The client: Perceptive

Perceptive is a UK medical education company that sets out to deliver "bespoke learning that really changes behaviour". They build and run online CPD platforms for healthcare regulators, professional bodies and employers, used by professionals to keep their skills and registration current.

The challenge

Perceptive take their software seriously. They have their own development team, they knew their deadlines, and they knew exactly what compliance required. What they needed was specialist Yii and PHP capacity to deliver it.

  • Planned maintenance. PHP and Yii 1.1 updates, plus the recommendations from a penetration test Perceptive had commissioned, all needed delivering promptly.
  • A planned move to Yii 2. Perceptive wanted the application on Yii 2, a larger piece of work to be scoped properly alongside the interim updates.
  • A fixed launch date. When a new CPD scheme was announced, the platform had to support it from the start.
  • Specialist capacity to work alongside their in-house team.

Why Perceptive chose Si Novi

Perceptive needed Yii and PHP specialists who could slot into their organisation, pick up a large, established codebase and keep it moving forward without slowing anything else down.

  • Yii specialists since 2010. We've built and maintained applications on both Yii 1.1 and Yii 2, so we knew exactly where an upgrade between them bites.
  • Straight into an inherited codebase. We were working on Perceptive's code within weeks of signing, with no long discovery phase.
  • An extension of their team. We worked in Perceptive's own repositories, with their developers reviewing and deploying our changes.
  • Honest advice on value. We recommended delivering the compliance updates first and giving the Yii 2 move the planning it deserved, rather than rushing both at once.
  • Careful with live data. We worked against an anonymised copy of the database and agreed a signed-off regression suite before changing any code.
It is easy to work with Si Novi. They take the time to fully understand our projects and deliverables. They are honest and transparent and overall a pleasure to work with. When working with them it feels like an extension of our team.
Rachel Barry, Managing Director
Perceptive Medical Education

What we did

We split the modernisation into two stages, agreed with Perceptive from the outset.

  • Stage one: secure and compliant, fast. Updated Yii 1.1 to its latest release and the application to PHP 7.4, resolved the findings from a recent penetration test, and moved passwords to salted bcrypt with single sign-on still working.
  • Stage two: rebuilt on Yii 2. We re-platformed the application first, then built the new CPD scheme's features straight onto the new codebase.

We built our own tooling for the move, generating automated regression tests from the application's routes and translating its Yii 1 model relations into Yii 2.

The outcomes

  • The new CPD scheme launched on time, on the new platform.
  • Secure and compliant, with the penetration test findings resolved and modern password hashing.
  • Built once. The new scheme went straight onto Yii 2, with no throwaway work on the previous platform.
  • A codebase Perceptive could own, current, documented and structured the way their developers already knew.

A growing partnership

What started as a focused security and compliance update grew into two years of work across Perceptive's platforms.

  • A second platform modernised. We upgraded one of Perceptive's learning management systems to current versions of Yii 2 and PHP, then built new and enhanced features on top.
  • Online payments. We integrated the Opayo payment gateway so providers could pay online, with reporting for Perceptive's client.
  • Provider feedback. We built feedback collection and scoring for completed CPD activities, with additional reflections for the professionals completing them.
  • Audit. We started the audit functionality and handed it to Perceptive's own team to complete.

Through 2022 Perceptive expanded their own development team and brought the work in-house, as planned from the start. Because the platforms were current, well structured and familiar, the handover was straightforward.

About Si Novi: PHP and Yii framework specialists

We've worked with the Yii framework since 2010, from Yii 1.1 through to Yii 2. We often find ourselves picking up mature PHP applications that other teams have built, getting to know them properly, and bringing them up to date without disrupting the people who rely on them.

If your application is running on an older version of Yii or PHP, talk to us about PHP and Yii development - we'd be happy to take a look.