The Office of Housing Stability, a division of the City of Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development, was charged with expanding constituent access to the City's affordable housing information via a brand new initiative called Metrolist. Making the program's Salesforce-based data available on the public boston.gov website in real time was a first-of-its-kind undertaking for the City, and it introduced a new set of technical and process challenges with no established precedent. We partnered with the City to design and deliver the solution end to end.
We developed a seamless integration between the City's Salesforce instance and Drupal, creating a persistent OAuth2 feed that publishes affordable housing data to the public site in real time as records are created, updated, or removed. As part of the engagement, we also helped the City re-architect its database structure, consolidating an import process that handled roughly 50,000 records down to only a few hundred and cutting total import time by more than 90 percent.
The resulting platform allows residents to filter and sort listings by the criteria that matter most to them. Because housing data is stored as custom objects within Drupal, the portal updates instantly without disturbing boston.gov's caching layer, keeping the broader site fast and stable. The interface follows the City's Fleet design system, meets ADA accessibility standards, and works equally well on mobile and desktop. We also trained City staff and produced documentation so they could manage the platform with confidence.
The launch delivered a meaningful lift in resident engagement and satisfaction, with faster load times and a standard other city services now look to. Most importantly, residents gained around-the-clock access to housing information they can turn to the moment they need it.
“During the discovery and development of the online platform of Metrolist, Jantcu provided both Drupal and business process improvement expertise. Jantcu built a seamless integration between our Salesforce instance and Drupal, thus allowing our data to be displayed on the boston.gov online platform. With Jantcu's partnership, we were able to enhance and streamline our internal business process and provide constituents with instant access to housing information 24/7.”
— Shana Berry, Product Owner, Department of Neighborhood Development
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