HCL DX Inspire 2019 - Jacobacci & Partners - Digital service delivery

Copyright © 2019 HCL Technologies Limited | www.hcltechsw.com
The fantastic voyage of HCL DX v9.5!
Power and Simplicity for today’s
Digital Experiences
CUST-03
Managing customer service
delivery with HCL DX
at Jacobacci & Partners
Fulvio Solinas / CIO / Jacobacci & Partners
Daniele Vistalli / CEO / Factor-y

Customer service delivery at Jacobacci & Partners
Jacobacci & Partners combines ERP, document and IP data to a personalized
extranet experience for their clients, partners, and staff located in 14 offices in 4
European countries
Understand the story so far and plans for the next innovation of this platform as
the journey continues.
2

Agenda
• About Jacobacci & Partners
• About Factor-y
• Business needs and history of J&P Digital Transformation
• First chapter: J3 – The extranet experience
• Second chapter: JStar – re-designing how the company works
• Present & Future for J3 and JStar
• How-To: How we do all this. Methodology & Platform
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About
About Jacobacci & Partners
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The Jacobacci Group
Intellectual Property Services in Europe
www.jacobacci.com

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SERVICES IN EUROPE
Attorneys at LawPatent and Trademark Attorneys

Nantes
Bordeaux
Lyon
Lugano
Kilometro Rosso (Bergamo)
Rome
Brescia
PaduaMadrid
Alicante
Paris
Turin
Milan
Bologna

High-quality IP service worldwide
European patent and trademarks attorneys
Covering all areas of Intellectual Property
Jacobacci & Partners is located in four countries: Italy, France, Spain and Switzerland.
The firm now has 14 offices which are located in: Turin, Milan, Rome, Brescia, Padua,
Kilometro Rosso (Bergamo), Bologna, Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Bordeaux, Madrid, Alicante
and Lugano.

• More than 5,000 clients in all industry sectors
• Managing about 100,000 patents and 100,000 trademarks
worldwide
• Strong international approach and reputation – about 50% of
revenue derives from international clients
• Fully electronic files and archives, personalized database for
clients
• Training and teaching activities
• Speakers at national and international conferences
JACOBACCI & PARTNERS

Jacobacci & Partners
International Business Development Committee
• Establishes and maintains procedures
consistent with international standards
• Seeks to meet expectations of all
clients from every country
• Includes members who are part of
international “desks” who travel
frequently to attend and speak at
international events and to meet with
international clients
• Coordinates Jacobacci & Partners’
international business development
strategies

Jacobacci & Partners 4T - Tech Transfer
Think Tank has taken place annually over the
past 6 years.
4T - Tech Transfer Think Tank is one of the
premier events in Italy for networking and
training, in-depth analysis and reports
dedicated to technology transfer and to the
professionals involved in these activities of the
sector, namely companies, universities,
research centers and the financial world.
https://techtransferthinktank2019.jacobacci.com

The Jacobacci Group in a nutshell
• One stop shop for IP services and legal representation, both
- vertically, from filing to enforcement
- horizontally, in four separate jurisdictions
• The only Italian-based IP firm having significant presence in other EU
countries
• The first and only firm consistently recognized as a top IP firm for both
consultancy and legal work in Italy

About
About Factor-y S.r.l.
Established June 30, 2009
• Delivered projects in many industries (manufacturing, banking, insurance, public government, distribution, automotive)
• Across the entire portfolio that’s today HCL Digital Solutions with years of real world experience (the team experience):
• Domino 4.5+, Sametime 6.0+
• Portal 4.1+ (yes, doing DX since 2000), WCM 5.0 (yes, were there when Aptrix was acquired)
• Connections 1.0+
• LotusLive –> SmartCloud -> Actively working towards Factor-y’s managed cloud services (work in progress, discussing with HCL)
• Since 2015 also Okta’s partner, adding to DX Cloud Identity Management to simplify extended-enterprise. (More later)
• Since early 2019 an HCL partner focusing on continuing the success with the Digital Solution portfolio
Daniele Vistalli (that’s me). Founder and CEO of Factor-y. HCL Master 2019
14

