futureSAX

With its start-up and innovation competitions, futureSAX has been the central contact point for innovation in the Free State of Saxony since 1999. In addition, the focus is particularly on cross-sector networking of innovators from business and science as well as the stimulation of collaborations and co-operations. All of this strengthens the culture of innovation in Saxony. Saxony-wide formats support the exchange of experience across target groups, strengthen the transfer of capital and provide growth impulses for sustainable innovations. This increases the effectiveness of innovation processes.

The focus is on the continuous support, further development and optimisation of the innovation platform. Editors and employees of futureSAX should be able to make as many changes as possible to the numerous competitions and workflows independently in future. The priority here is a pleasant user experience in the backend and frontend of the platform for all users. In addition to futureSAX employees, this includes competition participants, event visitors and judges.

Previously, futureSAX employees had to rely on the TYPO3 agency 's help several times a year when it came to launching start-up or innovation competitions on the web platform or making changes to existing processes. This process was to be optimised so that coordination loops could be eliminated and futureSAX could work more independently. It was hoped that changes to the competition forms could be made completely freely and flexibly by futureSAX itself in future.

In summer 2022, extensive reorganisation work therefore began on the competitions and all associated workflows. The complex but static application and evaluation forms in TYPO3 needed to be completely customisable without the need for additional programming.

With the very powerful form framework, TYPO3 already provides an optimal basis for the customised design of forms. Nevertheless, the basic configuration of the form framework was not yet sufficient for this project. In order to fulfil the high demands on complexity in the futureSAX project, Netresearch expanded the framework to include many more form elements. For example, a date picker and a text-image element were integrated, which can be inserted into forms as required by futureSAX. Furthermore, a category list was preconfigured, with which TYPO3 subcategories can be easily inserted into the forms as a drop-down menu.

All of these new form elements can be extensively customised by futureSAX employees and integrated into existing or new forms as required.

There was also a need to optimise the evaluation forms, which are used by a jury to evaluate the competition entries submitted. Previously, the jurors had to work very laboriously in the evaluation form, while they had access to the competition participant's documents via a second monitor or in printed form. In the case of very extensive documents, the relevant sections of the applications had to be searched for, which was very time-consuming and labour-intensive.

A solution has now been implemented for futureSAX that allows the jurors to work with a single form for evaluating the competition entries submitted. This form contains both the original questions and tasks of the competition as well as the corresponding details of the participant. At the same time, they can now use the same form to carry out and enter the assessment as a juror.

futureSAX employees thus have the option of independently referencing between the two forms, the one for applications and the one for evaluations. The jurors, whose task it is to evaluate numerous competition entries, can work very quickly and effectively in this way. Although the creation of new competitions is quite a complex task, futureSAX will no longer require direct support from the agency and can operate completely independently.

The display of applications in the backend now also had to be dynamic, as the forms and therefore the structure and content can be configured as required by the user in future. To display data records in the TYPO3 backend, the TCA is used, which statically retrieves the fields to be displayed from the database in the TYPO3 standard. This is where Netresearch came in and the data is now loaded dynamically based on the form configuration and displayed in the backend.

With the new extended form framework, futureSAX can process online competitions with significantly less effort. The work has been significantly simplified for everyone involved in the application and evaluation workflow. It is now possible for futureSAX employees to create complex dynamic forms themselves and in a much shorter time than before - in future without the need for time-consuming programming by an agency. We were also able to fulfil the wish to make both the backend and the frontend more user-friendly. The first competitions are already running smoothly. After successful testing in live operation, further optimisation steps in the form workflow can be checked and implemented.