Biblioteca
Digital
Digital Library Platform
| Customer | Grupo Santillana |
|---|---|
| Development | nazaríes intelligenia |
| Country | Spain |
The Digital Library project for Grupo Santillana is designed as a comprehensive solution to centralize, manage, and facilitate access to digital educational resources, tailored to the needs of students, teachers, and other educational stakeholders. As a client and a key player in the Spanish-speaking educational and publishing sector, Grupo Santillana aims to revolutionize how users interact with content, aligning with trends in digitization and flexible learning.
About the Client: Grupo Santillana
Grupo Santillana is one of the leading publishers in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world, specializing in developing educational and reading materials in various formats. Its mission is to provide innovative educational resources that support learning across all school stages. With a presence in many countries, Santillana has embraced digital transformation to enhance the educational experience, making it more inclusive, accessible, and adaptable.
Project Goals
The Digital Library aims to address the following needs:
- Centralized Educational Resources: A unified space for students and teachers to quickly and easily access digital books, audiobooks, teaching guides, podcasts, and other educational materials.
- Accessibility and Flexibility: Ensure online and offline access to cater to various contexts and environments.
- Management and Customization: Provide advanced tools for administrators to configure the library based on the specific needs of institutions or user groups.
- Enhanced Educational Experience: Features like recommended book carousels, integrated dictionaries, bookmarks, personalized texts, and progress tracking improve the learning process.
- Scalability: Design infrastructure capable of handling high user volumes and future expansion and upgrades.
User Benefits
- For Students: Access to curriculum-aligned content in diverse formats from any device, promoting autonomous and dynamic learning.
- For Teachers: Tools to assign resources, monitor student progress, and personalize the teaching experience.
- For Administrators: Efficient organization, categorization, and management of content from a centralized platform.
Technology and Functionality
The project comprises two main platforms:
- Management Platform: Designed for resource, user, and visibility policy administration. Aimed at Santillana's logistics staff, it offers advanced mass content management features.
- Reader Platform: An interactive web environment where users can intuitively and flexibly consume educational resources. It’s optimized for mobile devices and supports various customization options.
The proposed architecture leverages modern technologies such as Vue.js and Angular for the frontend, Node.js for the backend, and AWS infrastructure for performance, security, and scalability.
In the Digital Library project for Grupo Santillana, nazaríes intelligenia has played a key role, contributing our expertise in technological development and the management of complex projects. Our involvement has focused on designing, developing, and implementing specific solutions to ensure that the Digital Library meets the objectives set by Santillana, while adhering to the established timelines and resources.
nazaríes intelligenia' Key Contributions
1. Technical Design and System Architecture
- Developed a scalable microservices-based architecture to handle high volumes of users and resources.
- Proposed and implemented modern technologies like Node.js for the backend and frameworks such as Angular and Vue.js for user interfaces, ensuring performance and usability.
2. Management Platform
- Built an admin console for controlling resources, users, and visibility policies.
- Designed key features like managing environments, initiatives, and resources, including the creation and assignment of roles, profiles, and educational packages.
3. Reader Platform
- Completed and refined the development started by a previous provider, ensuring technical standards compliance.
- Added interactive elements like dynamic carousels, user personalization tools (text adjustments, dictionary, bookmarks), and offline resource consumption options.
4. Integration and APIs
- Developed and configured APIs for internal and external system communication, enabling synchronization with Santillana Connect and mass management of users and resources.
- Created specific functionalities like an analytics API for tracking user consumption and progress data.
5. Infrastructure and DevOps
- Configured AWS infrastructure, including storage via Amazon S3, session handling with Elastic Cache, and monitoring with CloudWatch.
- Designed CI/CD pipelines using Atlassian tools (Bitbucket, Bamboo, SonarQube).
6. Adaptation to Client Needs
- Prioritized essential features for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) within time and budget constraints.
- Ensured flexibility for future expansions and improvements.
Collaborative Approach
Our collaboration with Grupo Santillana has been consistent and close, involving telematic meetings for requirements analysis and working closely with their technical team. This has allowed us to deeply understand the client’s needs and provide solutions tailored to their vision and expectations.
TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DIGITAL LIBRARY SOFTWARE
The development of the Digital Library for Grupo Santillana has involved the implementation of advanced technical solutions to ensure a robust, scalable, and adaptable system that meets user needs. Below, we highlight the most notable technical features of the project:
Microservices-Based Architecture
- Description: A microservices-oriented architecture was designed to ensure optimal performance, modularity, and ease of scalability. Each key functionality (user management, resource consumption, statistics) was developed as an independent service.
- Challenge: Efficiently dividing responsibilities among the microservices and managing communication between them while maintaining minimal response times.
- Solution: Lightweight and scalable APIs were implemented using Node.js and Express, supported by Redis for caching frequent responses and RabbitMQ for message queue management.
Real-Time Data Management and Synchronization
- Description: APIs with advanced synchronization capabilities were integrated, enabling user consumption data (progress, reading metrics) to be sent to the server as soon as the connection is restored.
- Challenge: Ensuring data persistence in offline mode and synchronizing it correctly when the connection is re-established, avoiding data loss.
- Solution: Local storage in browsers and mobile devices was utilized, combined with retry strategies in the APIs to synchronize progress and statistics once a stable connection is detected.
Offline Resource Consumption
- Description: The platform provides offline access to digital books, audiobooks, and other educational resources by temporarily storing them on users' devices.
- Challenge: Ensuring that large multimedia resources are downloaded efficiently and securely while respecting the limitations of browsers and devices.
- Solution: Advanced caching mechanisms and storage management were integrated using Service Workers on the Reading Platform, along with optimized download strategies for the mobile app.
Scalable Infrastructure on AWS
- Description: The system's infrastructure was built using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to ensure high availability and on-demand performance.
- Challenge: Designing an infrastructure capable of supporting a high volume of concurrent users and enabling horizontal scalability without compromising performance.
- Solution: Elastic Beanstalk was used for automatic instance management, Amazon S3 for multimedia resource storage, and optimized databases with MongoDB Atlas for handling complex queries.
Personalization and User Experience
- Description: Advanced functionalities were developed to personalize the user experience, such as customization options for text display (font, size, line spacing, colors) and dynamic filters in searches.
- Challenge: Ensuring these features were intuitive, fast, and adaptable to various devices and contexts.
- Solution: A responsive interface was developed using Vue.js for the Reading Platform and Angular for the Management Platform, delivering a smooth and consistent experience across all major browsers.
our
PowerUps
PowerUp
ME
It is characterised by the formation of agile and cohesive teams, specialised in quick iteration and efficient decision-making for projects with short-term launch requirements but long-term sustainability. The synergy of working with teams that have prior experience ensures a smooth start that is often challenging to achieve with new teams.
PowerUp
BM
We transform ideas into viable technological realities. We polish value propositions and optimise market strategies for software products.
PowerUp
CI/CD
Continuous integration, automation of deployments, and homogenisation of environments.
Dynamic carousels and personalized recommendations
Description: The platform organizes available titles into interactive carousels tailored to the user's profile. These carousels include categories like "Recently Read," "Recommended for You," and "Discover More Titles," offering a personalized experience based on the user's age, educational level, and preferences.
Key Features:
- Intuitive swipe interaction on mobile devices.
- Integration with algorithms that suggest titles based on the user's consumption history.
- Available on both the mobile app and web version.
Offline reading and listening
Description: Users can download digital books and audiobooks for offline access, making this functionality ideal for areas with limited connectivity or for on-the-go use.
Key Features:
- Resource downloads via a dedicated button on each title page.
- Persistent reading and listening progress, automatically synchronized upon reconnection.
- Efficient management of local storage on mobile devices and browsers.
Reading personalization
Description: The platform allows users to customize their reading experience according to their preferences. These options include:
- Adjusting font size and type.
- Modifying line spacing and background colors for improved readability.
- Highlighting important passages and adding annotations, all accessible through an interactive menu.
Available on: Mobile apps and the web-based Reading Platform.
Advanced Search and Dynamic Filters
Description: Users can search for specific titles or explore categories using advanced filters, which allow refining the search by:
- Topic, age, series, genre, and more.
- Content related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), promoting values-based education.
Key Features:
- Real-time results as filters are applied.
- Integration with thematic tags to facilitate exploration.
Cross-Platform access
The Digital Library is available on mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as the web-based Reading Platform, ensuring a seamless and consistent experience across all devices. These applications allow reading progress to be synchronized between devices and optimize offline functionality for maximum flexibility.