Yorkshire Engagement Portal.
The Yorkshire & Humber Office for Data Analytics (YHODA) is a Sheffield-based company that aims to make data more accessible and understandable to stakeholders across Yorkshire and the Humber, enabling them to make data-informed decisions that promote sustainable economic growth throughout the region. We helped them by developing an online platform for them to share this data.
- Client
- Yorkshire & Humber Office for Data Analytics
- Who they are
- A Sheffield-based company, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP)
- What they do
- Work with local communities, businesses and policymakers, promoting the use of data-based insights in decision-making
- Location
- Sheffield
- Requirements
- To create an online platform to host the Yorkshire Vitality Index, a series of Power BI dashboards that help stakeholders make sense of complex data.
problem
YHODA created the Yorkshire Vitality Index, a set of Power BI dashboards that provided an insight into key economic and environmental factors around the Yorkshire and Humber region. They wanted to share this with stakeholders across the region so that they could have easier access to vital data to inform decision-making, but to do this, they needed an accessible online platform.result
We developed the Yorkshire Engagement Portal, a website that gives insight into who YHODA are and what they do, and that lets YHODA share their dashboards in an easy-to-access way.The scope
Prior to development, we spent some time working with the YHODA team to scope out the Yorkshire Engagement Portal and gain a better understanding of how they envisioned it would be used by users. We had a mix of online chats, calls, and in-person meetings where we discussed the scope, drilling into the details of each requirement and working out how necessary they were to the core user experience. Through these discussions, we ended up with a smaller, much more refined scope.
Design Collaboration
Shortly after defining the scope, we met with a designer from the University of Sheffield Print and Creative Service, who had been commissioned to design the website. We had some initial discussions with him, ensuring we were on the same page about the functionality of the website, and coordinating on the priority of different parts of the design. Soon after, we were provided with fantastic designs for the website, allowing us to kick off the development phase.
What is a Power BI Dashboard?
Before getting into the development phase, it’s important to understand what a Power BI Dashboard is. Microsoft Power BI is a data visualisation platform that allows people to present complicated data in a visually appealing, easy-to-understand format. Power BI provides dashboard admins with lots of options for data visualisation and organisation, which makes it a good fit to showcase the data in the Yorkshire Vitality Index.
Development
We decided that it would be best to develop the Yorkshire Engagement Portal using a headless content management system, so that we had full creative freedom when developing the front end, while also giving YHODA the ability to edit and update the website as time went on. We decided to branch out and use Payload, which we had not used before.
The Payload page builder uses blocks when building pages, so we went over the designs and split the different pages up into blocks, which we then grouped according to shared functionality. This gave us a full list of the components we would need to implement to allow one of the website’s content editors to create and edit the website to their heart's content.
We implemented these blocks in payload, using React and Next.js to build the front end, and having the designs in Figma made it simple to lift visual components from the design to implement on the website.
To embed the Power BI dashboards, we created a Power BI Dashboard block that lets a content editor simply put in the URL of the dashboard, and then the dashboard will appear and be usable on the page where the block has been used. This gives YHODA full control over the dashboards on the website, and makes adding, updating, or deleting dashboards very simple.
Technology
We used the following tools and technology to build the website:
- Figma - Designs (provided by the University of Sheffield Print and Creative Service)
- Payload - CMS
- React / Next.js - Front-end app
- DigitalOcean - Hosting
The Finished Product
As we reached the end of the development phase, we prepared a training document for the YHODA team and handed the website over to them fully completed. To mark the end of this phase, we attended a soft launch event, held at the University of Sheffield, where real users got a chance to get their hands on the Yorkshire Engagement Portal and give their feedback.
We believe that this portal has massive potential to help inform key decision makers and impact policy that affects our day-to-day lives by providing easy access to vital data. We really enjoyed working on this project, and we are thrilled to have played even a small part in promoting the visibility and accessibility of this vital data.
You can check out the Yorkshire Engagement Portal here: https://yorkshireportal.org/
To head straight to the Vitality Suite on the portal to view the Power BI dashboards, you can do so here: https://yorkshireportal.org/vitality-suite
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