IATSE National Benefit Funds Secure Portal

Polar Design created a uniquely designed public information site and secure participant portal for the IATSE National Benefit Funds.  This multi-year project is the largest secure web portal to date planned and executed by Polar Design.  It features extensive functionality, integration with third party system and enterprise grade infrastructure to support over a hundred thousand active members.

• Customized user interfaces such as dashboards
• Extensive self-service and reporting functionality
• Extensive third party system integration
• Mobile website
• Hosting / IT Infrastructure optimized for high load and security

Desktop Design

Visually Attractive and Secure Portal

The general look and feel features special touches that amplify IATSE’s brand such as the IATSE spotlight spanning the entire length of the web site and “fading in” as if it is has been turned on for a theater performance.  From a comprehensive dashboard that present participants with a bird-eye view of all their benefits after login, the IATSE secure portal is technologically robust and user friendly.

Robust Technical Solution

The IATSE secure portal features challenging requirements including:

1. Security considerations due to HIPAA compliance
2. A large daily user population numbering in the thousands, and growing several fold during annual enrollment periods
3. The desire of IATSE to provide its participants with real time access to data (the idea is to allow a participant to see an update to their account immediately after its made by the fund office)
4. The need to provide complex reports with nesting and grouping to business users that are taxing on database server resources

The system architecture implemented follows:

1. Two physical servers – an application server that delivers web site functionality, and a database server behind the DMZ and not accessible to the outside world.  This implem
   entation achieves security and performance objectives.
2. Real time replication of the database server with the fund office’s database server using a secure VPN.
3. Security implementations such as port obfuscation on the servers
4. Skilled SQL query optimization to reduce larger queries’ load times: this includes breaking up larger queries into sub parts, using progressive loading, paging and other methods.

Mobile Design

The public and secure web sites both include mobile versions that feature large, easy to read text, large buttons, and an optimized single column display that requires no pinch/zoom to view images and text clearly.

Mobile / Responsive Website

Provide compact, simplified interfaces with large text, graphics and buttons to improve usability on mobile devices and tablets.  Interfaces are designed to allow easy access to sub-pages by one tap, with the pages displayed in line and on the same screen saving time to load an entirely new page and making for a quick, smooth experience.

The example to the right shows these principals in the complete interface for the Annuity account dashboard, along with a sample subpage – the “Annuity Application Request” – that is accessible by tapping on the corresponding button.