| In late 2000, Redfield Developments in Sydney approached us with a plan to port their desktop application to the web. The application was written in Visual Basic 5 for the Windows platform. It had been developed over a number of years in the UK and was making inroads as a recruitment and leadership development tool. Facet5 is based on a questionnaire which is completed by the candidate. The responses are collated and a profile of the candidate is produced which gives an analysis of their personality which may be used for various purposes within an organisation.
The desktop application relied on a paper-based questionnaire which was completed and then the results keyed in by hand. Going to the web allowed candidates to select their responses on screen and have them uploaded automatically - so results would be available instantly. The immediate advantage of this was that it cut out the logistical problems of distributing the questionnaire to candidates, who could be anywhere, and manual keying of the responses. The questionnaire is initiated when the candidate follows a link in an emailed invitation. This allows instant delivery of the questionnaire to anywhere that an Internet connection is available.
One of the key features of the new web-based system was that it should be a relatively seamless fit into a client's environment and that it should be presented to candidates and other users as belonging to that client, so site branding was made customisable. This allows the system's administrators to customise a number of aspects of the site, including page banners, and gives the ability to provide customer-defined demographic fields. So one client can have payroll number and department, while another can have job title and position ID.
Another key feature was the support for multiple languages. The English questionnaire had already been translated into a number of languages, such as French and Spanish. So the ability to select a language in which to complete the questionnaire was a requirement from the outset. The client can select a language to present the questionnaire in before sending the invitation, so the first page the candidate sees will be in their own language. If they prefer to complete the questionnaire in a different language, they are able to do so by selecting it from a menu. This flexibility is very important, as the questionnaire relies very much on interpretation of the questions and it is vital that the candidate completes it in a language with which they are comfortable.
| Facet5 makes extensive use of charts. These include bar charts, radar and scatter plots, box and whisker plots, and some proprietary charts designed exclusively for the site. Initially we hoped to use a charting component, but none could be found that would provide the level of flexibility and customisation required, so we ended up creating our own. Some of the charts are created with plain HTML. This provides the interesting feature of being able to resize within a page as the browser is resized. To the best of our knowledge, no server side charting component can support this. The remainder are generated on the fly and downloaded as image streams. This helps to avoid caching issues when input data changes.
Output is delivered either as web pages, or as a downloadable PDF suitable for printing. The reports are often used for staff developement workshops, so quality printable output is mandatory. Although all the current users were English-speakers, Redfield Developments also required support for multiple languages on the output side of the system. This would allow them to produce the profile reports in any language as well.
Multiple reporting language support was achieved through the use of XSL stylesheets. Every element of each report is stored in a database, one definition for each language. Pages are defined as templates, which contain the page content in each language. When a report is requested, the page template for the requested page/report and language combination is loaded and merged with a stylesheet which details the page layout. The result is a page or report in the specified language.
To add a new language, all that is required is a translation of the page templates. Currently the system supports 27 languages. With this system, it is possible to have a candidate complete the questionnaire in one language, say Portuguese, and view the output in another, say Italian. This ability is unique in the field and has seen Facet5 taken up by organisations on every continent.
The Facet5 tool has a number of supporting features that are specifically targeted at an aspect of leadship development or recruitment. In addition the site is a platform for virtually any questionnaire-based tool and currently it supports a large number of these for individual clients. |
