E-Report Admin

UNIFI Companies: Ameritas Life
Lincoln, NE USA

The E-Report Admin application was developed for Ameritas Life Insurance Corp and the companies operating under the UNIFI Mutual Holding Company umbrella, which also includes Acacia Life Insurance Company and The Union Central Life Insurance Company. These life insurance companies and their affiliates offer a wide range of insurance and financial products to individuals and businesses. Ameritas traces its heritage back to 1887, when it was founded in Lincoln, Nebraska, as Old Line Bankers Life Insurance Company of Nebraska (Bankers Life). In 1988, Bankers Life changed its name to Ameritas Life Insurance Corp. to reflect the company's broad product line and national scope.

Application users can login with their email address and password.

The E-Report Admin application is used by our administrative staff and our customers to access company documents and reports. All application pages and fields are protected by Iron Speed Designer's role-based security. Application administrators can allow designated users access to various pages based on their assigned roles. User roles can be updated by modifying the Administrative Security Control Table. Administrators also can assign users access to their personal profiles on an individual or group basis. Each user role waterfalls down to accessibility, designating which report groups the user can access.

Customers can access various reports in the Reports to Report Groups table.

Application size and scope

One Microsoft SQL Server database is comprised of more than 25 database tables and 150 web pages. The two largest tables, Table Users-to-Roles and Table Report Groups-to-Reports, each contain more than half a million records. E-Report Admin is accessed by 75 to 100 people and processes approximately 10,000 transactions each month.

The project

This project only took me 45 minutes to implement. I spent a total of 10 minutes building the Iron Speed Designer portion of this application. This application is as "out-of-the-box" as it gets!

Code extensions and customizations

This application did not require a single code customization. Iron Speed Designer did everything for me.

Page layout customizations

I used the standard Kilimanjaro design theme in Iron Speed Designer.

Iron Speed Designer impact

I saved three person-months and approximately $36,000 in development costs using Iron Speed Designer!

Using Iron Speed Designer made this project infinitely easier than coding by hand. Before I found Iron Speed Designer, I'd spent weeks designing and developing data driven applications. In order to update the application and apply changes, administrators needed to work with me directly. The users would be able to see data in the database; however, they did not have administrative access to it. This frustrated them and created a tremendous amount of extra work for developers. With Iron Speed Designer web applications, the users have complete control of data. Of course, the developer is still in charge of code, but now the general administrative users access the database effortlessly. This is a small application; the bigger you get the more important it is to have administrative interfaces into backend databases.

Next steps

While planning E-Report Admin, I considered adding Windows Authentication (single sign-on) to the application. I ultimately determined it was unnecessary; however, I may add this customization in the future if our infrastructure requires it.

About the developer

Rich Myer holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems Management from Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, CO. He completed his post-graduate work in Management Information Systems at Regis University in Denver, CO. Today, Rich is the Assistant Vice President for UNIFI Companies: Ameritas Life. He has been using Iron Speed Designer since 2003.