Sector(s)
Overview
ShareX is a knowledge-sharing initiative designed to make a large global organisation’s research, documentation, and technical resources accessible to external partners, including donors, stakeholders, and the broader public.
The organisation needed a way to share its extensive knowledge library while maintaining strong security controls over internal systems. To address this, we designed and developed two Drupal platforms as part of the ShareX ecosystem.
The first platform, Clearing House, connects the organisation’s internal SharePoint libraries with a secure Drupal intermediary layer. The second platform, Knowledge, serves as the public-facing multilingual website where users can search, explore, and access curated knowledge resources.
Together, these platforms enable secure knowledge distribution while supporting structured publishing workflows for global teams.
About the project
Challenges
The organisation needed to share internal knowledge resources with external audiences while maintaining strict security controls over its document repositories.
This required a secure method to connect internal SharePoint libraries with a public-facing website without exposing internal infrastructure.
The platform also needed to support diverse content formats, including research reports, documents, images, and videos, while ensuring that metadata remained structured and searchable.
Another challenge was enabling content teams to curate contextual articles and insights around these resources across multiple thematic and regional microsites.
The system needed to balance secure knowledge distribution, efficient content publishing, and discoverability across a large volume of information.
The approach
During the research phase, we identified the need to standardise and streamline the organisation’s digital knowledge platforms.
To achieve this, we designed a two-platform architecture that separates internal content storage from public knowledge delivery.
The Clearing House platform acts as a centralized repository that connects to the organization’s SharePoint document libraries through API integrations.
The Knowledge platform serves as the public website where curated content can be searched and accessed by external audiences.
We also developed reusable code and configuration frameworks that allow other websites to consume content from Clearing House in the future.
This approach ensures a consistent user experience while maintaining secure and scalable knowledge distribution.
The solution
Cohesive cross-region design
A unified homepage structure was implemented to provide users with access to region-specific information while maintaining a consistent experience across the platform.
Visitors can navigate between different geographic regions and thematic areas while accessing a centralized knowledge base containing multiple media formats.
This design establishes a single source of truth across multiple regional sites.
Full-text search capabilities
Full-text search functionality was integrated into the ShareX platform to enable comprehensive site-wide or region-specific searches.
This allows users to quickly locate documents, media assets, and knowledge resources across the platform.
Clearing House content hub
The Clearing House platform acts as a central hub for storing and managing media assets, including audio, video, images, and documents.
Content stored in SharePoint libraries is synchronised through API integration and stored as media within the platform.
These assets are accessible through a public API, enabling other websites to embed media through iframes or provide direct download links.
Document approvals can be handled within SharePoint, after which metadata is synchronized with Clearing House at regular intervals, typically every few minutes.
Clearing House also allows other websites to subscribe to new content using OAuth 2.0 authenticated APIs. This framework ensures secure content distribution and allows the platform to enforce access rules when sharing information.
Knowledge platform
The Knowledge platform serves as the public website within the ShareX ecosystem and hosts multiple microsites covering various thematic and regional topics such as health, migration, and water and sanitation.
Content authors can access documents stored in Clearing House directly within the Knowledge administrative interface.
They can then create contextual articles around these documents, helping audiences better understand complex topics and technical information.
This approach combines structured knowledge assets with editorial storytelling to make information more accessible to a wider audience.
The outcome
The ShareX platform established a structured and secure workflow for sharing knowledge across multiple digital properties.
Content teams can now access documents from the Clearing House repository, create contextual articles, and publish them across global or regional microsites.
Both Clearing House and Knowledge provide improved search and sorting capabilities, making it easier for users to locate relevant information.
The platform also includes a page builder interface that allows content teams to design homepages and basic pages independently without developer support.
Overall, ShareX provides a scalable knowledge-sharing infrastructure that improves information accessibility while maintaining strong security and governance over internal content systems.
Why Drupal was chosen
Flexible content management
The platform needed to manage a wide range of content types, including documents, multimedia assets, and research materials. Drupal’s flexible content architecture allowed the system to structure and manage this information effectively.
Multisite and multilingual capabilities
The knowledge platform required support for multiple microsites across different regions and thematic categories. Drupal’s multisite architecture and built-in multilingual capabilities made it well-suited for managing global knowledge content.
Integration-ready architecture
The platform required seamless integration with SharePoint libraries and external APIs. Drupal’s API-friendly architecture enabled secure data exchange while maintaining system stability.
Open-source scalability
Drupal’s open-source ecosystem provides a scalable and cost-effective foundation supported by a large global community and a wide range of contributed modules.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
