Enhancing User Experience and Productivity in Education through Microservices-Based Solutions

WBS TRAINING is a large provider of various training services with over 1,500 employees and 40+ years of experience. Their services include sponsored professional training, company training, consulting, part-time and open seminars, SAP software training, etc. They had a legacy monolithic learning management system and a desktop-based student management application that were hindering their operational efficiency and user experience. They sought to redesign and rebuild these systems to boost their operational efficiency, increase employee productivity, and improve service quality and customer experience.

WBS TRAINING, a large provider of various training services, was facing challenges with their legacy monolithic learning management system and a desktop-based student management application. The learning management system consisted of several monolithic parts that required multiple authentications and constant synchronization, a process that was burdensome and could take several hours to complete. This resulted in low system performance and long loading times, hindering employee productivity. Similarly, the desktop application for student management, used to create learning course offers for students, was also plagued with performance issues. To boost their operational efficiency and ensure a smooth experience for students, WBS TRAINING decided to redesign their legacy learning management system into a unified platform and modernize the student management application.

N-iX designed and developed a new learning management system based on the microservices architecture and a web application for student management. The team built over 10 microservices based on the client’s complex business logic, including users, students, offers for courses, units, etc. They implemented authentication in the system using OpenID and built custom authorization that gives permissions for roles and different users. A simple mail transfer protocol service was integrated with the client’s mailing system. The team also used the Event Bus for synchronous communication between microservices and business transactions, which significantly reduced the page response time. Additionally, they built an engine based on Event Bus to migrate data from the old system. For the student management application, the team designed the architecture and developed a new web application with single sign-on technology, using the Elasticsearch engine, React.js, PHP 8, and Symphony. This significantly reduced the application’s load time and increased its overall performance.

• The implementation of the new learning management system and student management application has streamlined operations by rewriting the legacy solution and successfully building a unified system with improved performance. The design and implementation of the microservices architecture have expanded system flexibility, allowing for the integration of important components. The implementation of single sign-on technologies has increased employee productivity, improved security capabilities, reduced password fatigue, and streamlined user experience. The new learning management system has enhanced customer experience by building communication between services, and the newly developed student management system has improved service quality by allowing for the creation of better course offers based on student data.

• Reduced the page response time from over 5 minutes to less than a second (0.4-0.5 sec)

• Reduced the application’s load time to ~1 second

• Increased the overall performance of the student management application by 30%