Spiral Universe Use Case

Spiral provides a hosted, Web 2.0-model software and services solution for use by schools, school districts, and other educational institutions. This integrated software suite helps school administrators manage their day-to-day business operations, while providing ranges of functionality to teachers and students.
Teachers can post assignments ... students can check their grades ... educators can manage schedules, transcripts, report cards, and all other relevant information.

Spiral's business model is engineered to make a major impact in the education domain by providing a solution to individual schools free of charge, while generating revenue from higher organizational levels (such as school districts) and from services such as report design and generation. To offer competitive functionality at minimal cost, Spiral relies heavily on open source technology.

Reporting—primarily for administrators and teachers—is a critical component of the solution. Spiral needs the ability to quickly design and generate new reports for its customers and clients, with sufficiently robust features to be both compelling and informative.

JasperReports report generation
iReport report definition and design
Ext JS JavaScript Platform
PostgreSQL database

Spiral presents a web-based virtual desktop, or “webtop,” to end users, enabling them have a single environment accessible from any Internet terminal. Report requests and viewing occur within this webtop; Jaspersoft BI functionality is accessed by and driven through Ext JS components, customized by Spiral to enforce consistent look and feel.
Reporting is delivered PDF and HTML media, and can also be used to generate CSV and XML formats for simple data export—critically important to Spiral’s customer base. Most importantly, pre-configured GUI components and flexible Jaspersoft BI capabilities enable Spiral to rapidly design and deliver new reports as customers present evolving and unique information needs.

Spiral can deploy a new report style in a matter of hours, providing critical support to the company’s business model, which depends, in part, on revenue from report design services.

Jaspersoft’s flexible, powerful BI capabilities, integrated with the rest of the Spiral solution, consistently receive excellent “grades” from customers. And, because reports are essential to schools—in many cases, mandated by local, regional, and state governments—Jaspersoft’s BI components have become an enabler of Spiral’s rapid growth.