelerated Waterloo's migration timeline but also created valuable contributions to the broader Drupal community.
What They Needed
In January 2023, Waterloo’s Information Systems & Technology (IST) department requested support for consultation and Drupal 9 development to accelerate the migration of all university websites from Drupal 7 to 9 as soon as possible. The university manages approximately 1,100 live websites across both Drupal 7 and 9, supporting hundreds of content maintainers across campus.
Meanwhile, the Registrar's Office discovered their student expense calculator was stuck on the aging platform. This tool helps prospective students plan their finances, and what seemed like a straightforward migration quickly revealed the need to make the calculator adaptable for various university departments. Initial quality assurance testing and UAT uncovered additional work, requiring the teams to find new solutions.
The university also faced challenges in a separate project driven by the team at the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC), which was struggling with an outdated website that no longer reflected their position as Canada's largest mathematics and computing outreach organization. Serving over 300,000 students across 85+ countries, they needed a digital presence that could:
- Properly represent their brand and mission
- Provide robust multilingual support
- Offer accessible content management
- Deliver an engaging experience for students and educators globally
The university needed a partner who could think strategically about long-term sustainability while delivering immediate solutions to separate and distinct teams.
How We Helped
ImageX embedded our Drupal experts directly within Waterloo's IST team using a staff augmentation model. As new members to the development team, we contributed by consulting on solutions, ideating approaches, and resolving code issues on multiple backlog items.
There were two separate teams we worked with to help achieve their goals.
Supporting the Waterloo IST team
Migration Support and Technical Solutions
We tackled the migration challenges by improving and fixing bugs in their migration scripts, which resulted in less downstream impacts and smoother site migrations. When we encountered a multilingual frontend issue, our team assessed the functionality, documented requirements, identified available contributed modules, and created a proof of concept with custom code to address specific business rules.
Drawing from our extensive experience, we were able to recommend a contributed module to resolve a caching issue around single sign-on that previously was expected to be custom development.
Student Expense Calculator Transformation
The student expense calculator presented unique challenges. After initial quality assurance testing and UAT revealed additional work was needed, and faced with the requirement to make the calculator adaptable for various university departments, we made a strategic pivot. We shifted from custom-tailored solutions to developing two contributed modules:
- One for fetching data from a data store
- Another for processing calculations
This approach solved UW's immediate problem while creating tools that other universities could use for similar challenges.
Undertaking a Transformative Website Redesign for CEMC
For the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing, we undertook a complete website transformation. The project goals included:
- Redesigning cemc.uwaterloo.ca to better reflect who CEMC is today and their current brand
- Moving to Drupal to make content management easier
- Creating a valuable, usable, and delightful digital experience
We moved the website to Drupal 10 and extended our quality assurance testing to include Google Chromebooks, since that device isn't available in the BrowserStack testing platform. When CEMC needed to bring forward their go-live date due to business needs, our team was able to adjust and meet the new deadline.
Tune into our session from the PSEWeb Conference in collaboration with Joe Kwan from the University of Waterloo. Our section begins at 18:45.
Words from
the client
"ImageX was excellent to work with. The project team was impressive. When a team member was away, there was always a backup, so no gaps were felt. Also, the team was located worldwide, but we could always find times to meet during our business hours, and they promptly responded to our needs."
- Jenn Kelebuda, Administrative Officer, Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing
The Results
Migration Momentum
The partnership improved UW's migration efficiency through bug fixes and optimized scripts making site migrations smoother. By contributing modules back to the community, we solved UW's problems while helping them become part of the solution for others.
Calculator Innovation Impact
What began as a migration challenge became a showcase for sustainable development:
- Two contributed modules now available on Drupal.org (data fetching and calculation processing)
- Improved user experience for thousands of prospective students
- Cross-departmental functionality enabling various university departments to use the calculator
- Architecture built for future adaptability
CEMC's Project Results
Key project outcomes include:
- 300,000+ students served globally
- 85+ countries reached
- 100% accessibility compliance including Chromebook support
The new CEMC website now provides the content management system they needed, with the multilingual capabilities required to reach their global audience effectively.
