On a cold Minnesota morning, 12 non-profits were introduced to the web development teams that will transform their websites within the next 24 hours.

The paired teams are:

Code Cowboys and Access Press
Model.Citizens and Athletes Committed to Educating Students
Groovy Goolies and Battered Women’s Legal Advocacy Project
Namaste and Caring for Kids Initiative
Praxis and District 202
Team Inetium and Friends of Fort Snelling
The Kibarian Express and Global Citizens Network
TC Open Circuit and Hopkins Minnetonka Family Resource Center
Team IB (returning champions from last year’s event) and Rein in Sarcoma Foundation
Ruby.MN 2.2 and Resource Center of the Americas
Pollywog Stew and Students Today, Leaders Forever
Mighty Polymorphin Power Rangers: Extra Awesome and YEA Corps

While all the non-profits are participating for the first time, there are many familiar faces from last year’s event.

KARE 11 made an appearance around 12:30 p.m. and interview Mark Hurlburt and Mark Malmberg, the creators of this event. Keep an eye on the news at 5 and 6 p.m. for us!

Within the walls of VISI there are many business processes to follow and technical configuration tasks performed each day as we service our customers. A close-knit team of application developers work behind the scenes to build and maintain internal applications used to support the fulfillment of customer orders and assist our 24×7 customer support staff as they support our customers. At the core of this team’s mission is something called the VISI Admin Center.

The Admin Center is an internal business system with an applications framework designed around several core functions. The functions include:
• Customer order processing
• Automated services provisioning
• Service and equipment documentation and tracking
• Work activity and support ticket tracking
• Customer support

The Admin Center is an evolving tool. The VISI application development team works with other departments to review requests for improvements that increase efficiency and customer services.

Here is an illustration of what the Admin Center can do. A customer may subscribe to a service such as web site hosting, database storage, email, virtual servers or others. The customer information and order are entered into the Admin Center. The Admin Center structures the service data and connects to the server on which the respective service is to be provisioned. Through inter-system communication, the customer’s requested service is provisioned on the target computer in VISI’s SAS 70 Type II compliant data center. Concurrently, the corresponding technical documentation is stored in the configuration database. At that point the appropriate customized technical information about the service can be sent via email to the customer. This customer data is available for our 24×7 support staff should a customer need to call for assistance.

MyVISI Customer Portal is the direct customer extension of the Admin Center and can be accessed at support.visi.com. MyVISI Customer Portal allows VISI customers to access information relevant to their services, request customer support, check account status and pay for services online.

So what’s next? In 2009, the VISI applications team will make more improvements to the Admin Center focusing on efficiency in operations and the management of service configurations. Also, watch for more functionality for customers on the MyVISI Portal.