About
Factor-y S.r.l. expertise and future directions
HCL has brought “renaissance” to the Digital Solutions portfolio
This offered Factor-y the opportunity to:
• Invest with confidence in the portfolio
• Invest in community events like this (but we’re planning to be at Engage.ug, march 2020, and Social Connections)
Here at DX Inspire we introduce DXP10x, our first product, entering beta on January 1 2020
• Brings to portal capabilities to make “hard” (pro-code) extensions a breeze
• Works on DXP on WASNd but is designed with containerized and K8S architecture in mind
• Brings a “browser based” development environment to portal for “pro-code” that was complex to build and test (portal extensions)
• Is the first pillar in our strategy to provide “Wordpress-experience” to enterprises with enterprise Web Content Management needs
• Learn more at our booth and get enrolled in the beta program
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Business needs and history of
J&P Digital Transformation
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Business needs and history of J&P Digital Transformation
Project inception & Needs
Jacobacci & Partners (J&P for short) has been offering digital / web based services before 2009
In 2009
• AS400 in the backend managing & processing data and the complexity of the Intellectual Properties management, laws & processes
• Domino as information publishing system with data fed and updated every night for customers
Around September 2009
• J&P looks for the next step in it’s digital transformation, a portal that offers real-time direct access to customers information
• WebSphere Portal 6.1 is the chosen platform
• Projects begins as J3 (JCube) the customer’s extranet
Late 2010
• J3 is live, customers gets in
• J3 is extended to internal staff, integrating Active Directory Registry and providing a rich experience in parallel to IBM As400 Terminal.
More J3
• In 2012 Universal Inbox is born – Every email between J&P & Customers is tracked and available in the portal for customer’s consumption, indexed with reference to J&P files
• In 2014 J&P Switches it’s ECM platform, J3 is updated but everything is transparent for users
• In 2016 new requirements for Identity Management. Enter Okta and seamlessly connect customers to J3
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Want more ? JStar for the company
In 2015
• J&P has new needs. Growth continues and new acquisitions require a new front-end for the ERP (currently based on 5250 on IBM i)
• Given the positive experience on DX (was Portal) for the Extranet experience a requirements gathering process begins to evolve the J&P ERP providing additional value on top
of processes built in the last 20-30 years
• J* (JStar) is the codename of the new initiative that aims at integrating all the processes (from IP management to invoicing to document management)
• Around this time Portal is updated to 8.0. Seamless upgrade for all the components
• Web Experience Factory is not receiving enhancements so we look for a reference framework for the new project.
• October 21, 2015 the first commit on the project codebase
In 2016
• January 2016 first release to internal testers
• April/May 2017 we’re live in France offices with J*, the first set of core services are moved from greenscreen to browser
• More functionalities are added monthly and more processes gets to the web portal
2017-2018
• Huge endeavor re-organizing IBM i codebase and database to a service oriented architecture for consumption by the portal
• International version is released
• More reporting services are added (JasperServer) is integrated into J*
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Today and tomorrow
Today J3
• J3 is running on DX using the WEF based portlets. Work ongoing to modernize it
• Design of new “J3 workspace” is being considered moving from an information portal for customers to a
process portal with more interaction
Today J*
• More and more processes are being added to J*
• We moved to a weekly release cycle for features & fixes
• We just completed modernizing the development environment
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Inception of J3
Design begins, development follows, go-live is a
success
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First chapter: J3 Extranet
Needs & decisions
The new extranet needed to be
• Dynamic, with direct access to IBM As400 data, not a batch based refresh
• Multi-lingual to support J&P’s international customers
• Easy to use and ready for the future
• Fast time to market so we needed development productivity
So we decided
• To use WebSphere Portlet Factory as development tool
• To integrate IBM As400 exploiting stored procedures wrapping existing complex business logic
• To integrate the in-house document management system (IBM Db2 CM) to provide direct access to documents
• To apply a fresh design provided by a web agency with focus on usability and ergonomics
• To apply a double layer of security
• End to end SSL for clients (browsers) with LDAP Authentication
• Two factor authentication based on Okta & SSO
• As400 security constructs for the logic, user identity was passed to As400 and specific user profiles restrict the amount of information that can be accessed both at
system level and application logic level
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At go-live – 18 months later
We had:
• WebSphere Portal 7.0 (we adopted the most recent version)
• Fully tested process for information access to
• A multi-company profiling system to control customer access (today you’d call it tenants)
• Intellectual Property records for each customer
• Administration dept details with invoce details and document access & download (PDF)
• 3 Languages (Italian, English, French)
• 50+ As400 programs integrated with Portlet Factory
• IBM Db2 Content manger integrated to provide customers self-service access
• A management console that allows J&P to freely create/update profiles in the portal and provision:
• LDAP user account
• IBM As400 access
• A portal layout that was perfectly compatible and running on tablets (we just got IPAD at project launch)
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Not stopping there with J3
In 2012 Universal Inbox
For customers with acces to J3 we’ve the possibility to capture & organize email communication.
Every email sent by Jacobacci or a customer is captured to a Domino database and indexed.
In the Portal users can full-text search email or search for specific files/documents/practices managed with Jacobacci.
GSuite is the email platform, IBM Domino (today HCL Domino) captures, stores and serves the content to J3 users.
In 2014 a switch happens
J&P needs to update it’s ECM system. DB2 Content Manager is not evolving so content is migrated over to a new ECM
platform.
J3 Adapts: The backend is hidden from users. We implement a synced update of J3 Portlets to selectively use DB2 CM or the
new system during the migration process (that required a few months and phases).
At the end of the day the portal has succesfully hidden to users the internal changes.
This could possibly happen again as J&P is considering another switch for the future
23

