098 Indivizo - A SaaS App Built With Drupal with Bálint Kléri - Modules Unraveled Podcast

## Project
* First off, what is Indivizo?
Indivizo is a web application that provides a set of products for human resources specialists. Our flagship product is Indivizo Selection, that is a video interview platform.
    * Allows HR professionals to use video interviews as part of their selection process
    * Asynchronous interviews — no need to schedule anything, everything is automatic
    * Question databank, interview plans
    * Each answer is recorded as a standalone video
    * Unique workflow: allows you to focus on the competencies and skills of your candidates
    * Other products: ATS, Search
 
* Why is it a good approach to use video interviews in the selection process?
    * Saves time (up to 90%)
    * Better evaluation: objective, easier...
    * We recommend to use it for first-round selection, but...
 
* Where did the idea come from?
    * My partners are HR consultants and organizational developers with over a decade of experience on the field. They have helped many organizations in selection processes…
    * The project emerged from real world needs, with real expertise on the field
    * Our strength is how we work together
    * We are an HR company with technology
    * Global trends show that supporting HR and talent management with technology is getting more and more significant. An HR department plays a key role in an organization’s success, making the need of developing this area imperative.
 
* What is your target group?
    * Everyone! :)
        * Large-scale corporations (IT, telecommunication, SSC, bank and insurance)
        * Small and medium scale companies (without HR department)
 
* Switching to the technology side… What’s the biggest architectural decision when building a Saas app?
    * Separation of customer spaces: application vs. server level
 
* What are the pros and cons for these two?
    * Important factors:
        * Access control
        * Provisioning new “user space”
        * Deployment
        * Building server infrastructure
        * Scaling
        * Centralized billing system
        * Client customization
 
* Which direction was taken with Indivizo? Why?
    * Installation profile, separation on the server-level, provisioning a separate instance for each customer
        * Drush make
        * Build script
    * Scaling and customization
 
* What is the server infrastructure behind Indivizo?
    * One single VPS, custom scripts
    * Waiting for Commerce Platform to be released:
        * Modern, scalable, cloud-based hosting solution that is modeled on agile development best practices. Its unique capability revolves around managing the infrastructure topology and configuration using the same git-based tools that you use to manage your code.
 
* What are the key modules of the installation profile of Indivizo?
    * Bootstrap
    * Page manager and Panels everywhere
    * Message stack
    * Organic Groups
    * Naturally: Views, Entity API
 
* How are the videos recorded?
    * With the help of a third-party vendor
    * Recording happens through a flash widget
    * Videos are hosted by our vendor
    * We use video.js to play the videos
 
* You mentioned a question databank. How does that work?
    * Centralized place to curate the content - separate Drupal installation
    * Client sites fetch the content through a RESTful API
    * We have future plans with this question databank…
 
* Big organizations often have existing systems in place. Can you integrate with those?
    * It’s common that a client already has an ATS
    * We can retrieve applicant data through our RESTful API
 
* What is it like to build a product with Drupal
    * Insanely fast until about the 80%...
    * Amazing prototyping tool
    * I learnt what agile really means: for me is changing directions as quickly as we can
    * Reacting on customer feedback
    * Releasing as early as possible
        * “If you are not ashamed of your product when you launched, you launched too late” - Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn
    * I jumped into this project as a developer, but working on a product requires more of a business mindset
        * As a developer I liked polishing things until they are (nearly) perfect...
    * Shipping on time and on budget is essential, even when what you ship is rough
    * I’m gonna do a session about this topic at Drupal Developer Days in Szeged
 
* Where are you at with Indivizo?
    * Expanding on the Hungarian market…
    * Working on a strategy to reach out customers in broader Europe
 
## Use Cases
* Things
 
I hope this has inspired you to do something!
 
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