Outline
This document outlines the process of implementing a Madgex Job Board project and defines the responsibilities – of Madgex and of your company – during the project.
Please pay particular attention to the section Your Actions & Deliverables, as this details the requirements from your company which will be essential to deliver the project smoothly and on time, in line with the project plan.
Madgex Responsibilities
The scope of deliverables, the responsibilities on each side and the communications approach are as follows.
Project Scope
Madgex will deliver to you a Madgex Job Board product, which consists of:
- Jobseeker site
- Recruiter Services site
- Content Management System (CMS)
- Standard job posting and export webservices (API)
Madgex also delivers test (UAT) environments for all the above sites, which will be permanently available to you throughout your contract with Madgex.
The Madgex Job Board product is a SaaS solution, meaning that the product benefits from free updates for the duration of the contract. Your Account Manager will keep you updated on forthcoming product updates after the launch of your site.
Roles and Responsibilities
Madgex contacts
For the duration of the project you will be assigned a Madgex Project Manager, who will be your main point of contact for all issues related to this project. The Project Manager owns the complete process of the delivery of your Madgex Job Board project, and are responsible for all aspects, including:
- Acceptance and delivery of all deliverables to Madgex
- Management of Madgex resources
- Planning, prioritization, monitoring and reporting on progress
- Managing risks, issues, scope and timescales
- Managing any change control, and product enhancement requests prior to launch
- Madgex will assign various project resources (developers, designers, analysts, system administrators) to this project, and you will not need to deal with these people directly – your Project Manager will manage all communications.
Client contacts
You will need to appoint a dedicated contact who will coordinate your team members and act as the key point of contact for your Madgex Project Manager. They will have overall responsibility for all items detailed in the ‘Your Actions & Deliverables’ section below.
Communications
Your Project Manager will be in touch throughout the project, as necessary, by Microsoft Teams and by email.
Please let us know if you have preferred days/times of contact, or if your working hours are not standard.
Ad-hoc calls, or regular calls, will be arranged to cover project issues. Sometimes face-to-face meetings are preferable – the kickoff meeting and the training session being examples – and these will be arranged with your company and Madgex when appropriate.
Project Stages
The Madgex Job Board software is a platform product with standard templates and procedures; all projects follow set implementation stages.
The key stages of the project and the primary tasks involved are shown below. These stages will be explained in detail by your Madgex Project Manager during the initial kickoff meeting.
Project Initiation
- Kickoff meeting
- Discovery Sessions
- Statement of work confirmation
- Planning timeline
Project Scoping
- Completion of all documents, assets and data required for the build
- Signoff on configuration
- Signoff on design
- Delivery of data sample
- Supply of all third party details
Project Build
- Development and design build by Madgex
- Internal QA by Madgex
Training
- Training session delivered by Madgex
UAT Phase
- Release of test sites by Madgex
- Test data migration
- Fixed period (as agreed in the project plan) for your company to test all sites and data
- Resolution of all issues and change requests raised during the testing
Pre-live Phase
- Deployment of sites to a pre-live environment OR soft launch of sites on live URLs behind password protection
- Content population of sites by client
Launch
- Supply of final, full data cut from client
- Live data migration by Madgex
- Public launch of all sites
Handover Phase
- Meeting to handover the project to the Madgex Support team
Your Responsibilities
Madgex cannot deliver a job board without significant input from your company. The following list outlines all the key actions that will need to be taken on your side – at specific stages in the project – to ensure an efficient delivery of a high-quality job board.
Project initiation phase
- Attendance of all key stakeholders at the initial, project kickoff meeting
Project build phase
- Delivery of design assets – all logos and branding guidelines
- Return of completed Design Questionnaire document
- Return of completed Configuration spreadsheet
- Delivery of an initial, full data sample for data migration analysis
- Signoff on site design
- Delivery of Redirect strategy – redirected URLs required, as a minimum
- Signoff on Data Migration Specification
- Signoff on Scope document
Third Party details
- Supply of Payment Provider details
- Supply of Cookie Management Tool
- Supply of Ad Tags
- Supply of Analytics Tags
Additional build requirements
- Setting up DNS entries, as advised by Madgex; and the validation of security certificates, supplied by Madgex
- Delivery of completed Feed Specification – one for every feed, if required
- Delivery of completed Scrape Configuration spreadsheet – one for every scrape, if required
- Provision of Single Sign On services, if required, as detailed in the SSO Requirements document, supplied by Madgex – and a technical contact for any questions that Madgex may have
Training phase
- Attendance of all relevant Administrators and Sales staff at the Training session given by Madgex
Testing (UAT) phase
- Availability of all stakeholders to test the products delivered by Madgex, during the specific dates as detailed in the project plan.
- It is vital that the product is thoroughly tested at this point, to ensure that all issues and change requests are captured in this phase, rather than later in the project or at launch.
- This should include testing of the data migration, so that any necessary adjustments to the migration scripts can be made, and re-tested, well before the live migration.
