Client
Choice Logistics is a leading provider of customized logistics and global trade solutions, offering services such as inventory management, transportation management, warehouse management, reverse logistics, and global end-to-end supply chain management. With a robust infrastructure and advanced technology, Choice Logistics ensures seamless operations and real-time visibility for businesses worldwide.
Challenge
The Client Portal serves as the pivotal interface between Choice Logistics and its clients, enabling critical functions like order management, order tracking, reporting, among others. However, the existing system, built on outdated SharePoint technology, faced multiple challenges:
- Cumbersome User Experience: Complicated login and security model hindered accessibility.
- Lack of Data Transparency: Limited visibility into data modifications or user actions.
- Outdated UI: An inconsistent and inefficient interface affected usability.
- Maintenance Difficulties: A 25-year-old codebase with numerous client-specific customizations made updated and new features implementation slow and resource-intensive.
These challenges highlighted the urgent need for the Client Portal modernization and improvement to address critical issues and enhance overall functionality and security for both clients and employees.
Goals
The primary aim of the project was to modernize the Client Portal by transitioning to a unified .NET-based platform away from the legacy application, completely redesigning the user experience, and revamping the data interaction, while ensuring efficiency, data accuracy, and integrity. Key initiatives included: Developing a new Client Portal with modern Ul/UX, integrating advanced user management models including administrative self-service, migrating existing reports, and transitioning infrastructure to AWS managed services for improved stability and scalability.
Solution
The solution involved developing a new Client Portal application integrated into the existing. NET platform, covering core functionalities such as account administration, order management, inventory management, dashboards, and reporting.
The Client Portal solution comprises two main components:
Solution Details – Client Portal UI
The Client Portal Ul is a web application developed using modern front-end technologies such as React, with TypeScript enhancing the development experience. Hosted on AWS S3 and distributed via the CloudFront Content Delivery Network, it ensures fast access for end users while being protected by AWS Web Access Firewall against common web exploits and attacks. Following the atomic design methodology, the Ul is structured to create complex views by combining reusable sets of components and patterns.
Integration with the Dundas Bl platform enables the display of embedded and standalone dashboards and reports within the Client Portal Ul.
Authentication functionality is delegated to the Identity Service, ensuring secure access for users.
Ul Technology Stack
Solution Details – Client Portal Backend
The Client Portal backend orchestrates business workflows and acts as a data and processing layer for the Client Portal Ul. Built on a service-oriented architecture using modern NET technologies and frameworks (such as NET 6+), it extensively leverages AWS capabilities for services orchestration and deployment.
The backend improvements extend the core operational database with additional fields, tables, and schemas as needed. To optimize performance, a secondary read-only replica is employed for read-intensive workloads, reducing the load on the primary instance.
Integration with the existing. NET platform and leveraging public Choice APls allow the backend to implement main business workflows such as order management, inventory management, and order tracking seamlessly. This integration ensures that the Client Portal consumes the same set of API endpoints as Choice clients, eliminating the need for re-implementation of critical business processes for the Ul-based application.
Backend Technology Stack
Monitoring and logging were enhanced using tools like Grafana, Prometheus, and Loki for transparency and minimization of infrastructure-related issues.
Outcomes
AWS Services
The solution utilizes a range of AWS services to bolster the functionality, scalability, and security of the Client Portal.
- Multi-AZ Deployment: Ensures high availability and taut tolerance by replicating the Client Portal across multiple Availability Zones.
- Docker: Facilitates containerization, streamlining the deployment and management of application components.
- Amazon ECR: Houses Docker images for deployment, providing a secure and scalable repository.
- Amazon ECS: Orchestrates containerized services, facilitating deployment, scaling, and management.
- Application Load Balancer / F5: Distributes incoming traffic across multiple instances for optimal performance and reliability.
- Amazon Cognito / Duende Identity Server: Provides robust authentication and authorization mechanisms, ensuring secure access.
- Amazon Route53 / In-house DNS: Manages domain names and directs traffic to the Client Portal, ensuring seamless routing.
- Amazon Managed Grafana / Amazon OpenSearch: Offers insights into performance and health, facilitating proactive monitoring and troubleshooting.
- AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall): Protects against web exploits and attacks, fortifying security.
- Amazon Cloudfront: Accelerates content delivery by caching assets closer to users, enhancing performance.
- Amazon S3: Acts as the primary storage solution for hosting the user interface and storing resources.
- AWS Systems Manager: Manages configuration and secrets, ensuring secure and efficient operation.
- Amazon ElastiCache: Provides in-memory caching for improved performance and scalability.
- Amazon RDS / EC2-based installation: Offers managed database service or EC2-based installations for data storage needs.
High-Level Architecture
