​​

VTA Advances Contractor Collabo​ration with E​xtradium for SharePoint

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) provides countrywide transportation planning along with bus, para-transit and light rail services throughout Santa Clara County, the largest county in the San Francisco Bay Area. As such, the organization regularly collaborates with multiple outise contracting firms. ​​​​
​​

The Challeng​e

VTA employs Microsoft® SharePoint® to manage its communications and data share among internal employees and outside contracting firms. While this solution is powerful and robust, it does not offer an easy way to ensure security for outside contracting firms. SharePoint is also cumbersome and time-consuming for those charged with adding and managing new contractor log-in accounts. As a result, VTA had to find a way to improve convenience and functionality without bogging down its existing IT department.​​

 
  ​​​

The Solution

VTA researched a number of software packages as a means to enhance capabilities, ultimately choosing Extradium for SharePoint by RL Soft, a software development firm based in the Silicon Valley. “After exhaustive analysis of all technology options, Extradium was the clear winner due to its centralized and delegated administration, forms authentication, custom user properties and Excel user import functionality​,” explained Russell Liskey, business analyst supervisor for VTA’s IT department. Mr. Liskey also touted Extradium’s ease-of-use for both internal staff and outside contracting firms. ​​​

​​

The Achievement

VTA was immediately impressed with Extradium’s installation ease and speed, with absolutely no issues arising during its initial testing. The solution’s centralized extranet site administration freed IT staff to work on other more pressing deployment and support issues. VTA also appreciated Extradium’s email template functionality, which has reduced repetitive administrative tasks, eliminated their associated personnel cost and notably enhanced the user experience.

Outside contracting firms are now able to administrate and monitor th​eir own accounts on their time, with users finding administration forms and login screens both easy-to-use and intuitive. Because Extradium provides custom user properties, VTA is now able to gather essential information about users automatically during the registration process or during successive updates.

Extremely pleased with the results, VTA will be extending the use of Extradium for SharePoint to its internal Human Resource site to ensure a second layer of security for sensitive employee data. ​​​​​​