- Availability of a primary contact as Madgex works to resolve all issues raised during the testing phase
Launch phase
- Availability of relevant Administrators to populate the pre-live sites with (non-migrated) data prior to the launch
- Delivery of the final, full set of data immediately before launch – in exactly the same format as agreed at the data migration testing stage above
- Availability of primary contacts at the time of launch, to follow up on any issues that may need attention to complete the launch successfully
Post-Launch phase
- Availability of relevant contacts at the Project Handover meeting, when the Madgex Support process is explained and the project is handed over to the Madgex Support team
Additional Details
Third-Party Integrations
These are the plug-ins that we will configure for the banner adverts, site analytics, and the payment engine of your site. You will need to have separate contracts (outside of your Madgex contract) with an ad-server, an analytics provider, and a payment provider, and then tell us the specifics of the integration with this third party.
Ad Server
You will need to contract with an ad provider, and then use their administration system to generate the tags that Madgex will add to the jobseeker site for ads to be served.
If you are using an ad-server from our preferred list, Madgex will already have a plug-in to implement for your site. If you want to use an ad-server not on the list, we will need to include extra time into the project to build a plug-in (typically 5 days development). If this has not been agreed in the contract already the project cost will increase accordingly, and the milestone dates of the project plan will be affected.
Analytics
You will need to contract with an analytics provider, and then use their administration system to generate the tags that Madgex will add to the sites.
If you are using an analytics provider from our preferred list, Madgex will already have a plug-in to implement for your site.
If you want to use an analytics provider not on the list, we will need to include extra time into the project to build a plug-in (typically 5 days development). If this has not been agreed in the contract already the project cost will increase accordingly, and the milestone dates of the project plan will be affected.
Payment Provider
You will need to contract with a payment provider, and then provide Madgex with full account details and access to the administration interface so that Madgex can setup the payment module in the Recruiter Services site.
If you are using a payment provider from our preferred list, Madgex will already have a plug-in to implement for your site.
If you want to use a payment provider not on the list, we will need to include extra time into the project to build a plug-in (typically 5 days development). If this has not been agreed in the contract already the project cost will increase accordingly, and the milestone dates of the project plan will be affected.
Webservices
As part of the Madgex platform a standard job-posting webservice client is provided. This can be used by job aggregators (such as Broadbean) to bulk-post jobs onto your job site.
Job-posting webservice
You can access a guide to using the job-posting webservice online.
At the bottom of that page is a link to the full specification of the webservice. You can pass this on to any job aggregators that you use, to enable them to test the webservice.
As part of your client training you will be shown how to set up user credentials for any webservice user (such as a job aggregator). You will need to set up test credentials for each job aggregator who needs to test the system.
Live & Launch
Once the UAT phase has been completed, along with any bug-fixing and agreed changes, and you have signed-off on UAT, Madgex will deploy the system into the live (production) environment – either on temporary URLs with restricted access or on the live URLs behind password protection (‘soft launch’).
Content
Once your system is deployed to the live environment you will need to populate your site with any non-migrated date, via the CMS. A separate document on Content Population will be provided by your Project Manager.
Testing
You will need to ensure that the external ads are served to the ad slots provided, and it is your responsibility to check these are reporting correctly with your ad-server. Similarly, it is your responsibility to ensure the analytics codes are reporting correctly.
Live data migration
You will need to provide Madgex with a final, complete data cut – in exactly the same format as agreed during the data test period – and the live migration will then be run prior to launch.
Your Project Manager will inform you as soon as the migration is complete, for you to check, and the site is then ready to launch.
Client DNS entry – launch
You have control over the DNS entry, so you can choose when to make the switch to put your site live (within standard working hours), but you must notify your Madgex Project Manager as soon as you do this. There are some switches required on the Madgex side to ensure all host headers of your site are redirecting to the main domain name, and to ensure all internal site links are pointed correctly. Any redirects will also be activated.
The DNS switch should happen as early as possible in the standard working day so that there is someone at Madgex to support any post-launch queries (support is usually only available until 5.30 pm UK time). If a data migration is included in the project we recommend switching as soon as possible after the live migration, as the data could quickly become out of date.
The DNS resolution can take anything up to 48 hours to propagate through the Internet (depending on the ISP for your domain name), but often you can see the changes within an hour or less. If you’d like to see quicker propagation, then your service provider may be able to reduce the TTL (Time to Live) down to a few minutes.
Live payment test
You will need to submit a live credit card payment (using a genuine credit card) via the Recruiter Services site to test the live configuration of your payment provider. (You can refund this payment later using the third-party payment provider admin system.)
Project Closure & Support
Once your Madgex Job Board site is fully live and both parties are satisfied there are no ongoing issues, your Madgex Project Manager will move the project into Support. This means that all future issues and change requests relating to the live system will be handled by our dedicated Support team.
Your Project Manager will arrange a conference call a few days after launch to make this handover. This call will cover the support function, the process of logging issues, SLAs, and other important details. The call will be followed up with an email explaining everything discussed. Your Project Manager formally hands over to the Support team at this point and will no longer be a contact for your account.
As Madgex are continually striving to improve our processes, services and client interaction, we will also issue a Post Project Review after the launch to gather any feedback you have on the project process.
Questions?
If you have any questions about anything in this document, or any aspect of your Madgex Job Board project, please contact your Project Manager. For all other issues, please contact your Account Manager.