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The Royal Yachting Association (RYA) is the UK's national body for sailing. Part of its work is issuing compliance certificates for 'small commercial vessels' (larger than typical leisure boats but smaller than large commercial shipping), confirming they meet safety and maintenance standards.
Before this project, that whole process ran on a Microsoft Access database. Not a shared, server-hosted database, but a single file, emailed or copied between members of the admin team whenever someone needed to update it. ComputerMinds worked with the RYA to replace it with a secure, multi-user Drupal application.
About the project
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Goals and requirements
- Give the whole admin team secure, simultaneous, remote access to the same live records, ending the single emailed file for good.
- Rebuild the Access database's "reports" as proper, permission-aware listings, forms and record pages, including the ability to export results to a spreadsheet, just as staff could before.
- Model compliance data more richly than Access allowed, including compliance cycles and built-in validation.
- Automatically generate PDF certificates, each carrying a QR code, so that officials can instantly verify a certificate is genuine and current. No new public-facing website or redesign needed.
- Migrate thousands of existing records out of Access without losing data or downtime.
Approach and outcome
We at ComputerMinds always begin by building trust through listening. We helped the RYA figure out what would work for them, and conducted an in-depth audit of the existing Access database to find out not just the structure of their data, but what it meant. That understanding shaped a new content model that went beyond what was possible with Access.
The migration itself was scripted using Drupal's declarative migration tooling, then run and re-run repeatedly against test environments until we knew it would complete cleanly on live. The final migration of thousands of sensitive records into production took a matter of minutes. Plain sailing!
The result is a secure, multi-user application that has replaced the single Access file entirely, along with the real-world workflows it had forced up on the operations team. Certificates are generated automatically as PDFs with verifiable QR codes. They are emailed to vessel owners automatically, there's no need for the RYA team to print & post everything manually! They can now work concurrently, from anywhere, with a full audit trail. Reports are now permission-controlled views with one-click spreadsheet export. Port officials and vessel owners can check certificates are authentic and current in seconds. Surveyors, locked out of the legacy system, can now access and submit inspection details through the new website.
ComputerMinds' guidance was invaluable in ensuring a smooth transition.
The end result will have a significant operational impact enabling us to issue digital certificates, reducing our reliance on printed materials, and consolidating three separate systems into a single, streamlined database solution.
Adam Parry, Technical Manager at the Royal Yachting Association
Why Drupal was chosen
The RYA's problem wasn't really "we need a new website". It was "we have a creaking business process". Internal business workflows and applications might not immediately look like a Content Management System (Drupal's explicit niche), but we've demonstrated time & again how it can make a business 'ship-shape' again:
- Structured content modelling, out of the box. Entities, fields and entity references model vessels, certificates, inspections and how they relate to each other, rather than writing and maintaining a bespoke database schema and admin interface from scratch.
- Mature access control. Fine-grained permissions and role-based access meant different groups (e.g. office staff, vessel surveyors, port officials) could each get exactly the access they needed, with reliable audit trails of who did what.
- A proven route for moving data. Drupal's migration tooling is built for exactly this job: bringing structured data across from a legacy system into a new, well-modelled one, with the ability to test and re-run migrations safely before going live.
- A large ecosystem of ready-made building blocks. Rather than building every feature from zero, existing, well-maintained community modules already solved large parts of the problem, such as email notifications, two-factor authentication, and on-demand reports that can be exported to Excel.
- A track record for security and long-term maintenance, backed by an active community and a dedicated security team. Exactly what a regulator-facing, compliance-critical system needs.
Put simply: ComputerMinds could use Drupal to deliver a genuine business application, not just a website, for a fraction of the cost and risk of a bespoke build.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Views Data Export powered the spreadsheet exports that replicated, and improved on, Access's own reporting. These are required for the RYA's legal responsibilities towards the UK government as a Certifying Authority. ComputerMinds maintains this module, so the team could use it with full confidence, giving the client a well-tested, actively supported export tool rather than a bespoke, one-off feature.
Easy Email handled the automated compliance notifications sent to customers, keeping consistent branding and templates without a bespoke mail-handling build.
The Gin admin theme provides a modern, focused administration interface without needing to invest any resource in a bespoke frontend design
Drupal's Migrate system gave a robust, repeatable framework for moving records out of Access successfully.
Dashboard tailors the entry point for each type of user on the site: officials can verify certificate authenticity, surveyors get immediate access to the vessels they need to submit information for, RYA staff are shown key data for what action to take each day.
Paragraphs (plus Inline Entity Form and Field Group) modelled more complex, structured records (such as a vessel's inspections through its compliance cycles), as clean, related sets of fields, presented as manageable, well-organised forms for staff.
TFA strengthened account security and access control. Important for a system holding sensitive compliance and personal data, and for letting the client's own administrators safely manage some permissions without full site-builder access.
AI suggestions were used in the production of this article.