Extended enterprise
Seamless login Cutomer 2 Jacobacci - Okta SSO
Jacobacci asked us for a way to seamlessly allow customers employess access J3.
In 2015 Factor-y became the first italian Okta partner (leader in Gartner’s MQ for Identity as a service)
We suggested Okta as the way to:
• Federate customer’s identity in J3
• Automate user registration and user lifecycle management
• Automate authorization process
In a short time:
• Customer’s employee are able to access J3 from their O365 (or any portal that provides a SAML / OIDC Identity
provider)
• Rules in Okta create the user in J3 and assigne user profile based on groups the customer manages on his side.
• Jacobacci retains control over access rights by defining user profile but no passwords are created and the user
experience is seamless. J3 becomes a native component of J&P’s customer’s organization.
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Customer service and support
Zendesk is the customer care in the portal
J&P wished for first class support for their users
We suggested and integrated Zendesk as a customer care & ticketing system
Whenever a user needs help a «Support» banner is available in the portal.
The user context (identity and location in the portal) is logged in the ticket alongside the user’s request.
Zendesk has then been extended to JStar (more on this later, to support internal users)
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Staying fresh
In 2018 it’s time to look at refreshing J3
In 2018 we begun a «refresh» of J3 to update it and prepare it for the next 5 years:
• Manage technical debt
• Refactor and update IBM i codebase moving from Stored Procedures to RPG programs invoked directly. (Using JRouter, will
be explained later)
• Deprecate and abandon WEF and move to an active and future-proof framework
• Improve on portlet architecture to be able to deploy updates at will (possibly with an A/B canary test/release model)
• Improve UX
• Build a refreshed UX based on a «workspace» design that helps customers doing more actions and improve collaboration
between customers & employees
• Add a «smartphone» UX factor for specific features that provide value «on the road» VS complex processes / queries
requiring more screen space
• J3 EveryWhere
• Transform J3 in a component platform offering embeddable services for
• Customer’s portal
• J&P’s CRM (Salesforce), ERP (JStar) and Collaboration suite (GSuite)
26

Views of J3 – Customer’s IP presence in the world - Trademarks
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Views of J3 - Customer’s IP presence in the world - Patents
28

Views of J3 – Universal Inbox / Structured communication archive
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Views of J3 – Notices management / Orders for renewals
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Views of J3 – Direct access to customer’s documents – Self service
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JStar to link everything
DX gets to cover the company needs becoming
the UX of the ERP and more
32

Second chapter: J* ERP
Needs & decisions
The new ERP needed to be
• Dynamic, with direct access to IBM As400 data
• Multi-lingual to support J&P’s international companies
• Stable and rich UX/UI to replace 5250 but with the same (or similar) performance and productivity
So we decided
• To leave WebSphere Portlet Factory and select a new framework: Vaadin
• To modernize existing IBM i programs but this time “no stored procedures” but direct API integration
• To start with French and support the new Paris branch, then to add Italian and cover the entire population
• To ensure security is end-to-end but integrating Portal security with a one-to-one mapping between Active Directory
and AS400 profiles
• To plan for business continuity. Now portal switches to DR (as the entire company) twice a year
33

At go-live – 16 months later
• In April 2016 we’re live serving the French branch on the Trademarks management process
• The newly acquired branch is integrated, uses IBM I on backend without even knowing it
• Existing processes and Business Logic is re-used and exploited in a new market
• We could just translate and extend BUT
• We decide to refresh existing IBM I programs to modernize and improve a very large codebase
• This work completes in early 2017 and rolls out to J&P workforce
• Today we’re adding more processes and integrations
• CRM / Salesforce
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Views of Jstar
35

Views of Jstar
36

Views of Jstar
37

Views of Jstar
38

How we build this ? Modernizing the development environment
Vaadin as the UI framework
• Has Portlet support
• Is 100% java and manages rich client-side UX
• Scales well and seamless
• To us it’s “JSF done right”
What we do today
• Taking advantage of Containers/K8S. We moved all our development environments to K8s
• Portal is in running in containers
• IDE is running in containers
• Our containers connect directly to J&P Systems (real integrated development)
• Extreme productivity with Java
• Jrebel allows us to instantly deploy changes in the running test portal
• Jenkins is integrated to
• Build, test, validate
• Deploy to DEV, QA AND Production (yes we authomated deployment to production)
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For Additional Information
Jacobacci & Partners
https://www.jacobacci.com/
Factor-y s.r.l.
https://www.factor-y.com
Join DXP10x beta program, scan the code

For Additional Information
HCL Digital Experience Product Information
https://www.hcltechsw.com/wps/portal/products/dx
HCL Software
https://www.hcltechsw.com
HCL Product Support
https://hclpnpsupport.hcltech.com/csm
HCL Support Knowledge Base
https://hclsw.info/dx-support-knowledge-base
HCL DX Demonstrations
https://hclsw.info/dx-video-playlist
HCL DX Q&A Forum
https://hclsw.pro/dxforum

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